The pattern, when set out across hundreds of cases, is too consistent to be accidental. An officer's sworn account of the arrest is contradicted by body-worn camera footage, by bystander video, or by both. Charges are reduced. Then dropped.
Civil-rights lawyers describe the result as a quiet two-step: the arrest accomplishes the operational goal — removing a person from the street, often a protester — while the eventual case dismissal protects the agency from the kind of public verdict that builds a reform constituency.
The Department has not commented on the specific cases reviewed. It has defended the use of force generally.
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