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Monday, December 30, 2002

By Milan Simonich, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Two-time state Golden Gloves boxing champion Ramont "Monty" Clay is either a drug dealer or a victim of corrupt cops.

Clay says his life has been hell on earth since he sued four East End boroughs on April 24. He claims their police officers assaulted him for no reason in January, injuring his back, neck and arms, and wrecking his chance of competing in the Olympic trials.

	Ramont "Monty" Clay has filed suit against four boroughs for the conduct of their officers on Jan 19. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

Three days after Clay filed his lawsuit, officers from two of those same boroughs say he sold $100 of crack to a detective posing as a buyer.

Police say they arranged another drug deal with Clay four days later. That time, they say, he sold the undercover officer more crack, and promised he would supply heroin when they met again.

Now Clay, 21, stands accused of two felonies. He is scheduled to go on trial April 28.

He plans a high-risk defense -- namely that police sworn to uphold the law are lying about him to cripple his civil lawsuit.

"How did I become the target of undercover drug officers?" Clay says. "I'm a marked man because I sued the police."

Clay says police used drug dealers to purchase rides in the jitney he drove. When Clay went to pick up his fares, he says, police fabricated stories of his being involved in crack dealing.

Police from the four departments Clay is suing -- Braddock, Edgewood, Rankin and Swissvale -- will not talk about the drug case.

"I don't know anything about it, but I couldn't comment anyway because of his lawsuit," said Edgewood Police Chief Paul Wood.

Investigation reports signed by Detective Joe Osinski of the McKeesport police outline the criminal case against Clay.

Osinski, working undercover with Edgewood and Swissvale officers, says Clay twice sold him crack. Osinski gave this account of what happened:

Clay, driving a burgundy Cadillac, brought the drugs to a BP gas and convenience store in Swissvale. The first time Clay arrived alone. Osinski and a police informant who knew Clay from his jitney service got in the Cadillac. Clay handed them crack packaged in a baggie. Osinski paid Clay with a $100 bill.

In the second deal, Clay and a passenger -- police claim they do not know who he was -- drove to the gas station. The other man had crack in three baggies. He handed the drugs to Clay, who in turn passed them to Osinski. Clay pocketed the $200 payment.

Police let Clay go free after both transactions. Osinski planned to arrest him at their third meeting, which was scheduled for May 8. Osinski says Clay was supposed to supply him with $130 worth of heroin and another $200 in crack during that deal.

But police called off the sale when Clay could not make the delivery. Osinski says Clay offered to have his cousin supply the heroin, but the undercover officer declined.

Shawn Flaherty, Clay's lawyer, says Osinski's decision to cancel the meeting shows that police had no interest in stopping drug dealers. Their aim, he says, was to ensnare Clay in a heroin case -- a meatier charge than the crack allegation they had manufactured.

"Monty absolutely, positively was set up by the police," Flaherty said.

Clay has no record of drug offenses, and says he never possessed or sold any illegal drugs.

He says he only drove to the convenience store the first time because police and the informant, posing as jitney customers, called him for a ride. Once Clay got there, they canceled the trip. Clay says no drugs changed hands because he had none to deliver.

On the second trip, he says, the same customers asked him to pick up a passenger in Rankin, then drive him to the store. When they arrived, Clay says, the passenger appeared to sell something to the man he now knows to be Detective Osinski. Clay says he never handled any drugs involved in the exchange.

Osinski did not respond to requests for an interview.

"We'll let the courts decide Mr. Clay's involvement in any drug case," said one of Osinski's supervisors, Mark Holtzman, McKeesport's deputy police chief.

Clay says he fears police. He claims officers from East End departments have harassed him since he sued, tailing and stopping him on roadways and in stores.

He enlisted in the Army to escape them, only to see his induction canceled when police notified recruiters that felony drug charges were being brought against him.

Clay says he also lost jobs at two retail stores. The drug charges turned up in background checks, he says, so he was let go after a couple days.

"I thought I was supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. But I can't get a decent job," says Clay, who is certified as an auto mechanic.

To help pay his bills, he turned professional boxer in October.

A 5-foot-2, 130-pound junior lightweight, he won his first two fights with technical knockouts in the first round.

By day he trains for his next fight, which he hopes will be in January. At night he washes dishes at the Original Fish Market restaurant in Downtown Pittsburgh.

Though Clay stays busy and is in fighting trim, his life seems in disarray. He recently postponed an interview in which a Post-Gazette photographer was to take his picture. "My girl scratched up my face," he said. "She went crazy on me."

He made the same charge against police, saying officers from the four departments battered his body and hurled a racial slur at him the night of Jan. 19.

The episode occurred outside Jay's Auto Detailing Shop in Rankin, where Clay was about to begin his 11 p.m. shift as a jitney driver.

Police had received a report of shots being fired at the nearby Palisades Plaza housing development. Clay said police followed three black men to the shop. He refused to give the men a ride, then walked outside.

There, a crush of police from the four boroughs confronted Clay. After he denied being at Palisades Plaza that evening, he says, they attacked him.

Clay claims officers handcuffed him, pinned him against his car, banged his head against the vehicle, shoved snow and ice in his face, cussed at him and called him a racial slur. One officer, he says, grabbed him by his ponytail and snapped his neck.

When Clay boxes, every missed punch causes pain in his elbows. He attributes this to the police assault.

He says his boxing career has been set back because many promoters consider him damaged goods. But he fights on, for money and a sense of purpose.

As a boy, Clay competed in boxing matches run by the Police Athletic League. Back then, he never believed that police would hurt him or lie about him.

"I know better now. I had to actually move out of the town I was living in because of the police."

Clay was listed as a resident of Wilkinsburg when he filed his lawsuit.

Flaherty says that, if Clay is convicted in the cocaine case, he will find it impossible to win his civil suit alleging police brutality.

Clay has a bigger worry. A conviction could send him to prison for one to three years.