Pittsburgh City Paper: “A man currently incarcerated at the Allegheny County Jail has filed suit in federal court over two alleged assaults by correctional officers that his legal complaint describes as ‘brutal’ and ‘vicious.’

Daronte Brown, 21, is a pretrial detainee at the jail with documented psychiatric disabilities. The complaint describes two incidents in 2023 and 2024 in which jail employees beat Brown without provocation. The complaint asserts that, after jail medical staff threw his medications to the ground and refused to replace them, and Brown verbally protested, correctional officer McKinley (the complaint does not include his first name) punched him.

‘Four other officers arrived and began relentlessly beating Mr. Brown, even though he was already kneeling with his hands behind his back,’ according to a release from the Abolitionist Law Center, which is representing Brown in his suit. ‘The complaint states the officers lifted him off the ground and repeatedly slammed his face into the walls. They stomped on his head and continued to beat him,’ the release continues.

In the second incident, the complaint asserts that officer Robert Veith and sergeant Christopher Radaci entered Brown’s cell and repeatedly punched and tased him while he was handcuffed.

After both incidents, the lawsuit asserts that Brown was denied medical care and placed in solitary confinement. According to the complaint, Brown’s medical records show that jail medical staff were not permitted to have him moved from solitary confinement even though he was clearly decompensating.”

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