A group of protesters marches nonviolently down the street, watching as police officers arrest people from their ranks, seemingly randomly. A group of women standing on the street shouting slogans is rounded up into a mesh crowd-control net and sprayed in the face with pepper spray. Police drag a woman by her hair across the street.

These images could easily have come from any of the recent riots in dictator-controlled countries. But this time they come from the streets of New York City’s Financial District.

Occupy Wall Street, a movement to bring protesters from around the country to camp out and protest corporate corruption, has lasted for 12 days, brought more than a thousand people to the camp and spawned at least 45 solidarity events around the world, according to the Occupy Wall Street website. Unsubstantiated reports of police brutality and unfounded arrests have flooded social media since the start of the occupation, but coverage from mainstream media has been spotty and contradictory.

A New York Times article Friday characterized the group as “a noble but fractured and airy movement” that “wish[ed] to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgeably.” But accounts from people involved in the protest and journalists who spent time among the group paint things differently. A Huffington Post reporter said the group was “highly organized and based on consensus” and that it was a diverse group that operates on established schedules.

It doesn’t matter which of these accounts is true; whether the protesters are a saintly army heralding a needed revolution or a chaotic, pathetic force pining for the 1960s, they should not be facing this treatment at the hands of police. It doesn’t matter whether you think their message is inspired or deluded, they should not be denied their right to protest.

But that is exactly what is happening, if the videos, pictures, accounts from hundreds of witnesses, hours of livestreaming and innumerable details coming in from social media can at all be trusted. True, the latter cannot be relied on to give a purely factual account, but they can usually be trusted to create a reliable impression of the situation on the ground ­— and the number of individuals involved makes that picture less likely to be swayed by the agenda of a few. It’s clear from the videos that something disturbing is happening in New York City. Yes, protesters are probably at fault in some — maybe even many — cases. But if the police are at fault for inciting the violence even the handful of times suggested by these videos, this situation demands attention.

If just one person is being brutalized and wrongfully imprisoned by the police, it’s a big deal. Citizens’ horror should be the same whether the attack is on one or a hundred, and that outrage should be powerful enough to inspire a real outcry. It seems likely police are wrongfully restricting the rights of these protesters. And that’s something no citizen, no matter what they think of this group or its message, can afford to stand by and watch.