NAACP PITTSBURGH BRANCH PRESIDENT DAYLON A. DAVIS ADDRESSES THE MEDIA, JAN. 30.
Public meetings to occur, as use of force investigation continues
Standing outside the City-County Building on Thursday, Jan. 30, Tim Stevens, Daylon A. Davis and Lauren Lynch-Novakovic collectively told reporters they, along with other community advocates like Beth Pittinger of the Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board, had a “very productive” meeting with Pittsburgh Acting Police Chief Christopher Ragland and Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt.
After all, with photos circulating around town of a bloodied Black man, Devlon Pridgen, following his arrest in December 2024 on the North Side, and a video of a Black woman, Morgan Daniels, physically being forced down her own house’s steps to her arrest on New Year’s Eve (Dec. 31, 2024), many community members felt the arrests had the smell of “excessive use of force” written all over them.
B-PEP CHAIRMAN AND CEO TIM STEVENS, OUTSIDE THE CITY-COUNTY BUILDING, JAN. 30. (PHOTO BY J.L. MARTELLO)
Stevens, the leader of the Black Political Empowerment Project; Davis, the Pittsburgh NAACP President; and Lynch-Novakovic, civic engagement coordinator for the Alliance for Police Accountability, said they all agreed to not jump to conclusions about the arrests until the full investigation had been completed. But Acting Chief Ragland and Schmidt agreed to have public meetings in each police “zone” and disperse information about police use of force reports that the bureau will compile. Those reports will be given to “public safety councils” that are already established in each police zone. There are six Pittsburgh Police zones.
Davis said the city officials also agreed to have some trainers from the Pittsburgh Police Academy come to the public meetings.
“The fact that we’re here and the fact that you’re here as media, it sends a signal to the administration, to the Bureau of Police, that we expect our police officers, every one, to protect and serve, and not abuse,” Stevens added. “Officers have awesome power…they have handcuffs, batons, tasers, guns. That is a tremendous amount of power. We ask that those officers use that power effectively, correctly and with sensitivity. That’s our goal. And we ask that the city’s training emphasize that at the highest level possible, so we can avoid these incidents as much as possible.”
In the Pridgen arrest (Dec. 29, 2024), a bystander video shown on local television outlets captured multiple police officers trying to apprehend Pridgen, with a woman screaming off-camera that Pridgen didn’t have any weapons on him. Pridgen suffered cuts to his face and photos made the rounds on social media and in the New Pittsburgh Courier of Pridgen’s face bloodied and bruised following the arrest.
LAUREN LYNCH-NOVAKOVIC, WITH THE ALLIANCE FOR POLICE ACCOUNTABLILITY. (PHOTOS BY J.L. MARTELLO)
Daniels was arrested by Pittsburgh Police by being “forcibly removed from her home,” according to a joint statement by B-PEP, the NAACP Pittsburgh Branch and the Alliance for Police Accountability, dated Jan. 9. A video of the encounter, which was circulated on social media, showed, in the opinion of B-PEP and the NAACP Pittsburgh Branch, “an officer” pushing and falling on Daniels, “forcing her to fall down her front steps,” before being “violently handcuffed.”
B-PEP, the NAACP Pittsburgh Branch and the Alliance for Police Accountability said in their Jan. 9 statement that a “female police officer appears to be seen forcibly dragging another member of the household down the steps and pulling them over the cement edge of the wall of the steps. She then proceeded to punch that household member at least once while she was in handcuffs, before another male officer was seen dragging that same family member several feet across the concrete.”
Stevens, during the Jan. 30 press conference, reiterated the stance. “We were concerned about what we saw (in the videos). Many citizens were concerned about what they saw,” Stevens said. “However…we will await the full investigation because sometimes, what you see may deceive what is reality, on either side.”
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