Pennsylvania’s 3 cases of Police Brutality
may not be as widely known as the Rodney King case, but one is just as
shocking. Two of the cases occurred in
Pittsburgh while the third case occurred in the small town of Towanda,
Pennsylvania.
The first victim was Johnny Gammage, a
black man who was driving his cousin’s car in Brentwood which is a suburb of
Pittsburgh in October of 1995. He is using his brake lights often and this is
why the police officer first noticed him. The officer followed him into the city
limits and decided to pull him over. An
officer from the Whitehall department shows up and is followed by more cops
from the Brentwood and Baldwin departments.
Together the five officers subdued him and
after the man was handcuffed, the 2 officers from the Whitehall department
restrained him. Within the next seven minutes Gammage dies, the coroner’s
report listed the cause of death as asphyxiation because of pressure applied to
his neck and chest.
The second victim was a high school student
who was out walking on the night of January 12, 2010. Three plain clothed
officers went up to Jordan Miles and demanded drugs and money. When the student
ran away the cops chases him, beat him up, and then arrested him. In the police
report, the cops said it appeared that the victim had a gun in high pocket at
first glance. After they searched him they found it to be a bottle of soda.
The third case and perhaps the most
shocking of all occurred on a night just two months later in a small town of a
few thousand people. Robert Leone a 31
year old male was spotted driving his car down a dark road on March 8, 2010.
State troopers were out looking for a dark car involved in a hit and run, one
trooper mistook Leone’s car to be the one being sought and gave pursuit.
Robert Leone was not driving fast, nor did
he try to elude the trooper. He simply did not stop his car, as he did nothing
wrong. He assumed the officer was off to some other emergency and would pass
him. The trooper radioed for back up and more officers got involved with the
low speed pursuit.
The troopers used a manoeuvre to stop the
slow moving car. One patrol car blocked
the driver’s side door, while another one was parked in front of the car. The
back of the car was in a ditch so it was immobilized. The dashboard cam of one
patrol car facing the passenger’s side door showed what happened to Robert
Leone over the next several minutes.
Officers use stun guns on Robert Leone
several times during and after he was removed from the car. The dash cam view shows the officers as they
physically assault the victim, one officer is seen shaking his own hand after
he broke it by punching the victim in the head. The audio transmission records
the verbal assault by officers, lots of cussing as well as the pleas from Leone.
Te victim was taken to the local hospital,
and when he told hospital personnel he was being beaten by the cops, the
hospital workers were told to leave. When the troopers were done with subduing
Leone he had been beaten further, he would also suffer more at their hands
while in custody at the Towanda Barracks of the Pennsylvania State Troopers.
Mr. Leone who failed to stop for officers
had been in jail since that time. It was
realized after the troopers stopped him that he was not the driver they were
looking for.
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