OFF THE WIRE
Greater Pittsburgh still has a police problem. It bubbled into the evening news again yesterday. Pittsnurgh is the city who entitles their police to brutalize its citizens and then arrest them if they complain about it to teach them not to talk back.
Fourteen months ago, in the wee small hours of the morning of October 12, 2018, in a bar in Pittsburgh named Kopy’s four blotto drunk cops named Brian Martin, David Honick, Brian Burgunder and David Lincoln, under color of authority, attacked four Pagan Motorcycle Club members named Frank Deluca, Michael Zokaites, Erik Heitzenrater and Bruce Thomas for sport. For a way to top off the night. The cops asked for and got uniformed reinforcements. Then the department as a whole tried to prosecute the Pagans and coverup the crime. The drunk cops were never disciplined.
ED
One of them, David Lincoln and Lincoln’s wife who is named Deborah Siwik, are suing the bar and Pagans Frank DeLuca and Michael Zokaites for assault and battery, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, conspiracy and loss of consortium – which means that after participating in the beating Detective Lincoln could no longer sexually enjoy Ms. Siwik and his binge drinking had nothing to do with that. It was all the Pagans fault. It is a frivolous suit. It is part of well-organized conspiracy to prevent the Four Pagans from finding justice and to punish the bar for not allowing the owner of the bar to let the police destroy surveillance and casual video of the incident.
The way criminal justice works in America is as a test of comparative wealth and power. The police, with unlimited resourses are allowed to stall until the victim or accused runs out of money and that is what is happening here.
Butler
It is also what will happen to a woman named Keaira Booker. She held the press conference yesterday after she filed a cuivil rights lasuit against North Braddock, Pennsylvania police sergeant Larry Butler, North Braddock Police Chief Isaac Daniele, two cops who successfully concealed their identies from and the Borrough of North Braddock. The town is named for the British Gneral who almost lost Pennsylvania to the French in 1755 and commanded George Washington’s first combat.
ooker, who is an “activist” observed a traffic stop, legally parked and started video recording the police. Generally, nothing infuriates police more than to have their official conduct scrutinized. That is why Detective Lincoln and the very itchy Ms. Siwik are really suing Kopy’s. Kopy’s didn’t destroy the evidence and now Detective Lincoln has a certain inutility.
Booker complains that Sergeant Butler ordered to move when he observed her recording him. After the conclusion f the traggice stop he pulled her from her can, had her cuffed, had her car towed and arrested her with improper parking, refusing to provide ID, obstructing an investigation and resisting arrest. She was held in local custody for several hour before being released. Police eventually dropper the charges.
Her suit alleges Butler arrested her “to justify or mask his impropriety,” The suit complains the defendants “collectively subverted the judicial process” by falsely charging Booker and detaining her for hours.
She ialleges excessive force, false arrest, assault and battery and failure to train the police. She wants compensatory and punitive damages.