From [HERE] Two more Pittsburgh police officers are expected to testify in their own defense at the federal civil rights trial of a lawsuit brought by a young black man who claims he was wrongfully beaten and arrested in January 2010.
Officers Richard Ewing and David Sisak are expected to testify Monday. Those officers as well as Michael Saldutte (sal-DOO'-tee), who testified last week, have acknowledged using force to arrest Jordan Miles, who was then an 18-year-old senior in the city's performing arts high school, but deny it was inappropriate.
Miles has sued claiming he was stopped for no reason then beaten when he ran away and struggled with police. But Miles says he did that only because the white plainclothes officers didn't identify themselves as police and he thought he was being robbed. Today, the nearly all white jury (1 black man, no Latinos) were told that Moutain Dew bottles look like guns and his braids were not pulled out by cops but came out when his hair hit snow covered bushes. This could only make sense to a racist mind. Please believe if a 17 year old white girl or boy was beaten to the point of brain damage by black cops it would be game over. The mainstream media is playing it out of course. White police , white prosecutors and white jurors... should we expect white supremacy or justice? Silly media accounts follow...[MORE]
The third week of the Jordan Miles civil trial began this morning with testimony from two neighbors who said they found what were apparently braids of the young man's hair in a hedgerow the morning after his encounter with police. The testimony bolstered the contentions of Pittsburgh police officers Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak that Mr. Miles' injuries occurred when he was tackled through the bushes, and not by the beating that the plaintiff has alleged.
Patricia Coleman, a hospital secretary, said she lives at 7938 Tioga St., the house next door to the scene of the encounter. She said on the night of Jan. 12, 2010, she heard someone calling out for help from the street as she lay in bed, but did not investigate. The next morning, as she went to work, she saw blood by the bushes along her front walk and braids of hair in the damaged shrubs. Her son, Ron Roberts, later testified to the same observations, and both agreed that their cable wire was hanging much lower that morning than usual because the bracket that held it to their house was broken.
The hair in the hedges is a particularly important point for the officers, who contend that most of the damage to Mr. Miles was caused when Officer Sisak took him through the bushes into jagged ground beyond. Mr. Miles has said he doesn't recall going through the bushes. Parts of the testimony of Ms. Coleman and Mr. Roberts favored Mr. Miles. They confirmed that he was not a troublemaker and wasn't known to confront authority.
Mr. Roberts, 18, said he had never seen Mr. Miles cut through yards, undercutting the officers' theory that he may have been trying to use a shortcut from his mother's to his grandmother's house when they saw him that night.
Ryan Allen, 19, a high school friend of Mr. Miles, was called by the defense. He was asked whether Mr. Miles told him, two days after the incident, that he was carrying a Mountain Dew bottle at the time.
The officers have claimed they mistook such a bottle for a gun, and Mr. Miles has said he was not carrying a bottle. A report by FBI Special Agent Sonia Bush of her interview with Mr. Allen bolstered the officers' contention.
On the witness stand, though, Mr. Allen said he did not remember Mr. Miles telling him about a bottle. He did not remember telling Ms. Bush that Mr. Miles said he had a bottle. He did not remember whether Mr. Miles regularly drank Mountain Dew. And he did not remember being questioned by former city police about the alleged bottle.
"I'm not taking sides," Mr. Allen said, when asked by defense attorney James Wymard whether he was testifying that way to avoid hurting his former friend's case.
In the trial's first week Mr. Miles, 20, of Homewood, testified that three men jumped out of an unmarked car on Homewood's Tioga Street on the snowy night in 2010, chased and beat him both before and after he was handcuffed.
Only when he was placed in a police wagon, he said, did he realize they were officers.
In week two, police Chief Nate Harper said that the city's investigation found no wrongdoing by the officers.
That week's testimony closed with Officer Saldutte telling the jury that Mr. Miles ignored officers' orders to stop, carried a heavy object which appeared to be a gun, struck officers and resisted arrest.
Officers Ewing and Sisak have not yet testified.
The officers were never charged with any crime. Charges against Mr. Miles of aggravated assault, loitering, resisting arrest and escape were dismissed at a preliminary hearing.