ACLU sues over man’s arrest for videotaping police

By Jill King Greenwood
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, August 13, 2009

The ACLU of Pennsylvania has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Hill District man who was arrested for recording an incident between his friend and police.

The suit, filed today, stems from an April 29 incident between a friend of Elijah Matheny, 29, and University of Pittsburgh police officers. Matheny and his friend, who isn’t named in the suit, went to Oakalnd to search for furniture and other items discarded by Pitt students leaving for the semester and were picking through a Dumpster outside Bouquet Gardens on Oakland Avenue when the University police approached, according to the suit.

The officers asked Matheny and his female friend for identification. His friend gave police her name but did not have ID and was placed in handcuffs after police could find no record of her in their system, the suit states.

Matheny took out his cell phone and began recording the incident. Police were able to verify his friend’s identity and she was released but Matheny was arrested for violating the state’s Wiretap Act, said Witold Walczak, ACLU-PA legal director and one of the attorneys representing Matheny.

Matheny was also charged with “possession of an instrument of crime” in regards to his cell phone, Walczak said.

The Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office is also named in the lawsuit because Assistant District Attorney Chris Avetta talked to Pitt officers and agreed that Matheny had violated the state statute and authorized the arrest, Walczak said.

In July, a judge dismissed all charges against Matheny.

A message left with University of Pittsburgh police Chief Tim Delaney and with Mike Manko, spokesman for District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. were not immediately returned.

Walczak said the state law is “absolute” in its terms regarding obtaining permission to record people in public but said case law states that public officials — including police officers — are exempt.

“This is a widespread misunderstanding among law enforcement and the staff at the District Attorney’s office,” Walczak said. “If the police are doing something wrong, a citizen has a right to record it. For the same reason the police want cameras on the front of their police cars, citizens should be able to record the behavior and actions of police officers. It’s for everyone’s benefit.”

Walczak said he worries that “dozens of lawsuits” will result in September if police arrest protesters and others recording interactions between them and officers at the Group of 20 summit.

“If there are problems at the G-20 you can bet people will be whipping out their cell phones and recording what is happening,” Walczak said. “The police will have enough going on with people vandalizing and breaking things, and they don’t need to be arresting people who are simply recording them. We need to educate local police before the G-20 or this is going to be a nightmare.”

3 slain Pittsburgh officers to lie in state

By DAN NEPHIN, Associated Press – Mon Apr 6, 10:48 am ET

PITTSBURGH – The bodies of three slain Pittsburgh police officers will lie in state at a downtown municipal building, city officials announced Monday.

The viewing at the City-County Building will begin Wednesday afternoon for officers Eric Kelly, Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo II. A memorial service will be held Thursday at an arena on the University of Pittsburgh Campus.

Richard Poplawski, 23, was wearing a bulletproof vest when he opened fire on the officers who were responding to a domestic disturbance call Saturday, turning a quiet Pittsburgh street into a battlefield, police said.

The 911 call that brought Sciullo and Mayhle to the home where they were ambushed on Saturday, and where Kelly was later killed during a four-hour siege, was precipitated by a fight between the gunman and his mother over a dog urinating in the house.

Thursday’s memorial will also serve as the funeral service for 41-year-old Officer Eric Kelly, who will be buried immediately afterward.

Separate funeral services are set for Mayhle and Sciullo.

The argument between Margaret and Richard Poplawski escalated to the point that she threatened to kick him out and she called police to do it, according to a 12-page criminal complaint and affidavit filed late Saturday.

When Sciullo and Mayhle arrived, Margaret Poplawski opened the door and told them to come in and take her son, apparently unaware he was standing behind her with a rifle, the affidavit said. Hearing gunshots, she spun around to see her son with the gun and ran to the basement.

The mother told police her son had been stockpiling guns and ammunition “because he believed that as a result of economic collapse, the police were no longer able to protect society,” the affidavit said.

Autopsies show Sciullo, 37, died of wounds to the head and torso. Mayhle, 29, was shot in the head.

A witness awakened by two gunshots told investigators of seeing the gunman standing in the home’s front doorway and firing two to three shots into one officer who was already down. Sciullo was later found dead in the home’s living room, and Mayhle near the front stoop, police said.

Kelly, 41, was killed as he arrived to assist the first two officers. Kelly was in uniform but on his way home when he responded and was gunned down in the street.

Kelly’s radio call for help summoned other officers, including a SWAT team. The ensuing standoff included a gun battle in which police say Richard Poplawski tried to kill other officers.

Poplawski is charged with three counts of criminal homicide and nine counts of attempted homicide — one each for the eight officers who were shot at in an armored SWAT vehicle, plus a ninth who was shot in the hand as he tried to help Kelly.

A district judge arraigned Poplawski at a hospital. It was not immediately clear if Poplawski had an attorney.