This much is clear: early on February 11th at about 1:30 AM officers from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police shot and killed 39-year-old Mark Daniels near the intersection of Brushton Ave. and Bennett Street in South Homewood. All other details of the shooting remain obscure.
The cops claim to have responded to a report of a man with a gun, and that Daniels shot at them first as he was running away. However they have provided no evidence for this claim whatsoever. No 911 tape of the supposed report, no gun recovered from Daniels’ body, no dashcam or surveillance video. In addition Daniels’ mother Joyce has said that he did not own or carry a gun, and that employees of UPMC were ordered by the cops not to give his family any information or let them see him.
The signs of a coverup are all there. The boilerplate story that completely exonerates the cops, the lockdown of all pertinent information, the stonewalling of the victim’s family. Next we can expect the usual excuse from the cops that they can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, accompanied by various liberal groups pleading for peace and calm “until we have the full story.”
Fuck all that. It’s time to stop giving state-sanctioned murderers the benefit of the doubt. Joyce Daniels said it perfectly: “How you going to go to the police when something’s wrong when you know you might not walk back from ’em?” For Mark Daniels what was wrong was the cops themselves.
Watch this post for further updates.
UPDATE: Turns out the Pittsburgh cops suck at coverups. WTAE is reporting that the stories of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police and Allegheny County Police don’t match. Also, the cops still haven’t officially released Mark Daniels’ name – reporters had to learn it from his family. It’s hard to imagine what they’re thinking. Standard policy everywhere is to wait until the family has been notified before releasing victim’s names, but continuing to withhold what is now public information reeks of bureaucracy and indifference.
UPDATE 2: The Allegheny County Police have jumped into the spin control arena with yet another version of Daniels’ killing. Now he supposedly fired at officers on foot patrol who were following him, and a gun was supposedly recovered near where he collapsed, as reported in the Post-Gazette. Of course we still haven’t seen the gun, or heard any explanation of why it took two days for the cops to claim they had it.
In the same PG article Allegheny County Public Safety Director Wayne Hissrich is quoted saying “There are reports circulating that officers were beating on the individual in a back alleyway. They were actually performing CPR on that individual.” This is curious because no such reports have yet surfaced in the media. It is also racist because Hissrich is assuming that Black residents of Homewood are too stupid to tell the difference between CPR and a beating.
Update 3: The lid is off. WTAE and the Post-Gazette are reporting major holes in the cops story. Lashay Mahaffey, whose house Daniels ran to after he was shot, saw police drag a bleeding and unarmed Daniels down her front steps, roll him over, and handcuff him with his arms behind his back. No one performed CPR on him until EMTs arrived, giving the lie to Hissrich’s claim. Another witness describes Daniels with his hands up, screaming “It wasn’t us! It wasn’t us shooting!” – before being shot at again.
Yet the stonewalling continues. In the WTAE video one of Daniels’ friends describes viewing surveillance footage that had the section removed in which Daniels would have been shown first interacting with the cops who shot him. No footage of the shooting was provided at all.
SAVE THE DATE! A fundraising dinner to cover Mark Daniels’ funeral expenses is being planned for Saturday, February 17 at 6 PM. Details will be posted on Torchlight as they become available.