What happened next continues to baffle a man who has committed his life to defending the U.S. Constitution. “It was a wave of compliance,” he says. “I didn’t see a single person resist.”

The violence came, but it was from police.

Multiple videos, including some shot by people who were arrested, show the police kicking people on the ground and spraying them with pepper spray.

“This isn’t a he-said, she-said,” says attorney Javad Khazaeli of Khazaeli Wyrsch LLC, the law firm that represents the Nelsons and several other people who were arrested that night. “It’s abundantly clear what happened.”

“I was on the ground, I kept my face down,” Nelson continues. “A police officer came up to me and Maced me in the face. He grabbed my head and hit me in the eyes a couple of times with the Mace, or pepper spray. My head was smashed on the ground. I was blinded for the next several hours. I was bleeding and I was covered with Mace.”

Iris saw her husband “dragged violently” by police. “I was shocked,” she says.

Protesters whom Nelson had never met helped clean him up and provide medical care while he and his wife were in jail for the next 20 hours.