Former Black Police Chief says he was victim of Police Brutality

• Originally published in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review March 26, 2005 Copyright 2005 Tribune Review Publishing Company

By Brandon Keat

Former Rankin police Chief Darryll Briston said Friday that he was the victim, not the instigator, of a scuffle with a state trooper inside a district judge's office.

"This was a blatant attack. ... When he started choking me, I thought I was dead," Briston said. "If this isn't a case of police brutality, I don't know what is."

State police said Briston elbowed a trooper who tried to keep him from swallowing potential evidence.

Briston, 41, of Penn Hills, is to report to prison in less than two weeks to begin a three-year term for his federal conviction of stealing $5,885 seized during a drug raid at a Rankin house and falsifying receipts to cover it up. He now faces additional state charges, including assault and attempted evidence tampering.

The scuffle happened during a hearing Thursday before North Versailles District Judge Robert Barner on charges stemming from accusations that Briston bullied a bar owner into paying $1,334 for allegedly damaging a squad car on Oct. 31, 2003, and kept the money for himself.

Briston showed a receipt that he said proved the police car was repaired in November 2003, police said. Believing the receipt is fraudulent, the district attorney's office and state police decided to seize the receipt as evidence, but Briston repeatedly refused to surrender it, police said.

Police said Briston crumpled up the receipt and "inserted it into his mouth in an attempt to destroy it." Police said they recovered the receipt and informed Briston he was under arrest. He is accused of then assaulting a trooper by elbowing him in the neck and chest.

Briston said he did not put the receipt in his mouth. According to court documents, Briston accused Trooper John Tamewitz of beginning to choke him and hit him in the face while he was asking his attorney about the legality of the prosecution taking the receipt.

"He picked me up out of the chair and started choking me and threw me to the ground," Briston said. "This is my defense exhibit. You don't have the right to just take something off of somebody. There are rules of criminal procedure."

Briston said he was taken to UPMC McKeesport hospital and treated for a sprained left arm, bruised jaw, cut lip and a chest injury. He then was taken to jail. He was released from jail about 9 a.m. yesterday after posting $10,000 bond.

A hospital spokesman confirmed that Briston was treated there. Barner could not be reached for comment.

Briston, who was fired as chief in April 2004, said he plans to file a complaint with the state police internal investigations unit and with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"They're violating my civil rights," said Briston, who is black. "I'm not taking this. That man had no right beating me down in that magistrate's office"

Briston was ordered to stand trial on the original charges of theft by deception and official oppression.

Briston said he will fight the charges in both state cases and has appealed the federal conviction. Last month, he asked an Allegheny County judge to reinstate him to the chief's job. He said the borough's civil service commission mishandled the appeal of his firing.

"I plan to go to trial on everything I've been charged with," he said. "I'm fighting everything. I'm fighting to the finish." [more]