The other guys of the title are three unnamed Pittsburgh undercover police officers who tased and beat an 18 year old African American male student, Jordan Miles, for the crime of carrying a concealed bottle of Mountain Dew.
Here’s how he looked after his arrest:
For other pictures go to WPXI’s story and check out their photo slide show. Here’s how the reporter described Jordan’s encounter with Pittsburgh’s finest:
Police charged Jordan Miles, 18, with assault and resisting arrest Jan. 11 because, they said, he fought with the officers who thought a “heavy object” in his coat was a gun. It turned out to be a bottle of Mountain Dew.
Miles said he resisted because he thought the men were trying to abduct him and didn’t identify themselves as police.
Miles’ family and attorney said he was hit with a stun gun and hospitalized after the violent Homewood struggle during which a chunk of his hair was yanked out and a tree branch went through his gums.
“I was accused for something I never had anything to do with,” said Miles, an honor student at CAPA. “I was completely innocent. They couldn’t find anything.”
Oh, and yes, the three officers who kept the public safe from this honor student crazed deadly fiend just happen to be white. Purely a coincidence, I’m sure. Hey, teenagers high on Mountain Dew are capable of anything. Perfectly understandable that they had to disarm him before something much worse happened.
Of course some people (his mother in this case) just can’t resist playing the race card:
… 10 days after plainclothes officers stopped him on a street and arrested him after a struggle that they say revealed a soda bottle under his coat, not the gun they suspected, his right eye is still slightly swollen and bloodshot. His head is shaved. The three white officers who arrested him have been reassigned. And his mother says she is considering a lawsuit.
“I feel that my son was racially profiled,” Terez Miles said. “It’s a rough neighborhood; it was after dark. … They assumed he was up to no good because he’s black. My son, he knows nothing about the streets at all. He’s had a very sheltered life, he’s very quiet, he doesn’t know police officers sit in cars and stalk people like that.”
A judge continued the case until Feb. 18 after the officers failed to appear at a hearing Thursday, Miles’ attorney, Kerrington Lewis, said.
And let’s face, black youth do look more dangerous than white kids. To white cops, anyway:
Miles’ family describes him as a studious teenager who plays the viola for a jazz band and the orchestra at Pittsburgh’s prestigious Creative and Performing Arts High School.
The confrontation began around 11 p.m. Jan. 12, when the teenager walked out of his mother’s home and headed to his grandmother’s, where he spends most nights. His mother complimented him on the new jacket he had gotten for his birthday. […]
As Miles walked up the block, he noticed three men sitting in a white car, “but I thought nothing of it,” he said.
The criminal complaint says Miles was standing against a building “as if he was trying to avoid being seen.” But he says he was walking when the men jumped out of the car.
“Where’s the money?” one shouted, according to Miles. “Where’s the gun? Where’s the drugs?” the other two said. “It was intimidating; I thought I was going to be robbed,” Miles said.
That’s when he says he took off back to his mother’s house but slipped on the icy sidewalk. Before he could pull himself up, Miles said, the men were at his back.
“That’s when they started beating me, punching, kicking me, choking me,” he said.
Now we know what constitutes “probable cause” of possible criminal conduct in Pittsburgh. All it takes is for you to be a young black male walking down a street alone after sundown. And have a bottle of Mountain Dew in your pocket. Oh wait. It seems Mr. Miles claims even the part about him carrying a bottle of Mountain Dew is phony:
According to the affidavit, the object in Miles’ pocket turned out to be a bottle of Mountain Dew. But Miles says he didn’t have anything in his pocket and rarely drinks Mountain Dew.
Well, who you going to believe: one beaten half to death eighteen year old kid black gangsta wannabe or three honorable white cops who failed to show for a hearing on the charges against said dangerous individual.
I think you know which way I’m leaning.
