Just got an email from the tireless videographers and civil liberties activists at I-Witness Video, indicating that video activism has won a significant victory against the NYPD, a police force known for its acts of impunity at political demonstrations and in communities of color. I’ll let the email speak for itself:

Do you remember seeing a YouTube video this summer of an NYPD officer brutally tackling a bicyclist in Times Square? The bicyclist was charged with assaulting a police officer, among other things. But the video showed the opposite — Officer Patrick Pogan singling out bicyclist Chris Long for a sickeningly hard tackle that threw Long into the air and onto a crowded sidewalk.

In the days following this incident, teams of video activists — including the Glass Bead Collective and the TIMES UP Video Collective, with assistance from I-Witness Video — worked to publicize the YouTube video of this event. People have viewed the video on YouTube over 1.6 million times.

Today, in a stunning turn of events, rookie police officer Patrick Pogan was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury. The charges have not yet been made public, but are said to include the crime of filing a false report and assault.

This indictment is a signal event for video activists. Despite the abundance of video showing that police officers have fabricated charges against people arrested at demonstrations, in New York City at least, we have never before achieved an indictment of a police officer for lying in a sworn statement.

Look for the indictment to be handed down on Tuesday, December 16. [Editor's note: there's a New York Times article on the startling indictment here. And there's an upcoming event about web 2.0 activism in Brooklyn here.]

Eileen Clancy
I-Witness Video

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