Mediation Tried in G20 Lawsuits

Lawyers have agreed to try mediating a lawsuit in which 25 plaintiffs are seeking damages from the City of Pittsburgh for alleged rights violations during the G20 economic summit of September 2009.

Attorney Sara Rose of the American Civil Liberties Union says both her clients and the city want a settlement to resolve the case. She says a jury could only award monetary settlements, rather than change the City Code, because many law enforcement regulations during the summit were temporary.

Rose says state law requires both sides to choose between arbitration, mediation, or early neutral evaluation before the court case can begin. The ACLU lawyer says the mediation is tentatively scheduled for May.

City Responds to G20 Suit

The city of Pittsburgh has filed a response in court denying that police violated the civil rights of people when they made about 100 arrests at Schenley Plaza hours after the G20 Summit ended September 25th of last year.
25 plaintiffs are included in the lawsuit against the city claiming they were roughed up by police or wrongly arrested. In its response, the city says the arrests were made with probable cause and denies that people were prevented from dispersing. The court filing said if the plaintiffs were injured, it was "caused by their own willful, malicious and criminal conduct" or by their own negligence.

G20 Suit Says Arrestees Were Bystanders, Not Protesters

Another lawsuit has been filed against the city of Pittsburgh in connection with arrests made during the G20 Summit September 24-25 last year. Two men, who at that time were students at the University of Pittsburgh, say they were bystanders and were wrongly swept up in arrests of protesters in the Schenley Plaza area of Oakland.
Army Second Lieutenant Ryan Kingston was a senior at Pitt and a military police trainee at the time. He and Nathan Poloni were both jailed for several hours on charges of failure to disperse as police responded to anti-G20 protests. The charges against Kingston and Poloni were later dropped. The city has not responded to this lawsuit, one of at least four filed by people arrested during the summit. However, this suit alleges the plaintiffs were swept up in a policy that suspended the rights of citizens just for being near some protests. Their attorney called the arrest action..."de facto martial law."

Bike Thrower Gets Probation for G20 Charges

A Pittsburgh woman charged with throwing her bicycle at police during the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh in September 2009 will enter a program for first time offenders and have her record expunged if she meets the conditions of the program.
24 year old Lauren Wasson of Mount Washington was originally charged with aggravated assault. She was recorded on Pittsburgh TV news video throwing her bike. The charge was reduced to simple assault to allow her to enter the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition Program, which does not require her to plead guilty to any charges. However, she must serve 9 months probation without incident, complete community service and pay court costs.
Her attorney says Wasson was not a protester but was biking home when she was caught up by police who were rounding up G20 protesters in Oakland.

Judge Rules Against CPRB

An Allegheny County judge has rejected a request by the Citizens Police Review Board to get information on police actions during the G20 Summit a year ago in Pittsburgh. Common Pleas Judge Stanton Wettick ruled that Pennsylvania law forbids Pittsburgh Police from turning over complete arrest reports to the review board.
The CPRB wants the documents to investigate allegations of police misconduct during the G20. Police officials had provided heavily redacted files to the review board but the board said that so much information was blacked out that it rendered the records useless.
Judge Wettick agreed with city attorneys who argued that Pennsylvania's Criminal History Record Information Act prohibited the full disclosure of certain records, except to other law enforcement agencies.

City Finds New Way to Delay CPRB Request

Despite saying that it would turn over all the requested documents, the City of Pittsburgh has once again argued that it cannot give the Citizen Police Review Board what it wants. The board has asked for arrest reports and other documents related to police staffing and assignments during the G20 Summit in September of 2009. The board says it needs the documents to do its job. The city has argued alternately in the past that the data would put national security at risk, that it would jeopardize its efforts to defend itself against litigation, and that the board is not entitled to the documents without a specific citizen complaint being filed. It turned over heavily redacted documents in May and last month said all documents would be forthcoming. Yesterday, the city went before Judge R. Stanton Wettick and argued that it could not hand over the documents due to state laws prohibiting the CPRB from seeing the information. CPRB attorney Hugh McGough says the city does not fall under the Criminal History Record Information Act because it operates under a home rule charter. In fact, he notes that the city’s solicitor under Mayor Tom Murphy specifically laid out tight privacy rules and procedures that should be used in freely handing over the documents. In past investigations the city has made the non-redacted document available to the CPRB without question. Judge Wettick has not set a time line for making a ruling on the city’s latest argument, but McGough points out that the judge took ten days to rule in the last instance.