The Pittsburgh police bureau is reviewing several officers’ forcible restraint of a 47-year-old man late Tuesday near PPG Paints Arena, city public safety spokewoman Sonya Toler said.
Video captured at the scene appears to show an officer repeatedly striking Daniel T. Adelman of Ravenna, Ohio, who also appears to be subdued on the ground with a Taser. The footage, apparently captured by a bystander, has been circulating via social media.
None of the five officers involved in the matter has been placed on leave, Ms. Toler said. She said the incident began around 10:45 p.m. Tuesday, when officers spotted warrant suspect David Jones, 34, near Lemieux Place and Centre Avenue, Uptown.
Mr. Jones was wanted on a warrant out of Cranberry on forgery charges — and had previously fled from a Pittsburgh officer who attempted to serve that warrant, Ms. Toler said in a statement.
“As officers were taking Jones into custody, a man later identified as [Adelman] attempted to interfere with the arrest,” she said. “He was forcibly taken into custody and is in the Allegheny County Jail on charges of obstructing the administration of law, resisting arrests, and public drunkenness.”
Ms. Toler said the city police bureau began an internal review Wednesday of the use of force. The city’s Office of Municipal Investigations and Office of Professional Services are reviewing the incident as well, she said.
Elizabeth Pittinger, executive director of the Citizen Police Review Board, said her office has opened an inquiry into the incident.
“I think it’s very unfortunate that whatever the facts were, it will be colored by their language and their ferocious efforts to take this person into control,” she said.
The facts of the incident are not yet clear, she said, but the video raises some immediate questions.
“For the public to see these officers engaged in that type of violence is disconcerting, it’s always disconcerting,” she said. “It might have been less offensive if the language didn’t enhance the entire thing.”
The woman who posted the video on Facebook, Joce Smith, said her cousin took the video and sent it to her just after the incident happened.
“It made me sick to my stomach watching it,” she said, adding that she posted the video on her Facebook page so that people would see it.