Pittsburgh Alpha to Omega

While the G-20 Summit is almost be a month past, the city is still feeling the ramifications of the event.

The Citizens Police Review Board held a public hearing Tuesday at the Stephen Foster Community Center in Lawrenceville to address the city’s police force and its handling of the G-20 demonstrations that occurred Sept. 24 and 25.

During the hearing, citizens had the opportunity to voice their opinions in front of the review board. Marsha Hinton, chair of the board, said the board will use the information generated at the hearing to investigate police action during the demonstrations.

Mel Packer, a Point Breeze resident, spoke in front of the board. According to Packer, the police acted irresponsibly and unjustly during the demonstrations. Packer said the city became a battlefield dominated by police.

“People were seized unjustly and beaten,” Packer said. “Every one of our elected officials chose not only to sit on their hands, but to issue public statements applauding [the police's] efforts. If it is a crime to break a window, it is a crime to break a head.”

Some of the individuals who spoke said they felt the media did not do a proper job of conveying the truth during the summit.

“The Pittsburgh media does not believe in telling the truth,” said Mt. Washington resident Harry Miller. “It’s heavy handed. It’s politics at its worst, and we don’t even have a chance to say what’s really going on.”

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Julie Pittman, a student at Providence College in Rhode Island, was arrested during protests in Oakland at 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 25.

Pittman said the police told her to disperse, but she could find no way out of police barricades. She said she spent the night on a police bus until 6:30 a.m. with her hands in plastic handcuffs. According to Pittman, she and the other protesters on the bus were unable to go to the bathroom and the police continually turned up the air conditioning on the bus so the captive protesters could not sleep.

Albert Petrarca was another speaker who said he witnessed the police abuse their power. Petrarca was arrested at Penn Avenue and 34th Street during an unapproved march from Arsenal Park on Sept. 24.

Petrarca also said the board should hold Mayor Luke Ravenstahl accountable if they find truth behind the reports of police abusing their power.

“I saw kids who were five and six years old overcome by tear gas. Until the police decided to unleash the tear gas, the demonstrations were very peaceful,” Petrarca said. “I think the responsibility really falls on the shoulder of our mayor.”

Following the hearing, Hinton said the board plans to schedule a similar meeting in Oakland and combine information from both hearings for an investigation of the information they received at the meetings.

“Police review board holds G-20 forum” by Steve Orbanek, 10-22-09

A parade of college students marched through the Municipal Courts Building yesterday to explain why they were caught up in mass arrests following the G-20 summit, and District Judge Kevin E. Cooper played the role of a scolding parent.

“Young lady, you made a bad judgment,” he told Jocelyn Petyak, 21, a Pitt senior who was arrested on the night of Sept. 25 in Oakland and charged with failure to disperse and disorderly conduct. “You should have left your friends and gotten your butt out of there.”

The judge then asked about her grades.

“I have a 3.4 GPA,” she replied.

“Give me 25 hours of community service,” he said. “I’ll dismiss the charges.”

Police made nearly 200 arrests during the summit last month, and 103 cases had hearings yesterday. The vast majority involved minor charges, but at least four people were held for trial on felonies, including a man accused of hitting a police officer with a brick and another man who was accused of taunting a police K-9 while dressed as a cow.

By 8:30 a.m., a line stretched out the front of the courthouse as G-20 arrestees passed through metal detectors and tried to locate their lawyers. On the second floor, dozens of people swarmed around representatives from the offices of the county district attorney and public defender, trying to cut deals and clear their records.

By the end of the day, 53 people had agreed to perform community service in exchange for having the charges dismissed.

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Judge Costa ordered 22-year-old Kalan Sherrard to stand trial on a charge of inciting a riot after hearing testimony from Officer William Friburger, who said he saw Mr. Sherrard parading through the streets of Lawrenceville and Bloomfield on Sept. 24, wearing a cow suit with udders.

Mr. Sherrard was “banging his drum, flailing his arms, yelling and screaming,” and he repeatedly taunted a police K-9, Officer Friburger said.

Video footage of Mr. Sherrard, a student at Oberlin College in Ohio, in his cow outfit was broadcast on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

“It was more to do something to make people look twice,” he said before the hearing yesterday.

“G-20 arrestees line up before judges” by Jerome L. Sherman, P-G 10-22-09

Dog-taunting may well be a felony (I kinda doubt it, but I certainly wouldn’t put it past the bastards) but judges taunting defendants brought up on bullshit charges is presumably an everyday thing around here.

I remember back in ’02 going before this goofy judge for a parking ticket.  I fought it, but the judge said without photos to prove the sign said what I said it said (which was, “No parking during this window of time,” a window well outside of which the time I was ticketed fell) I’d just have to pay the ticket.  I argued he knew from the ticket where I was parked, and that the city should know what its own signs say, what its own parking laws are for particular places in town, and he was like, “No.  You need to provide photographic evidence showing your car and the sign,” and I was like, “But, but…” and he was like, “Tell you what, I’ll cut the fine in half.”  I’d already had more than my fill (several hours) of sitting around in that obnoxiously lit and furnished courtroom listening to this jackass mock folks, so I paid the $25 and left, cursing the judge and the horse he rode in on.

This judge, whose name I forget, seriously made fun of everyone who showed up to fight their tickets.  I remember one furious woman, who had taken photos of her car next to a pole on which a sign was posted and the judge glanced at it and said, “You’re showing me a picture of a pole.  You could have thrown in two Hungarians and it wouldn’t have made any difference.”  This  lady was like, “You just said that guy needed photos of the car and the sign to prove he was legally parked, and I took them!  What do you want?”  The judge said she had to have photos from three other angles, proving the original photo was taken at the site of the ticketing and not somewhere else.  Like me, this lady knew she was right and figured of course her ticket would be dismissed and tried to reason with the judge.  Like me, she ended up paying the fine just to get out of there and be done with it.

These Pitt arrest cases are a different bushel of Sea-Monkeys, and 25 hours of community service is an order of magnitude more obnoxious than a $25 fine… though Judge Cooper playing “the role of a scolding parent” here sounds very similar to what I witnessed in traffic court.  By taking community service, I understand these kids are acting according to rational self-interest: finish the ordeal and get on with your life.  To those defendants and lawyers standing up to these authority-addled judges, though, and to the CPRB: hats off and buena suerte.  Like those sports teams people get so worked up about around here, but for real, if yinz win, we all win.

Go team, have fun and cuídate.

UPDATE, 10-24-09

Dos mas:

“Can you give us the name of any individual who was disorderly in Schenley Plaza prior to the dispersal order?” attorney Jon Pushinsky asked police Lt. Ed Trapp.

“No, I can’t,” the lieutenant replied.

“Lawyers spar with police over arrests” by Jerome L. Sherman, P-G 10-24-09

Dulak was one of about a dozen defendants who decided to fight the charges. District Judge Anthony W. Saveikis found Dulak guilty of two summary offenses — obstructing a highway and disorderly conduct. About 10 other people were found guilty on similar charges.

Pittsburgh police Detective Dave Honick said Dulak was one of about 25 people who had gathered on Oakland Avenue after police pushed several hundred people out of Schenley Plaza and then off Forbes Avenue. The group started walking toward him and another officer at the intersection of Oakland and Forbes, Honick said.

Most of the crowd left, he said, after the two officers used a handheld smoke device and a kind of pepper spray to form a barrier between themselves and the group.

“Dulak walked through the smoke toward me,” Honick said.

After Dulak ignored repeated orders to turn around and leave, Honick said he used a second burst of pepper spray. Dulak fell to the ground, and the officers arrested him.

Chuck Pascal, an Armstrong County lawyer who was acting as a legal observer for the National Lawyers Guild during the G-20, said Dulak and Michael McDermot, 22, of McCandless had stepped out of the pub only a few seconds before Dulak was arrested.

Honick testified that Dulak was in the middle of the street, but Pascal and McDermot said he was on the sidewalk when the pepper spray incapacitated him.

“Dozens of G-20 arrests wind through Pittsburgh Municipal Court” by Brian Bowling, 10-24-09