Abolitionist Law Center posted this statement to Facebook on the June 2nd, in the early morning following the Pittsburgh Police’s violent descent upon peaceful protestors, terrorizing them with tear gas and excessive force in East Liberty. The post reached over 55,000 views and over 700 shares – aligning with the greater public’s eye-witness accounts of police terror and contradicting what the Pittsburgh Police had said during the news conference following the protest: that tear gas was NOT deployed.

Mayor Peduto’s office and the Citizen Police Review Board of Pittsburgh received countless complaints of police violence from protestors and bystanders who were brutalized, and those who had witnessed the use of tear gas, firing of bean bags, and violent arrests. In the afternoon of June 2nd, the Pittsburgh Police revealed that they had INDEED used tear gas – a chemical weapon banned in war – on peaceful protestors in the June 1 East Liberty protest.

Mayor Peduto has called for independent investigations into the police’s use of force on protestors supporting Black Liberation and police abolition in Pittsburgh.