FBI, Citizens Police Review Board, NAACP All Looking Into Homewood Arrest

While the beating of high school student Jordan Miles during a Pittsburgh police arrest remains under investigation, the local NAACP branch is calling for the firings of those officers and for all charges against Miles to be dropped.

“He had robbed no one — no bank, no establishment, not hijacked a car or caused anyone any harm. He was simply walking while black,” Pittsburgh NAACP President M. Gayle Moss said Wednesday at Freedom Unlimited in the Hill District.

Already, the three officers have been reassigned from plainclothes to uniform duty during a probe by the city’s Office of Municipal Investigations. The FBI is also reviewing the case to determine if any civil rights violations may have occurred.

“We support the reprimand of those who beat him almost beyond recognition,” Moss said. “Having them become uniformed police persons seems to be unfair punishment for the crimes committed against the person of Mr. Jordan Miles.”

Miles’ mother, Terez, was also at the NAACP’s news conference and said she will file a civil rights lawsuit.

“Every assumption they made about my son was wrong, and when they could not justify brutally beating Jordan, they resorted to lying to try to cover their own backsides,” Terez Miles said.

Jordan Miles, a senior at Pittsburgh’s Creative and Performing Arts High School, was walking to his grandmother’s house on Tioga Street in Homewood late on the night of Jan. 12 when, he says, the plainclothes officers beat him severely.

According to the criminal complaint, police thought Miles had a weapon, but he did not have one. He ended up in a hospital with facial bruises, swollen eyes and hair ripped from his scalp after being arrested on aggravated assault charges.

“My heart just breaks,” Terez Miles said. “My heart breaks, because I know Jordan is the last person who would have deserved that.”

Kerrington Lewis, the Miles family’s lawyer, said that the teen is a victim of racial profiling and didn’t know the three men were police officers.

“I see two distinct issues in this case — police brutality and racial profiling. Each of them is terrible in its own right, but when they combine, the result is what happened to my son,” Terez Miles said.

Lewis told Team 4 that the FBI told him Agent Brad Orsini would be involved in the investigation of Miles’ arrest, but Lewis said he objected because of Orsini’s disciplinary record that was made public during a federal case against former Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht. The FBI has now assigned a different agent to the Miles case, according to Lewis.

The FBI has not returned calls for comment from Team 4. Police Chief Nate Harper and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl are also declining to comment while the OMI investigation continues.

The Pittsburgh Citizens Police Review Board will make a recommendation next month as to whether to conduct a full public hearing, during which the officers involved would be subpoenaed to testify.

On Tuesday, CAPA students marched down Grant Street toward the City-County Building, chanting “Justice For Jordan” in a rally to support Miles.

A preliminary hearing on Jordan Miles’ criminal charges has been postponed to Feb. 18 in Municipal Court downtown.

“I encourage you to continue to protest peacefully, so that we can see that the officers who did this to Jordan are fired and the charges against Jordan are dropped,” Terez Miles said.

WTAE Channel 4 Action News is not identifying the officers, who have not been charged with any crimes, but Team 4 investigated and found that one of them is facing a lawsuit filed by a prisoner who claims to have been beaten.