Pittsburgh, PA, January 17, 2012 – “The Gammage Project: From Jonny to Jordan, what’s changed?” begins a series of community talkback events centered around the upcoming opening of The Gammage Project, a staged docu-drama produced in conjunction with Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company and The University of Pittsburgh Repertory Theatre.

“From Jonny to Jordan” will look at the changes in police procedure and oversight from the time of the Jonny Gammage case to the recent Jordan Miles case. Panelists will include local experts including David Harris, distinguished faculty scholar and Associate Dean for Research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law; Elizabeth Pittinger, Executive Director of the Citizen Police Review Board; Tim Stevens, former President of the Pittsburgh NAACP and Chairman of the Black Political Empowerment Project; and Wayne Babish, former Brentwood Police Chief.

Moderated by Attilio Favorini, esteemed Pittsburgh playwright and author of the upcoming The Gammage Project, the evening will begin with presentations by the panelists and finish with an open discussion with members of the audience.

The Charity Randall Theatre is located inside the Stephen Foster Memorial on the University of Pittsburgh’s campus, on the Forbes Avenue side of the Cathedral of Learning, directly across the street from Scheley Plaza.

Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company is committed to developing and showcasing the works of local playwrights; from accomplished masters like August Wilson and George S. Kaufman to promising new talents. We seek to nurture a racially and culturally diverse community of playwrights, directors, actors and technical specialists to hone their craft and to network creative opportunities. Finally, we support a racially and culturally diverse management staff and board of directors who, together, promote audiences that reflect the rich variety of our Pittsburgh community. Through such sharing of talents, resources, perspectives and experiences we aspire to provide artistic enlightenment that will strengthen our civic community.

The University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Theatre Arts (founded in 1982) offers BA, MA, MFA and PhD degrees in Theatre Arts. All faculty members are active in teaching, research, and artistic projects. The department shares a philosophy of theatre education, the chief feature of which is the firm conviction that theory and practice, academic and creative work, and educational and professional theatre must be integrated for a successful program of theatre education. The University of Pittsburgh Repertory Theatre is the department’s flagship theatre company with performance spaces in the landmark Stephen Foster Memorial and the Cathedral of Learning. For more information visit http://play.pitt.edu.

For more information, please contact Josh Storey at 412-624-0933 or jstorey@pitt.edu.

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NOTE: Due to problems with the livestream internet connection, the amazing performances by Vanessa German and Jasiri X were interrupted several times. Don Carpenter’s recording of these performances has decent, unbroken audio, so you don’t have to miss it!

WTAE—Two years after the violent arrest of then-high school senior Jordan Miles, a march to the Allegheny County Courthouse will be held today by groups who want action against the Pittsburgh police officers who put him in the hospital.

The Alliance for Police Accountability and Occupy Pittsburgh protesters said they will march to District Attorney Stephen Zappala’s office at 3 p.m. and demand prosecution for Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak.

“There is more than enough evidence that crimes were committed by the police,” APA chair Brandi Fisher said in a written statement. “The DA has not returned any phone calls about this case and has most recently received a letter from the NAACP national office looking for a response on the status of his office’s investigation. If we have to occupy the DA’s office to get a response, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Miles was walking on a Homewood street on the night of Jan. 12, 2010, when he was approached by the three men, who he said he did not know were plainclothes officers. He said he tried to run because he was scared and they beat him.

Police have said that the officers identified themselves and that Miles resisted arrest and assaulted them. A district judge dismissed all charges against Miles at a preliminary hearing.

Following a lengthy investigation, U.S. Attorney David Hickton decided not to seek criminal charges against the officers, who have since returned to work. A lawsuit has been filed by Miles’ family.

In January of 2010, Miles suffered severe injuries from an alleged encounter with three plain-clothes Pittsburgh police officers. The officers claimed Miles refused to cooperate during a drug investigation, but charges were dropped against Miles.

Back in June, local, state and national leaders from the NAACP along with other community groups asked Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala to bring charges against the three officers.

WTAE—Two years after the violent arrest of then-high school senior Jordan Miles, a march to the Allegheny County Courthouse will be held today by groups who want action against the Pittsburgh police officers who put him in the hospital.

The Alliance for Police Accountability and Occupy Pittsburgh protesters said they will march to District Attorney Stephen Zappala’s office at 3 p.m. and demand prosecution for Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak.

“There is more than enough evidence that crimes were committed by the police,” APA chair Brandi Fisher said in a written statement.

“The DA has not returned any phone calls about this case and has most recently received a letter from the NAACP national office looking for a response on the status of his office’s investigation. If we have to occupy the DA’s office to get a response, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Miles was walking on a Homewood street on the night of Jan. 12, 2010, when he was approached by the three men, who he said he did not know were plainclothes officers. He said he tried to run because he was scared and they beat him.

Police have said that the officers identified themselves and that Miles resisted arrest and assaulted them. A district judge dismissed all charges against Miles at a preliminary hearing.
Following a lengthy investigation, U.S. Attorney David Hickton decided not to seek criminal charges against the officers, who have since returned to work. A lawsuit has been filed by Miles’ family.

Read more: http://www.wtae.com/news/30195325/detail.html

Chris Young, City Paper—It’s been two years since Jordan Miles confronted three undercover Pittsburgh police officers on a cold winter night in Homewood. But what happened during the former CAPA student’s high-profile beating arrest on Jan. 12, 2010, is still a mystery.

Did the three officers — Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak — properly identify themselves as they approached Miles? Was Miles’ jacket concealing a Mountain Dew bottle, which the officers say they mistook for a gun? Did police use excessive force?

As the saying goes, there are two sides to every story — and those sides are squaring off in a federal civil-rights suit filed by Miles last year. And perhaps not surprisingly, even police experts involved in the case disagree about what happened that night.

In late December, two police experts — one hired by the city of Pittsburgh, the other by Miles — filed their opinions about what transpired. Both experts reviewed largely the same materials, including police reports, medical records and depositions. Taken together, their opinions reveal details that were previously concealed from the public, despite all the controversy. But the reports also reveal how murky the truth remains.

The city’s expert, former New Britain Township Police Chief Joseph J. Stine, argues in his 14-page report that the three officers acted appropriately. Miles’ expert, retired criminology professor R. Paul McCauley, of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, comes to the opposite conclusion in a 35-page report of his own.

It may not be surprising that each side got an opinion that bolstered its case; some legal experts decry courtroom experts as little more than “guns for hire.” But which opinion is more believable? At least one observer says the answer might lie not in what the reports include, but in what Stine’s report left out, including potentially damaging testimony about the officers’ work history.

The city’s version

Police have contended that, while patrolling Tioga Street in plainclothes and an unmarked car, they saw Miles acting suspiciously — hiding near an unoccupied vehicle in a lot between two homes.

As the officers pulled up, they claim Miles began walking toward the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. Ewing says that through a lowered window, he identified himself as a Pittsburgh police officer and asked Miles to stop.

In the ensuing brief conversation — during which police say their badges were clearly displayed — Saldutte grew suspicious of what he observed to be a heavy object inside Miles’ right jacket pocket. “He has something on him,” Saldutte told the other two officers, according to Stine’s report. “I think he’s going to go.”

At that point, the officers claim, Miles started walking away, and began to run once they repeated that they were police officers. As he fled, the officers claim, Miles kept reaching toward his right jacket pocket, as if to secure something inside. But Miles slipped and fell, allowing officers to catch up with him.

A fight ensued, in which Miles allegedly kicked an officer, was hit with closed fists and even zapped ineffectively with a Taser, whose dart apparently lodged in his thick winter coat. The struggle ended when Ewing struck Miles in the head with his knee.

The officers claim they identified themselves as police throughout the fight — and that after subduing Miles, they found a Mountain Dew bottle in his jacket pocket.

In assessing responsibility for the incident, Stine’s report argues that Miles must have assumed from the outset that the men were police. Otherwise, Miles “would have had to believe that three adult white males had come into [a] predominately Afro-American community in order to rob him.”

Meanwhile, Stine concludes the officers did almost nothing wrong … because their training wouldn’t allow it.

Stine and McCauley both acknowledge that there are conflicting accounts about whether the officers identified themselves. But Stine, a former executive officer of the City of Philadelphia’s Police Training Bureau, stresses that officers are trained to do so.

“This training is so engrained,” Stine writes, “that it becomes a reflex action for officers to immediately and continuously identify themselves when they are taking police action, especially while in plainclothes.”

And because the officers believed Miles might have a gun, their use of force was justified.

“[A] reasonably well trained professional police officer would have believed that they were in a life and death struggle,” he concludes.

The Mountain Dew bottle — whose existence Miles has denied — was never put into evidence; police say they tossed it aside. Stine writes that the officers “made a mistake when they discarded the soda bottle.”

But, he reasons, “Police officers are human beings and can make mistakes.”

The Miles version

McCauley, a retired IUP criminology professor, concludes that the three officers made more than just one mistake.

Miles says he was on his way from his mother’s house to his grandmother’s home around the corner, walking on Tioga Street instead of on the icy sidewalk. Suddenly, he alleges, a car pulled up beside him. Three white men then exited the vehicle, Miles says, according to McCauley’s report, demanding, “[W]here is the gun, money, drugs?”

The three men, he says, never identified themselves as police officers. Thinking they were trying to rob him, Miles says he started to run.

And since officers “did not have … probable cause to believe Mr. Miles committed or was about to commit a crime,” McCauley’s report argues, “Mr. Miles is not required to talk to the officers and he may walk or run away.”

That’s assuming Miles recognized them as police. McCauley argues that even in an unmarked car, the officers could “activate the vehicle’s lights and ‘chirp’ the siren to alert Mr. Miles that this was a police car.” Officer Ewing testified, according to McCauley’s report, that they did not do so because police emergency lights must be used only for traffic stops.

McCauley’s report concludes that, given the officers’ combined weight (about 625 pounds versus Miles’ 140 pounds), strength and training, the “closed fist strikes and knee strikes to Mr. Miles’ face/head were unnecessary and excessive.” He also concludes that it is “not reasonable” to believe that Miles would reach for a bottle of Mountain Dew during an altercation with police or thugs. Miles, McCauley writes, “had no reason to reach for his pocket or for a bottle of Mountain Dew during a struggle with the police or anyone, even if he was thirsty.”

McCauley states that failing to retain the Mountain Dew bottle would be “conduct unbecoming of an officer and subject to disciplinary action.” The omission “indicates extremely poor police work at best or officer dishonesty at wors[t].”

McCauley notes that Ewing, when asked in a deposition about the bottle, said that the issue “seems very petty.” That response, says McCauley, “reflects a deviant police culture requiring serious inquiry by police management.”

To some extent, it’s no surprise that each side of the case got the opinion it wanted.

“You’re in the middle of the quandary of criminologists as expert witnesses,” says Patrick Anderson, a criminology professor at Florida Southern College and the co-author of Expert Witnesses: Criminologists in the Courtroom. “Some experts are just guns for hire. It’s sad but true.”

Meanwhile, he says, “The jury is left trying to figure out which expert to believe.

“It’s one of the weaknesses of the American [justice] system,” adds Anderson, who notes that in the British system, the court picks the experts.

But perhaps the most significant difference between the two reports is what Stine’s opinion omits.

Only McCauley’s report summarizes the contents of a deposition given by Commander Rashall Brackney. According to McCauley’s summary, Brackney asserted all three officers “had a history of lying and taking action when not rising to [the] level of reasonable suspicion.”

Brackney testified, according to McCauley’s report, that officer Ewing was “untruthful regarding [a] police pursuit involving an accident with vehicle damage.” In addition, McCauley writes, Brackney “mandated PO Sisak and PO Ewing be closely monitored and supervised.”

(Brackney has been the subject of controversy within the police bureau herself. In 2007, she was investigated for reportedly interfering with a police investigation into a traffic accident involving her friend.)

“The striking difference between the two [opinions] is Miles’ expert’s inclusion of the facts from the Rashall Brackney interview,” says David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who specializes in police issues. “That’s potentially very significant.”

Juries tend to give police officers the benefit of the doubt when testifying against civilians, Harris says. But testimony about officers having a history of untruthfulness could erode the officers’ credibility — especially if the testimony comes from another officer.

“It makes a major difference,” Harris says. “This case will turn on the credibility of the witnesses.”

After reading both opinions, Harris says McCauley’s report was more balanced. “[McCauley's] report was somewhat more comprehensive and considered more facts whether positive or negative” to Miles’ case.

For example, McCauley’s writes that, “If Mr. Miles knew the three men were police officers and he was being arrested[,] then he was not justified to resist arrest even if the arrest was unlawful.”

By contrast, Harris says, “The city’s expert tended to call everything in one direction.” And Stine’s account includes some contradictions, he says. Stine writes that because police training stresses the need for officers to identify themselves, they almost certainly did so when confronting Miles. Yet, on the other hand, Stine dismisses the officers’ failure to retain the soda bottle as a mere “mistake.”

While agreeing it’s possible the police made a simple mistake, Harris says “retaining evidence is also part of their training. It begins to strain your analysis when you say one mistake is not possible and another is understandable.”

After being briefed by a reporter on the contents of the Brackney deposition, Anderson agreed that the police commander’s testimony is extremely important. But he’s not surprised that Stine’s report glossed over it.

“It is common and also troubling” for experts to ignore evidence that could hurt their client’s case, he says. “The fact that [the city's] expert didn’t take that into consideration … indicates bias.”

Stine declined to comment for this story. City Solicitor Dan Regan similarly declined to discuss specifics in the reports, saying, “We don’t think it’s the appropriate time or venue to respond.” However, Regan added, “We continue to maintain that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of the officers.”

McCauley, meanwhile, maintains, “I’m not an advocate for or against Miles.”

“[McCauley] calls it like he sees it,” agrees J. Kerrington Lewis, Miles’ lawyer. “Other experts sing whatever tune somebody wants.”

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Please Join APA, One Pittsburgh, NAACP, One Hood, Occupy Pgh, Kuumba, Occupy the Hood, Black Political Empowerment Project(B-PEP), African American Leadership Association(AALA) and others as we demand Justice for Jordan Miles and more Police Accountability by echoing King’s message of ending Police Brutality and Economic Injustice.

Performances by:
Nationally known Artist/Activist, Jasiri X
Talented Spoken Word Artist, Monique Barber
Renowned Poet, Vanessa German

Speakers such as:
NAACP-Pgh President, Gayle Moss
State Representative, Joe Preston
B-PEP Chair, Tim Stevens
City Democratic Committee Chair, Ed Gainey
PA Human Rights Commission, Robert Flipping

**Voter Registration Available**

Everyone in this City is Fed up with the Delay in Justice in the Jordan Miles Case!!

NO MORE CORRUPTION IN THE CITY OF PITTSBURGH!! WE WANT TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY, EQUALITY, AND JUSTICE!!!

LET’S MAKE THIS THE LARGEST RALLY YET!!!

**ALSO JOIN US ON THE ANNIVERSARY DATE THURSDAY, JANUARY 12 AT 3:00PM AT OCCUPY PGH, DOWNTOWN GRANT STREET, AS WE MARCH INTO THE DA’S OFFICE DEMANDING PROSECUTION AND SEEKING ANSWERS!!!**

FOR MORE INFO:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alliance-for-Police-Accountability/172738296112833

www.justiceforjordanmiles.com

http://vannevar.blogspot.com/2012/01/jordan-miles-beating-pittsburgh-police.html

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11363/1200070-100.stm

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.

Go to the polls and vote…but when you get to where the District Attorney candidates are listed on the ballot, instead of voting for Zappalla—who is always unopposed and who refuses to investigate the police beating of Jordan Miles—write in Jordan Miles!

Send a message to the city that Officers Saldutte, Sisak and Ewing must be fired and prosecuted!