Two stories have emerged following the incident between police and protesters on August 20th in Pittsburgh: what the police did to protesters and their justification for it
Several groups from Pittsburgh, including the one which organized the Saturday morning protest - the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, People Against Violence and the Thomas Merton Center - have called for an independent investigation into the incident and for a moratorium on the use of tasers by city police.
Two investigators and an intake coordinator from the Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board were at the news conference[Monday 5/22/05] to listen to witness accounts. Executive Director Elizabeth Pittinger said the board was in the process of taking complaints...about excessive force and unbecoming conduct...
"City police are typically accommodating until something goes wrong, and now the determination has to be what went wrong," Pittinger said. "We're particularly interested in looking at how Taser was deployed."
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Between June 2004, when they first acquired tasers, and December Pittsburgh police used them six times. This year, tasers have been used 125 times - 57 between January and March, 66 from April to June and the two protestors on Saturday - and are now issued to nearly 200 officers, twenty times as many as when they were introduced little more than a year ago.
A number of cases involving tasers in Pittsburgh sound like that of Frank Caruso,
...a 66-year-old pizza shop owner, [who] was hospitalized after being shot by a Taser during a traffic stop in which police contend Caruso got out of his car, swore at officers and "cocked his right arm and fist and made aggressive movements."
Caruso had parked on the sidewalk near his business, Caruso Pizza...His wife, Josephine, was a passenger in the car. As he pulled away, officers topped im nearby. His wife exited the vehicle, saying she was hot. Her husband followed, and police said both refused repeated requests to get back into the car.
Caruso, who has high blood pressure, complained of chest pains and stayed overnight at St. Clair Hospital.
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But tasers were not the only problem on Saturday. A 68-year old grandmother was bitten on the thigh by a police dog, a four year old girl and her family were pepper sprayed, retracting metal batons were used to club people and police
"toppled a man with multiple schlerosis from his motorized wheelchair."
Pittsburgh police chief, Rober W. McNeilly, Jr., stands behind the use of force, stating "several participants...chose to turn the allegedly nonviolent event into something that warranted police intervention in order to ensure public safety."
Police insist that the trouble began when a protestor, Edris Robinson, allegedly struck the camera of Thomas Sypula, a freelance cameraman for WPGH Fox 53 in Pittsburgh, causing the camera to consequently hit Sypula's face. Robinson ran into the throng of protestors, but was protected from police and Sypula when they came to indentify him.
...Officer Heather Bristow warned Robinson several times taht he was blocking the sidewalk and entrances to businesses. When Bristow tried to identify Robinson, the crowd tried to hold her back...Bristow and Pitt[University of Pittsburgh] officer Brian Kopp chased Robinson and had to struggle with him...
After being struck, Sypula said, he regained his balance and pointed the camera at his attacker.
"He looked right at me and said 'Get out of here right now,'" Sypula said.
Sypula said he walked about 10 feet and told a police officer that he had been assaulted and wanted to press charges. As he was approaching and pointing out his attacker, he said, protestors surrounded him and the officer."
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There are no other witnesses to the confrontation between Robinson and Sypula, though it seems Sypula could answer this simply by providing the video tape, since he "pointed [his] camera at his attacker." Nonetheless, even if Sypula's account is accurate, the use of tasers was unwarranted.
De'Anna Caligiuri was one of the two lit-up with 50,000 volts, when she allegedly attempted to prevent police from arresting Robinson by grabbing his arm to free him. From KDKA news, there is this description:
...the woman is seen struggling with as man as
five police officers on a sidewalk as a crowd gathers. One officer stumbles to the ground as he and the others try to subdue the woman and at least two male protesters.
One of the male protesters overturns a garbage container as he struggles with officers. The woman continues to struggle even as she is lying on the ground. After she is subdued by two officers who hold her hands behind her back, a third officer approaches and ues his Taser on the woman...
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In all, four people were arrested, including a young man who was sitting on the sidewalk and a teenage girl, who was later released.
But police have stumbled in presenting their case:
Police spokeswoman Tammy Ewin initially said no pepper spray was used on protesters, but Sgt. Clint Winkler...told the Associated Press he tried to use pepper spray on one woman who would not leave, but it hit her glasses. She was then subdued with a Taser...
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There is also a slight discrepancy between Winkler's version of what started the trouble and Sypula's - Winkler has stated that City police assisted University of Pittsburgh police after Sypula's camera was broken by protesters. Perhaps it is a minor difference, but a broken camera is not the same as being assaulted, as Sypula contends, and Edris Robinson is one man, not a group of "protesters."
There is much to be sorted out from the mayhem on Saturday morning in the Steel City, but it has become clear that, at least, Pittsburgh City police are considerably "taser" happy and their conduct that day did more to put the safety of the public at risk than quell a disturbance, which their actions may or may not have contributed to.
As David Meieran, a spokesman for the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, has said, "The response was way over the top...Why in the (expletive) were they using Tasers on these nonviolent protesters in the first place? I heard no dispersal order. What they're saying is total (expletive)."