That's truly unfortunate. But it doesn't surprise me one bit. This is how they operate. They love trumping up charges any way they can ("stop resisting!") because the more "serious" crime they stop they better they look and then they are able to get promotions. Was there any dashcam or other video evidence available? I assume not or else I imagine it would have been used.
They really have no choice but to provide it, if the defense attorney subpoenas for it, but public defenders often don't do a good job defending people, and the dashcam evidence suspiciously often goes missing or broken.
What I meant is that the OP would have plead not guilty and then had their lawyer file the request as part of discovery to see if any dashcam or bodycam footage was available. Believe me, I have no expectation that they would review this naturally themselves and offer up evidence of officer wrongdoing (even though these people swore an oath to do exactly that).
We'll soon have a a future where our cars have like 14 cameras and a radar and police officers will still be having trouble getting their cameras to work reliably no doubt.
In my justice fantasies some smart ass company comes along to "help" the police by providing them with vests each containing 60 cameras all operating independently and unable to be turned off. The same company will "help" the police avoid complicated data maintenance issues by uploading to their secure servers. This same company would be very popular with the voting public who vote for laws that ensure police accept the "help". Just a fantasy for sure.
