Tag: police violence.

Making Noise & Making News: June 2023

Posted on by Amber Black

Our community organizing, legal work, and strategic communications have contributed to exciting developments in the last few months for many of the issues we work on at the Abolitionist Law Center. Check out our June 2023 update for a sampling of the latest highlights.

RECORD-BREAKING SETTLEMENT IN PHILLY POLICE VIOLENCE SUIT

In March, with our co-counsels the Legal Defense Fund and the law firm of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin LLP, we announced a record-breaking $9.25 million settlement for a large group of clients (represented in several cases, including ours) who were brutally attacked by Philly cops during peaceful demonstrations following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

The city also must pay an additional $500,000 to a fund that will provide both counseling to targets of police violence and also community-led programming in the aftermath of police violence and misconduct.

Additionally, Philadelphia must disengage from the federal program which arms state and local law enforcement with military weapons and equipment, and meet every six months with the West Philadelphia community to present data around the police department’s use of force and to respond to questions and comments from residents.

ALC staff attorney Nia Holston noted, “This landmark settlement provides a singular opportunity for the City to reflect upon the harm it enacted on its residents on that day, harm that echoed Philadelphia’s own history of racism and discriminatory infliction of violence. It is only through the work of the community and the movements that have pushed this city to do better, that we progress to a more just Philadelphia for all who inhabit it. The settlement not only compensates those who were targeted, but provides further opportunity to residents to heal and to continue their work.”

Get more details, plus press coverage and video of the press conference announcing the settlement.

ENDING PROBATION-RELATED DETENTION

ALC and Civil Rights Corps attorneys outside federal courthouse in Pittsburgh

Our staff presented a persuasive argument at a preliminary injunction hearing in April in federal court in Pittsburgh, in our class action suit (co-counseled with Civil Rights Corps) alleging that Allegheny County’s pervasive incarceration of people awaiting hearings for alleged probation violations is unconstitutional.

This issue is vital to our community and our movement: more than 40% of people in Allegheny County Jail are currently being held on probation detainers, and a favorable decision would have major ramifications for pre-trial incarceration throughout Pennsylvania and beyond.

The expertly constructed presentation by ALC staff attorney Dolly Prabhu included powerful plaintiff and witness testimony by ALC’s Court Watch founding director and current Movement Building Director Autumn Redcross and and volunteer court watcher Emma Fenstermaker, coupled with extensive data collected by our court watchers who’ve observed hundreds of probation hearings, and analyzed by top-notch ALC intern Lolo Serrano.

This case perfectly illustrates how we combine our Court Watch program and other grassroots mobilizations with movement-lawyering to build innovative and effective challenges to the carceral state.

SHOWING UP FOR OUR COMMUNITIES

flyer of Ecology of Mass Incarceration Event at Carnegie Mellon University

Among many other activities in communities across Pennsylvania this spring, we’ve challenged the prioritization of county-wide resources, celebrated the queer community in spaces like Pride events, and presented at public programs on a wide range of topics including the Ecology of Mass Incarceration, human rights violations in U.S. jails and prisons, and policing the police.

In greater Pittsburgh we’re continuing to focus the majority of our litigation and organizing on the extreme injustices and abuses happening in the criminal courts and the county jail. Our organizers, legal team, and volunteers remain engaged on many fronts, including establishing a vocal and visible presence at Jail Oversight Board meetings, and advocating on behalf of incarcerated people and their loved ones, who are trapped in atrocious conditions.

ALC’s Court Watch program recently partnered with Point Park University psychology students who conducted ethnographic observations of Allegheny County’s mental health court as part of an advocacy-focused research project. As one participant noted in this article in the Wellsboro Gazette, “This experience showed me the type of community activism that needs to be done. If we don’t have people going to courtrooms to see what is happening and talk about it, then nothing will change, and the people in difficult positions may never have the chance to actually get help.” To explore how you can take an active role through court watching or court packing, sign-up for one of our upcoming Courtwatch Orientations here.

In Philadelphia, we remain hard at work on an effort to establish a board to oversee the city’s jails, where people experience truly dire conditions. We’re aiming to create an independent civilian body whose members will include formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones who are the experts on Philly’s carceral system. This oversight group will have the power to investigate abuses, audit prison practices and policies, and have full access to the facilities to create oversight, transparency, and accountability where there is none currently.

To learn more about the effort to address the human rights disaster in Philly jails,
join us for this upcoming event:

Philly Incarceration Crisis: Virtual Town Hall

Too many deaths, too much violence, too many held in inhumane conditions, too many excuses!

Join us on Tuesday, June 27 at 6pm
to discuss the Philly incarceration crisis and how you can get involved.
Registration required. Sign up here. 

FROM VICTIM TO VICTOR

“Deserving of a Second Chance”
by Megan Lentz

In mid April, in collaboration with Let’s Get Free and the Human Rights Coalition, ALC released our newest report: From Victim to Victor: An Inquiry into Death by Incarceration, Gender, and Resistance in Pennsylvania with a press conference at the William Way LGBTQ Community Center in Philadelphia.

As the first ever in-depth report examining the gendered experience of Death by Incarceration (life without parole) in Pennsylvania, From Victim to Victor exposes the overwhelmingly common yet vastly overlooked threads woven through the direct experiences of women and trans people sentenced to die in prison.

“I’d like to express how psychologically deafening it is to be rehabilitated, take full responsibility for your crimes, have meaningful goals and assets to offer to society, be called a role model, yet denied a second chance to become a taxpayer, instead of a costly tax burden within society… I pray for the day I’m afforded at least a chance to see the parole board. Even Charles Manson was afforded this gift.” – Jennifer Rhodes, in her speech at the press conference

Dig deeper here, download  the report, find press coverage in Truthout and the Pittsburgh City Paper, and more.

SAVE THE DATE FOR OUR 10th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION!

Graphic to Save the Date Celebrating ALC 10th Anniversary

Ten years ago, two attorneys founded the Abolitionist Law Center with one client, political prisoner and former Black Liberation Army member Russell Maroon Shoatz. Today ALC is both a public interest law firm and a community organizing project, has nearly 20 staffers, offices in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and a portfolio of work that by some estimates impacted close to 70,000 people last year.

As we blast into our second decade, we’re wielding litigation, pressure campaigns, and public education. We’re centering and mobilizing affected communities. We’re targeting every point on the criminal punishment conveyor belt, including policing, the courts, jails and prisons, and other forms of correctional control.

This urgent, challenging, and often life-and-death work can be very heavy. But there’s a lot to celebrate, too.

Save the date and plan to join us on the evening of September 20th for a festive, community-centered commemoration of this milestone at the World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, and look out for more details coming soon about this event and other anniversary programming.

DONATE TO DECARCERATE

Help us sustain the fight to free people from incarceration and other forms of racist state violence by making a tax-deductible donation to the Abolitionist Law Center today.

Your gift fuels our collective liberation struggle and powers the transformative change we’re fighting for in the courts, in the streets, behind bars, and on the outside.

We need your partnership to keep the pressure on, and we appreciate your contribution of any amount today. There’s so much more for us to do together!

Contributions to the Abolitionist Law Center, a 501(c)(3) organization, are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.

No Police. Statement from ALC, 04-22-2021

Posted on by abolitionist

This verdict is not about “justice.” This verdict is not about “accountability.”

This verdict is a testament to the political force of the masses, of colonized peoples, in the face of state-sanctioned terror.

It’s about making it known to all cops trembling in their boots, “You are not welcome here.”

But our challenge is not to pursue the conviction of one racist cop. Our challenge is to carry out the total dissolution of police and racial capitalism — to manifest the unfinished project of absolute freedom, to sustain and live out Abolition.

As you read this, the National Guard has set up checkpoints across US cities. State legislation has been proposed around the country — and signed into law in the case of Florida — to criminalize Black grief, Black Power, and allyship; to make it legal for white supremacists to use their vehicles as weapons to run over and kill protesters; to make it illegal for local governments to defund their police departments; to ultimately make Black protest a felony and deprive bail to those charged.

In the same week that Daunte Wright was murdered by officer Potter, in the same week the Chicago Police released body cam footage of the killing of 7th-grader Adam Toledo, the Biden-Harris Administration chose to abandon their campaign pledge to create a police oversight commission.

In Brooklyn Center, MN, hundreds of community members have been rounded up by the police and detained for days without charges, without ability to post bail, without access to lawyers. Journalists have been corralled, lined up, photographed, and driven miles from protests, unable to document the scenes of resistance to ongoing police terror.

This is not hyperbolic, this is America.

Moments before the jury declared Chauvin guilty of all charges for the murder of George Floyd, Columbus, OH police lynched 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant. Her death, and the deaths of so many others, are a brutal reminder that our current system will never deliver us justice, and that anything resembling such is a mere scrap intended only for extending the life span of our apartheid policing system.

We are reminded that police will continue to occupy the entrance to the prison-industrial complex. They will continue to serve white supremacy and capitalism. We have no tears for Chauvin and other agents of the State who are fearful of conviction. They should be.

Politicians and police apologists of the professional managerial class will continue to co-opt righteous Black Rebellion and capitalize on Black death, neutralizing the struggle for self-determination. They will call for “peace,” “calm,” and “independent investigations” — and funnel millions of dollars into task forces, trainings, superficial restructuring, and PR stunts. Just as they did in 2020, they are working to humanize a racist, fascist system and those who wear its shiny badge and thin blue line.

Almost one year since the George Floyd Rebellion, we maintain our position: abolition is our only way out. Abolish the police.

We do not seek a more “diverse” and “inclusive” technopolice state that will continue to openly hunt and slaughter Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, maim and kidnap protestors, medics, and journalists, and surveil and brutalize sex workers, immigrants, and community members who are disabled, queer, trans, or houseless. We do not want nicer slave patrols.

We seek the demise of police in their entirety. We know that “justice” will never be fully realized from the colonizer’s courtroom, that the verdicts from every previous trial have not stopped cops from killing with impunity. Our governments encourage them to do so.

Would Chauvin’s guilty verdict have been possible, without the threat of another rebellion hanging over the proceedings? Would the prosecutor have put on the same kind of case? Would the chief of police’s testimony have been completely different — would he even have testified at all?

These questions undoubtedly suggest that Black Rebellion and year-long, sustained organizing by Black and brown militants and allies forced the State to make a concession.

But at what cost?

Our friends and family members, and thousands of people were brutalized by the State during last summer’s rebellions and protests. They have been surveilled and kidnapped by the FBI, they have been placed on house arrest or are in prison, they are facing charges and living with permanent brain injuries, maimed bodies, and PTSD. Several community members have been killed by white supremacist vigilantes who openly coordinate with police.

People who have led the fight for Black Liberation during its sharpest inflections, have sustained incredible harms in doing so. It is our duty as abolitionists to support them, learn from them, and build with them. They are not forgotten.

We are living in the outgrowths of chattel slavery, in apartheid cities — but state terror and racial capitalism is not our fate. Our mentors and ancestors have reminded us of this time and time again: from the burning of the plantations to the hunger strikes of the prison cells, from the Amistad mutiny and swamps of the Maroons, from the armed cop watches and unconditional sharing of food, medicine, shelter, knowledge, love, and power that have defined abolitionist projects since the beginning…we have been here before.

And we have kept our promise to fight for the safety and freedom of victims and survivors of police terror. We have kept our promise to meaningfully advance the movements to defund and abolish the police. We are committed to everlasting solidarity.

Since the George Floyd Rebellion, we have fought for protesters and bystanders in East Liberty, Pittsburgh, and for Black activists and residents of West Philadelphia. We have revealed the development and maintenance of racial apartheid in Allegheny County, PA analyzing arrests by police and the use of cash bail by judges. We have organized with community groups, seeking the urgent release of all Black Political Prisoners, the abolition of the FOP, and permanent removal of all statues and symbols of state violence. We have published a report on the war on Black Pittsburgh, financed by bloated police budgets and normalized through excessive force, traumatization, and incarceration of Black residents — especially Black children. We’ve been part of countless panels and community forums and have offered alternatives to policing and punishment. We have hosted transformative justice workshops and teach-ins, and issued recommendations to lawmakers that seek unconditional pre-trial freedom for our community members who have endured the violence of arrest and detainment. We are building out the visions of collective care, safety, and harm reduction with our partners at the Alliance for Police Accountability and 1Hood.

We are actualizing abolition in real-time — with you — our friends and family members, our community members, those on the inside and the outside. We do this, when so much seems so impossible. In the words of Mariame Kaba, “We do this ’til we free us.”

ABOLITIONIST LAW CENTER

04/22/2021

LDF and Co-Counsel File Lawsuit on Behalf of Black West Philadelphians Who Experienced Police Terror on May 31

Posted on by abolitionist

Today, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the Abolitionist Law Center, and the law firm of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin LLP filed a lawsuit on behalf of residents in a predominantly Black neighborhood in West Philadelphia, challenging the Philadelphia Police Department’s (PPD) excessive and unwarranted use of militaristic force during a peaceful protest.

On May 31, 2020, amid nationwide protests against police violence and other abuses against Black people, the PPD repeatedly attacked protestors of police brutality, residents, and bystanders who congregated in West Philadelphia’s 52nd Street area of the city. PPD officers used military-style weapons – including rubber bullets, tear gas, and pepper spray – against these individuals as they either peacefully protested against police abuse or simply engaged in daily activities in or near their homes. 

The complaint establishes that this use of force directed against a predominately Black community was unconstitutional, violating the plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive force, First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and express their views, and Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from racially discriminatory policing under the Equal Protection Clause.

In what many witnesses described as a war zone in an otherwise peaceful, residential community, police officers in tanks traveled away from West Philadelphia’s business corridor and down residential side streets for hours, chasing residents into their homes and indiscriminately firing canisters of tear gas at them — all under the guise of responding to incidents of looting. As a result, families, including those with small children, were injured while inside and outside of their homes and, in some cases, forced to temporarily evacuate their homes and seek treatment for tear gas exposure.

“I realized police had fired tear gas at our family’s home after my three-year-old son began crying and my six-year-old son complained that something was in his eyes,” said plaintiff Shahidah Mubarak-Hadi. “Our family’s home is supposed to be our safe space amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing civil unrest in this country. Yet, PPD officers violated the sanctity of our home, without forethought, senselessly firing tear gas around our residence while we were inside. Because of this incident, my children and I no longer feel safe in our own house – and we demand that police are held accountable for the lasting damage they have caused.”

“The events of May 31 represent yet another act of city-sanctioned violence endured by the Black community in West Philadelphia. Law enforcement has a long history of engaging in overly harsh tactics and racist violence against residents of West Philadelphia — most notably, the police bombing of the homes of MOVE members and their neighbors in 1985,” said Cara McClellan, Assistant Counsel at LDF. “City officials must be held accountable for these militaristic police actions, which are discriminatory, illegal, and completely unacceptable. Our clients deserve safety and security in their own neighborhood and to be free of fear of discrimination and police terror.”

“The Philadelphia Police Department deployed violence against West Philadelphia’s Black communities in retaliation for protests that sprang up in response to police violence. Such blatant disregard for First Amendment freedoms and targeted attacks against Black communities in West Philadelphia are rooted in a long history of police violence,” said Jamelia N. Morgan, Of Counsel at the Abolitionist Law Center. “At a time when some Philadelphians celebrated the removal of the Frank Rizzo statue, it is now time for the city to break with this legacy of violence and racial discrimination and remedy the wrongs done to these communities.”

“The excessive and unreasonable use of tear gas and rubber bullets by police in military gear against non-violent protesters, residents, and bystanders in West Philadelphia on May 31 was the latest episode in a long line of racially biased policing that this City has tolerated for far too long,” said Susan M. Lin, partner at Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin LLP. “Our clients have brought today’s lawsuit to hold the city accountable and demand that the city’s leadership make changes.”

“While the mayor has apologized for the treatment of protesters on Interstate 676, he continues to ignore and dismiss the horrifying police attacks against Black protesters and residents in West Philadelphia, further demonstrating how underlying racial discrimination often dictates whether police are held accountable for their actions.” said Anthony Smith, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and an organizer with Philly REAL Justice. “The irony is that PPD has responded to protests of police brutality, racial discrimination, and excessive force, with further brutality, discrimination, and excessive force.”

Like countless communities around the country, residents of West Philadelphia engaged in protests advocating for systemic reforms to eliminate racist and violent policing following the May 25 death of George Floyd. Notably, while the city of Philadelphia apologized for using tear gas on another, more racially-diverse group of protesters gathered on Interstate 676 on June 1 – and subsequently put a moratorium on the use of tear gas – the city has hardly acknowledged the police violence against West Philadelphia’s Black residents on May 31.

During the same weekend that PPD terrorized residents in West Philadelphia, PPD officers declined to use any force in other predominately white neighborhoods where looting and rioting occurred. This disparate treatment of Philadelphia residents by PPD epitomizes the very racial discrimination that motivated the protests in the first place.

Read a copy of the complaint here.

PROTESTERS FILE CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST PITTSBURGH POLICE AND CITY OFFICIALS FOR POLICE ATTACKS ON EAST LIBERTY PROTEST

Posted on by abolitionist

To view the complaint and videos of the June 1 police attack on peaceful protestors in East Liberty visit: bit.ly/eastlibertypoliceattack

If you were at the protest and think you might be a class member, please fill out this form at bit.ly/intakeeastlibertypoliceattack and email to: info@obrienlawpgh.com , msc@obrienlawpgh.com , qcozzens@alcenter.org

On June 1, 2020, a peaceful protest in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh against nationwide police violence turned into a yet another demonstration of excessive force by the police. Protesters who participated in this protest have filed a class action lawsuit in federal court against Pittsburgh Bureau of Police (PBP) officials, Mayor Bill Peduto, and the City of Pittsburgh after police unleashed violence on peaceful demonstrators, then rounded up and arrested nearly two dozen people who committed no crimes. The protesters are represented by attorneys from O’Brien Law, Abolitionist Law Center, and Elzer Law Firm, LLC.

Named Plaintiffs include a 13-year-old boy, his mother, and her fiancé, who attended the protest to learn about the First Amendment, but instead were met with tear gas and violence; a dance instructor who was arrested outside his apartment while he was on his way home; a local non-profit worker who was gassed and chased at gunpoint; an international peace observer who spent the night in jail after being tear gassed and arrested while trying to walk to their car; and a man who was shot in the back by four rubber bullets as he tried to leave the protest. 

On June 1, the PBP escalated a peaceful protest into a scene of pandemonium, panic, violence and bloodshed. The PBP deployed hundreds of officers to counter approximately 150 protesters.  As the assembled protesters held their hands in the air and chanted, “This is not a riot,” and “Hands up – Don’t shoot,” PBP ordered its officers to attack them with explosives, chemical agents and ammunition which is known to seriously wound and sometimes kill its targets.  PBP officers drove ambulances past injured protesters without stopping. After ordering peaceful protesters to leave the area, PBP officers blocked their escape with chemical gas, riot police and mounted patrols. The PBP ordered tactical officers dressed in paramilitary garb to patrol a residential neighborhood in armored vehicles and arbitrarily throw canisters of chemical gas at anyone they encountered. The PBP arrested twenty-two protestors for failing to disperse, subjecting them to confinement in the midst of a global COVID-19 pandemic.  The Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office withdrew the charges for every person arrested due to a lack of sufficient evidence or allegations to support the criminal charges.

Immediately following the PBP’s overwhelming and unjustified use of force in East Liberty, Mayor Peduto, Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich and Chief of Police Scott Schubert held a press conference at which they disseminated flagrant lies to conceal and/or justify the PBP’s use of force against peaceful protesters. These officials accused protesters of hurling rocks and “volleys of bricks” at PBP officers, and vehemently denied using chemical agents.  Numerous videos statements were patently false.

“In Pittsburgh and across the country, police officers’ use of chemical weapons such as tear gas and projectile munitions such as rubber bullets, beanbag rounds, and sponge grenades against protesters has resulted in serious and debilitating injuries. Moreover, the routine and indiscriminate use of these tactics deters would-be protesters from exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and petition the government,” said the attorneys representing the Protesters.  

The lawsuit seeks an order preventing the City of Pittsburgh from declaring peaceful protests unlawful and from using chemical agents and projectiles against peaceful protesters.[1] The lawsuit also seeks money damages for protesters whose rights were violated.

The suit was filed the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania by Attorneys Margaret Coleman of O’Brien Law, Quinn Cozzens of Abolitionist Law Center, and Christine T. Elzer of Elzer Law Firm, LLC.

For additional information contact

Margaret Coleman

msc@obrienlawpgh.com

Quinn Cozzens

qcozzens@alcenter.org

Christine Elzer

celzer@elzerlaw.com

[1] Federal courts have issued similar injunctions against police departments in several cities, including Denver, Seattle, and Oakland

MEET THE PROTESTERS-PLAINTIFFS

To view the complaint and videos of the June 1 police attack on peaceful protestors in East Liberty visit: bit.ly/eastlibertypoliceattack

If you were at the protest and think you might be a class member, please fill out this form at bit.ly/intakeeastlibertypoliceattack and email to: info@obrienlawpgh.com , msc@obrienlawpgh.com , qcozzens@alcenter.org

Copy of Final Filed ComplaintDownload

POLICE TERROR at EAST LIBERTY PROTEST 06/01

Posted on by abolitionist

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.

Federal Lawsuit Filed on Behalf of Activist Who Was Assaulted and Arrested at North Versailles

Posted on by abolitionist

May 8, 2019
PITTSBURGH, PA (May 8, 2019) – The Law Offices of Timothy P. O’Brien is filing a federal lawsuit against Christopher Kelly (“Kelly”) and Phoenix Theatres Entertainment, LLC (“Phoenix Theatres”) for assaulting and arresting Melanie Carter for recording Kelly—a police officer for the North Versailles Police Department, who was in full uniform at the time of the incident—with her cell phone. The Abolitionist Law Center has also joined as co-counsel. Ms. Carter began recording an incident at Phoenix Theatres where its employees, along with Kelly, were targeting a group of young African American children at Phoenix Stadium 18 at 1701 Lincoln Highway, North Versailles, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania 15137. Ms. Carter filmed the episode because she thought the young African American children were being treated unfairly because of their race after she witnessed Kelly and Phoenix Theatres forcibly remove some of the young children from Phoenix Stadium 18 and overheard them calling the girls “animals.”

Because Ms. Carter recorded the incident, Kelly arrested her by using his larger size to throw her to the concrete, push his body weight into her back with his knee, and shove her face into the concrete multiple times. The next day, Kelly charged Ms. Carter for numerous false criminal charges. All the criminal charges were dismissed at various stages of the criminal process prior to a criminal trial through the assistance of Bret Grote, Esquire and Quinn Cozzens, Esquire of the Abolitionist Law Center. “Ms. Carter—like any other member of the public—has a constitutional right to record police officers conducting official police activity,” said Alec B. Wright, Esquire. “If and when police officers like Christopher Kelly retaliate against members of the public like Carter for recording their activities, then they must be held accountable. That is what this lawsuit seeks to accomplish.”

According to Timothy P. O’Brien, Esquire, “Ms. Carter exercised her right of free speech and did the right thing by recording an abusive police officer. For that, she was violently attacked and falsely arrested and charged for crimes she did not commit. This lawsuit stands up for Ms. Carter and for every other citizen who may speak freely without fear of retaliation. We need more citizens like Ms. Carter and fewer police officers like Christopher Kelly who willingly abuse the powers that we entrust to them.”

Press Contact :
The Law Offices of Timothy P. O’Brien will be holding interviews on Wednesday, May 9, 2019 at The Law Offices of Timothy P. O’Brien to discuss this important case. Attorney Wright may be reached at (412) 260-1662 or abw@obrienlawpgh.com.  Attorney Bret Grote may be reached at bretgrote@abolitionistlawcenter.org