Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette—An expert hired by Jordan Miles’ legal team in his federal civil rights suit against the city of Pittsburgh says three plainclothes police officers had no reason to stop Mr. Miles on a Homewood street last year and used too much force in subduing him during an arrest.
In a report filed Thursday as part of the case, R. Paul McCauley, a retired professor of criminology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, also said that one officer, Richard Ewing, fabricated statements from a witness in an affidavit.
In another report filed last week, Joseph Stine, an expert for the city, concluded that the police acted properly during the encounter on Tioga Street on Jan. 12, 2010.
Mr. Miles filed suit last year against the city and Officers Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak, claiming they beat him. The city reinstated all three men after the U.S. Justice Department concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute them.
The civil trial is scheduled for next summer.
In his report, Mr. McCauley concluded that the officers did not have cause to approach Mr. Miles, but central to the case is whether they identified themselves once they did stop him.
Mr. Miles’ lawyers say they didn’t and he fought with them because he thought he was being robbed.
Mr. Stine’s report said they did and concluded that Mr. Miles had to have known they were police.
Mr. McCauley’s report said that if they did identify themselves properly, Mr. Miles should not have fought back, but that he also had the right to resist physical abuse at their hands.
He said the officers punched and kneed him in the head, pulled his hair out and used a Taser on him.
He said their combined weight and martial arts training should have been sufficient to subdue him without having to hit him in the head repeatedly.
“Under these circumstances closed fist strikes and knee strikes to Mr. Miles’ face/head were unnecessary and excessive,” he wrote.
Mr. McCauley also said that Officer Ewing lied in Mr. Miles’ arrest report in regard to a statement by a witness, Monica Wooding, who lives at the Tioga Street address where the incident occurred.
In the affidavit, Officer Ewing wrote that she said she did not know Mr. Miles when the officers questioned her. At a hearing, however, Ms. Wooding said no officers asked her that question, according to Mr. McCauley’s report.
In summarizing depositions, Mr. McCauley also paraphrased police Cmdr. RaShall Brackney as saying that the three officers had a “history of lying” and taking action in situations without the required level of reasonable suspicion.
In addition, Mr. McCauley criticized the officers for the handling of a key piece of evidence. The officers said that before they stopped Mr. Miles, they saw one of his pockets sagging lower than the other as if he was carrying something heavy, like a gun. After the struggle, they said they found a Mountain Dew bottle but threw it out because they didn’t think it was evidence.
Mr. McCauley said he disagreed and indicated that both Cmdr. Brackney and police Chief Nate Harper said in their depositions that the bottle should not have been discarded.
“Absolutely, the Mountain Dew bottle was critical evidence to justify the lawful use of force,” Mr. McCauley wrote. “In accordance with well-established police practices, this evidence should have been retained by the officers.”
In his report, Mr. Stine said the failure to keep the bottle as evidence was a mistake understandable in the wake of what the officers “believed to be a life and death struggle.”
Mr. McCauley wrote that in an interview on Jan. 20, Mr. Miles said he never had a bottle of any kind in his pocket and was carrying only his keys.
