Lawyer: White Pa. cops thought man ‘was some black drug-dealing punk’

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

A young man was wrongfully beaten and arrested by three white police officers because they assumed he “was some black drug- dealing punk,” his attorney said Thursday, while the officers’ lawyers contended that the man was prowling near a house with what appeared to be a gun.

Jordan Miles was an 18-year-old senior at Pittsburgh’s performing arts high school with no criminal record when he was arrested late Jan. 12, 2012, by officers Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak. He was charged with assaulting police, loitering and prowling at night, resisting arrest and escape.

After hearing closing arguments from lawyers for Miles and the officers, the jury began deliberating whether the policemen had violated Miles’ civil rights that frigid, snowy night. If they find that the officers did, they will also determine damages.

Miles, now 20, said police used excessive force — choking him and hitting him in the head with a hard object after he was handcuffed — while wrongfully arresting and maliciously prosecuting him. A district justice who doubted police claims dismissed charges against him.

The officers said Miles was prowling near a neighbor’s house with a bulge in his jacket pocket, which the policemen thought was a gun but later determined was a soda bottle. Miles said he wasn’t prowling and didn’t even have the soda bottle that police say they found in his jacket before throwing it away.

Miles is seeking unspecified damages. An economist testified on Miles’ behalf that he would lose more than $1 million in lifetime earnings if he can’t finish college because of the cognitive problems that Miles’ attorneys and doctors say he has suffered.

“They thought he was some black drug-dealing punk and they were going to take him down,” Miles’ attorney J. Kerrington Lewis said of the officers. He said they were in plainclothes and in an unmarked car when they approached Miles while working a special detail targeting the highest-crime area in the city.