Ethics

Video Proves Police Lies. Again.

By Ed Brayton

Here's yet another case where a surveillance video proved that cops were lying in arresting innocent people.

When undercover detectives busted Jose and Maximo Colon last year for selling cocaine at a seedy club in Queens, there was a glaring problem: The brothers hadn't done anything wrong.

But proclaiming innocence wasn't going to be good enough. The Dominican immigrants needed proof.

''I sat in the jail and thought ... how could I prove this? What could I do?'' Jose, 24, recalled in Spanish during a recent interview.

As he glanced around a holding cell, the answer came to him: Security cameras. Since then, a vindicating video from the club's cameras has spared the brothers a possible prison term, resulted in two officers' arrest and become the basis for a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on June 20, 2009 (boomark / email).