Pittsburgh police chief testifies at trial of 3 officers

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Pittsburgh police Chief Nate Harper says that three white officers were not wrong to throw away a soda bottle they believed to be a gun concealed in a black man’s coat pocket after an arrest that prompted police brutality allegations.

Harper testified today in the second week of a civil rights trial brought by 20-year-old Jordan Miles, who contends that police had no reason to stop him and then covered up their beating and wrongful arrest of him by claiming he appeared to have a gun.

Miles, then an 18-year-old senior at the city’s performing arts high school, denies having the bottle or doing anything suspicious to prompt the officers to stop, chase, beat and arrest him.

The officers say they thought Miles was a prowler with a gun.