Trial Begins for NYC Cop Caught Tackling Cyclist

The police officer said he was deliberately rammed by a rowdy cyclist, one of thousands demonstrating in Times Square.

But a witness's video, posted online, told a different story. Former officer Patrick Pogan faces trial on charges he purposefully knocked the activist off his bike and lied about it on his report; opening statements are scheduled for Monday.

Nearly 20 years after an amateur tape of Los Angeles officers beating driver Rodney King sparked a national outcry, the New York case spotlights the growing prevalence of witness and surveillance video in law enforcement in an era of YouTube and cell-phone cameras, and whether the videos show the full story.

Four officers were acquitted of criminal charges in the 1991 King beating, igniting a riot that killed more than 50 people. In the years since, videotapes of police activity have sometimes implicated suspects and exonerated officers - and at other times have suggested the opposite.

"It's very hard for offenders to commit crimes without being captured, either on a surveillance camera or a cell phone," James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. But the ever-expanding corps of cameras also means officers' "behavior is constantly being recorded, and that might be a potential minus."

In Maryland, two Prince George's County officers were suspended after a March 3 video taken by a University of Maryland student from a dorm room window appeared to show an unprovoked attack on a student during a rowdy post-game celebration.

A northern California transit officer is headed for trial in June on a murder charge stemming from a 2009 incident that became a widely watched video online. Johannes Mehersle is accused of shooting an unarmed man in the back on an Oakland train station platform; his lawyer has said Mehserle mistakenly pulled his handgun instead of his stun gun.

To civil liberties advocates, videotapes offer citizens the prospect of effectively countering the authoritative weight of police reports and other official statements.

"There's no question but that video evidence gives ordinary people enormous boosts in credibility when confronting contradictory police evidence," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

In the Pogan case, the video of the 2008 confrontation "was a crucial element of persuading the DA to prosecute it," said New York attorney Norman Siegel. The attorney has represented riders in the cycling demonstration who urged charges against the then-officer.

The Manhattan District Attorney's office declined comment on the role the video might play in the trial, although prosecutors emphasized the video when announcing charges in 2008.

Long was initially arrested on a charge of resisting arrest, based largely on Pogan's account of Long purposefully swerving into him at the July 25, 2008, demonstration.

The video clip, shot by a Florida tourist, was posted online a few days later and has been viewed more than 2.1 million times.

It shows Pogan, then a rookie cop, standing in the street as bikes whiz past. He moves toward Long and violently knocks him to the ground in front of crowds of people. Another officer comes over, and the two officers wrestle with Long before handcuffing him.

Time's Up!, one of the groups sponsoring the ride, collected the roughly minute-long video after the incident, paying $310 to the tourist, the group said.

The charges against Long were later dropped. His lawyer, David B. Rankin, said he was thankful the video had surfaced.

But Pogan's lawyer, Stuart London, said witnesses have said the video didn't capture important pieces of the run-up to the incident.

"If you look at (Long's) actions beforehand, his hands were off the handlebars. ... He's screaming, trying to call attention to himself. He's disrupting traffic," said London, who said the full account will vindicate Pogan.

Pogan, who resigned from the force in February 2009, has pleaded not guilty to charges including assault and falsifying business records. He faces up to four years in prison if convicted.

Both police and civil liberties advocates generally agree the spread of video cameras has proven useful. Police in New York, Dallas and other places have installed video cameras on patrol cars' dashboards to document arrests and traffic stops. Investigators increasingly turn to surveillance footage and cell phone cameras to capture suspects and build cases; the New York Police Department solicits video clips as tips.

Video can raise questions as well as answer them, experts say, especially because the visual record can seem so definitive: Now you see it, yes, but what about what you don't?

What happened before the "record" button was pressed? Who shot it, and why? What did it look like from another point of view?

Perspective made stark differences, for example, in dueling videotapes of an April 2009 protest at the New School, a university in Manhattan. Students occupied a school building for several hours, calling for the resignation of the university's president.

Video shot by student activists appeared to show angry police chasing down protesters outside. But a video shot by officers inside the building appeared to portray a calm, orderly and peaceful scene with students voluntarily being arrested.

"Clearly, (a video's) one piece of documentation is not everything that happened, and it's not a 360-degree view," said Pat Aufderheide, a documentary film expert and director of American University's Center for Social Media. "But it's a representation that, in general, people know how to read."