Lawsuit filing: Cops identified themselves to Jordan Miles
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The police who subdued Jordan Miles clearly told him they were officers, had reason to believe that he had a gun and acted according to standard police procedures, according to an expert report filed by the city of Pittsburgh in the civil case stemming from the high-profile 2010 encounter.
The report filed Friday by Joseph J. Stine, who ran Philadelphia's Police Training Bureau and served as chief for New Britain Township, provides new detail on the officers' view of the nighttime melee on Homewood's Tioga Street.
It concludes that jumping out of an unmarked car, pursuing Mr. Miles and striking him until he submitted to being handcuffed were consistent with police training.
An attorney for Mr. Miles, though, characterized the report as "not credible" because it assumes the officers' version of events that are very much in dispute.
Mr. Miles was a student at the Pittsburgh's Creative and Performing Arts high school whose accusation that police jumped out of a car and beat him without identifying themselves ignited concerns about police tactics.
According to Mr. Stine, officers Michael Saldutte, Richard Ewing and David Sisak were patrolling a high-crime area, when they saw a man "hiding in the shadows in a lot between two homes." He wrote that the officers turned around their unmarked vehicle, identified themselves as police and displayed their badges.
Officers Saldutte and Ewing got out of the car. Officer Saldutte "observed something heavy in Mr. Miles' right jacket pocket and he observed Mr. Miles touching the area of the heavy object," Mr. Stine wrote, and concluded that he "has something on him."
Mr. Miles walked away, and when the officers said, "Pittsburgh PD, stop," he ran, Mr. Stine wrote. They caught him, and he elbowed Officer Saldutte in the face, the report said. In an effort to subdue him, the officers punched him in the body, face and head, it said.
An attempt to shock Mr. Miles with a Taser had no effect, it said.
The struggle "ended when a solid blow to Mr. Miles' head [from Officer Ewing's knee] stunned him and the officers were able to restrain him with handcuffs."
The officers found a Mountain Dew bottle, but discarded it, the report said, characterizing the failure to preserve that evidence as "a mistake" understandable in the wake of "what they believed to be a life and death struggle."
On one disputed point -- whether Mr. Miles knew the men were police -- the report suggested that the officers' accounts are more credible. Police are trained relentlessly to identify themselves, it said. It isn't likely, the report found, that Mr. Miles really thought that three white men came to a black neighborhood to rob him.
"In the dark of night, if three guys in dark clothes jumped out, you have to assume that this young man was fearful," countered J. Kerrington Lewis, an attorney for Mr. Miles, in an interview today. "I don't think he cared if they were white, green or blue."
Mr. Lewis said that Mr. Stine, as the city's hired expert, naturally accepts the facts most favorable to the police.
"Many of the circumstances that he assumes are facts are not facts," Mr. Lewis said, "and are not what happened, and so the report is not credible."
He said that Mr. Miles' expert report is due next month.
Charges against Mr. Miles stemming from the incident were dismissed, and U.S. Attorney David J. Hickton opted not to charge the officers criminally.
First Published December 26, 2011 12:00 am
