Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop's lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake.

How convenient that this "mistake" happened to benefit the prosecution. The deleted portions of the tape contradicted police claims that Dunlop pushed his bicycle into a line of police officers.

If it wasn't obvious at the time, it should now be clear that most protestors at the RNC weren't arrested for breaking the law; they were arrested for protesting. "Of the 1,670 cases that have run their full course, 91 percent ended with the charges dismissed or with a verdict of not guilty after trial."

In the bulk of the 400 cases that were dismissed based on videotapes, most involved arrests at three places - 16th Street near Union Square, 17th Street near Union Square and on Fulton Street - where police officers and civilians taped the gatherings, said Martin R. Stolar, the president of the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Those tapes showed that the demonstrators had followed the instructions of senior officers to walk down those streets, only to have another official order their arrests.

Arresting protestors might have benefited the Republican Party, but the arrests came at an enormous cost to the public, to the individual arrestees, and to the First Amendment. The New York City police should be ashamed to have played this game.