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TechnoratiAndre Thomas Is Dead. Why?
Too bad Andre Thomas of Swissvale is dead. He probably would have disputed the Allegheny County medical examiner's report that his death was not the result of excessive force by the Swissvale police.But what would he know? Andre Thomas was just another unarmed 37-year-old civilian acting "erratically" when he encountered the police for the last time late Monday night. He died early Tuesday morning.
After he was shot with a Taser and reportedly kicked and punched while in handcuffs, Mr. Thomas' treatment might be within the acceptable range of brutality for Swissvale. Whether that is a standard that should shock the conscience of citizens throughout Western Pennsylvania is another question.
As Andre Thomas stared into the faces of his assailants, did he see an inkling of compassion in their eyes -- or contempt? Were his last thoughts of the 2-year-old daughter he'd never see again?
Did the autopsy report do justice to the blood and vomit that coagulated around his mouth or the excruciating pain that wracked his body? Will the toxicology report come back clean -- or tell a story of "excited delirium" induced by cocaine or other drugs, as Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. suggested yesterday?
"There was no evidence in general, no evidence of excessive force being used," Dr. Karl Williams of the Allegheny County medical examiner's office told a reporter. Dr. Williams also refused to define "excessive force" or shed light on other aspects of the autopsy.
That's why the circumstances surrounding the death of Andre Thomas still begs the question -- why is he dead?
The nearly 20 protesters who marched up Braddock Avenue to the Swissvale Borough Building on Wednesday evening want an answer.
"I knew the guy they killed," said Sabrina Williams, 40, a Swissvale resident who cheered the protesters as they passed her on the sidewalk. "I've had my own run-in [with the cops]," she told me. "That's why I'm scared to call them about anything."
Fellow Swissvale residents Dametria Reed, 27, and Octavia McNeill, 19, echoed Ms. Williams' sentiments. Still none were eager to join the marchers, citing scheduling conflicts and possible police retaliation.
Chanting "prosecute the cops / the killing must stop," the group of local activists could barely contain their indignation as they confronted glowering Swissvale police outside the station.
A 31-year-old Swissvale resident who would only give his name as Charles was interviewed in front of the borough building by television crews eager to get his take on life in what one protester called a "police state."
"This is why I'm here," Charles said, pointing to his young son clutching his hand. "I can't keep ducking and being afraid when I know [the police] were wrong."
"We think it would be appropriate if the cops responsible [for Mr. Thomas' death] were taken off the street pending the investigation," said Celeste Taylor of Point Breeze, the march's organizer.
A phalanx of Swissvale officers -- some who may have been involved in Mr. Thomas' death -- kept a respectful distance from the protesters and the television cameras.
With the exception of Lt. Matt Lisovich, 42, a 19-year veteran of the Swissvale force, all refused to comment. "It's America," Mr. Lisovich said to me, hunching heavily muscled shoulders. "They have a right to protest -- as long as they do it lawfully."
Augmented by cops from Braddock Hills and Edgewood, the police outnumbered the protesters.
Many Swissvale cops look like they spend more than their fair share of time in the gym. Even those with paunches are tall and imposing. Those who glared at the protesters looked like they could handle themselves against an unarmed man acting "erratically."
If he was merely acting strangely, couldn't the cops have used pepper spray or a baton to subdue him instead of pumping 50,000 volts into his body? What menace did Mr. Thomas present to the public or to the cops to make the use of a Taser a reasonable option?
Given the controversial and deadly track record of Tasers, does it make sense for cops to use them when less potentially lethal methods are available? Whatever happened to the mandate "To protect and to serve"?
At the Swissvale Borough Council meeting after Wednesday's protest, a diminutive young woman approached the microphone during the comment period. She said she lived on street where Mr. Thomas encountered police and witnessed the incident. She was one of the people who called police in the first place.
"We called the cops to get help for him," the woman said, countering reports that the neighbors felt threatened by his behavior. "He wasn't aggressive."
Yesterday, District Attorney Zappala said other witnesses had come forward to say the police did nothing more than stun Mr. Thomas three times with a Taser and handcuff him.
The woman at the meeting asked council President David Petrarca why Andre Thomas had to die.
It was a good question. Mr. Petrarca had no comment. Nobody -- not the cops or the protesters -- had a clue.
--Tony Norman
Copyright ©1997 - document.write(new Date().getFullYear());2008 PG Publishing Co., Inc.
19 Comments so far
Show AllTaser McCain.
thegreatrockyhill, you ought to check out the troglodytes whose minimally-literate scrawls are enthusiastically published in the Philly "Daily News" letters page.
They are uniformly supportive of their Boys in Blue; they have a few talking points that must percolate through the sub-intellectual ether. Maybe they're carried like anthrax spores from the fumes emanating from corner taprooms.
It's all about how Philly's Finest put their lives on the line every time they go to work, and how would YOU handle violent lawbreakers or crazy people running amuck with knives or broken bottles?
No doubt police work is tough and risky-- but that's only the beginning of the problem, not the end of the story. But the DN letters staring at you from the bottom of the birdcage say otherwise.
Gee! It is truly grand that comments are dropped before being logged!! Otherwise, How could free speech survive? Especially, if you question how five thugs, and one thuggette, could not subdue one unarmed man that only has two legs and two arms. Let's see, one 240 pound alpha male, I.Q. of 96, per extremity, equals 960 pounds of All American, beer guzzling, potato-chip, bean dipping stupidity, unable to subdue one male of unknown weight and stature, who was doing nothing more than standing in the street yelling?
Your Homeland Security dollars at work.
And it only took 150,000 volts! Oh, but I forgot, he was on PCP, a horse tranquilizer, misconstrued as a Superman drug. Plus, he probably had a couple of the local cops favorite brewskis to make him realize he wasn't living in a pre-Bush fascism state any longer when he went out into the street of this Hicksburg, U.S.A., or metropolis, to vent his opinion.
OOppsie...Don't look!
The swill is at your front door! Oh, you are eighty years old and disabled. You filed a Social Security disability claim?
Whack, wham, ZZZZZZZZ...(while flopping like a fish on your living room floor).
Next question, Mr. and Mrs. American sheeple clamhead?
I wonder if this was one of the police departments trained by Blackwater?...
Aren't baseball bats less expensive than tasers? Sounds like "those cops" could use baseball bats and not get everyone pissed off and scared. They wouldn't be hurting their fists either.
We've had a lot of this in my city. There are so many stories from different witnesses, and you're never sure who to believe.
You have the people who always side with the police, as if they're always the good guys. Then you have people that always side against them no matter what. I also wouldn't doubt that race plays a role in this too. Mr. Thomas was a drug addict, a troubled man, and certainly was no angel, but still, did he have to die?
Can we even trust our police officers? I'm not going to knock all of them. I know that it can be dangerous, stressful work. However, I do think that at least some cops are powermad and sociopathic. I also think that many of them have just spent too much time on the street. After a while, they start thinking that they are at war and start seeing average citizens as the enemy.
If nothing else, these deaths of the hands of the police display immense irresponsibility. Don't they realize how much tension they create when they beat, choke,or taser someone to death for no good reason? Do they care? Maybe they figure that the more the public resents them, the more reason they have to go break some heads.
Everytime something like this happens my heart sinks. I'm just thankful that cooler heads prevail among ordinary people here in Pittsburgh.
These aren't cops. This is the first line of defense FOR Homeland Security, not for you. I'm old enough to remember when the police were considered public servants. Ah, yes those were the days...
It's ironic, though not amusing, that taser technology was originally seen as a relatively non-violent and "safe" alternative to simply shooting out-of-control or otherwise dangerous persons, whether perps or mentally ill persons acting out violently-- Philadelphia still prefers the traditional method of seven in the noggin, incidentally.
Instead, it turns out that Tasers are more like hand-held electric chairs. They're merely another device for summary execution, which leaves us back at Square One.
The story makes me angry too.
The second crime is, there's no feedback mechanism so that this won't happen next time. Ask your local public officials how the local cops are going to avoid this outcome the next time the circumstances happen in their town. Who's looking forward in your town? If no official is looking forward, look for other political candidates.
Localities only respond when you sue their cloaks off. You have three years, so always time this for an election year.
And another candle is snuffed out in the 'Shining City On the Hill'...
When are we going to demand the out-right banning of the Taser?
Better yet, wouldn't it be a damn shame if Taser corporate headquarters were to mysteriously burn to the ground, and the owner commit 'suicide'?
This is the kind of image I retain when a foreign prerson demands why WE/citizens are not actively taking down our corrupt government. The America under the bloated budget of "the homeland security state" and its arsenal of weapons being little by little aimed at citizens (some conscientious objectors to war and/or disaster capitalism, an ideological war) is not the America in all the dreamy l950's films, the great heros that saved the world from Naziism. This Cancer nation, (Cancer rules the stomach) has to an extent devoured its enemies only to become them, or make their strategies for controling citziens its own. Reality is now officially stranger than sci-fi. Maybe just as the bullet proof vest was invented, someone can come up with a device to ward off the tethers of these disgusting tasers?
does anyone have info on the use of psychiatric evaluations for law enforcement candidates?
"To protect and to serve"
That is the motto of many police forces. What isn't clear about that is who are they protecting and serving. It isn't you or I... It's the empire, the state, the fascists. The militarization of law enforcement has turned them from public servants into thugs for the state. They are not your friends. They are the enemy. Treat them as such.
They call them the filth in the UK. The police state is here, licensed killers.
There are people who would continue to try and kiss the cops' asses, even after those same cops cut their fuckin' lips off.
Do cops ever wonder why they're called 'pigs'? Do pigs ever wonder why they're insulted so?
from the Pittsburg Tribune-Review
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_581454.html
Note: five officers
"Swissvale police did not comment. Witnesses told the Tribune-Review that Thomas had been shackled, with Taser wires pocking his body. They said Thomas was facedown on the pavement and subjected to punches and kicks from four or five officers.
"'I can't sleep now. Shook up. I feel I have to watch my back and my family's back,' said Rose Adams, 51, who witnessed the fracas from a house on Hawthorne Street.
"Adams said she saw five officers -- four men and one woman -- standing around Thomas. First, a tall officer 'buried it in his back, just stomped him,' she said. Another officer with short-cropped hair then 'whomped between his shoulder and back.' Then a bald, heavy-set officer 'reared back, like you're throwing a ball' and punched Thomas in the head.
"'He hit so hard that it looked like he hurt his fist or wrist. I seen the body jump and then (Thomas) vomited, his leg jumping. It was disgusting. It was unhumanitarian,' said Adams."
to protect and serve,, themselves...
You can't help but make a connection between increasing
lawlessnes/decreasing respect for individual rights at the
Federal level and the same things appearing in local government. Strict rules and regulation need to be adhered to at all levels, and it just isn't happening.
Give an authoritarian and inch and he'll take a mile. We need to be scared.