On entering the Kingsley Center it was immediately obvious the police were not interested in hosting a large gathering. The space provided was small, with only about 30 chairs set up. In addition they had done very little outreach to promote the meeting. Nonetheless the room filled quickly, with most of the remaining chairs getting set up and numerous latecomers standing in the back. Total attendance was close to 100.
Police present were all from Zone 5 or the major crimes unit, with no sign of chief Scott Schubert or other top brass. No one from the Allegheny County Police turned up either, a point we will return to later on. Other luminaries included state representative Ed Gainey, Brandi Fisher of the Alliance for Police Accountability, and Black Political Empowerment Project’s Tim Stevens.
The proceedings began with Jason Lando, commander of Zone 5, making a preemptive excuse for the incompleteness of the narrative that was to follow – that he could only reveal that information that had been released by the Allegheny County Police, and they hadn’t finished investigating yet.
A “data specialist” from Zone 5 followed, presenting charts and graphics in an attempt to show that the part of Homewood where Mark Daniels was killed is a crime-infested war zone where cops just naturally have to be even more trigger happy than usual. A cop later tried to claim this data is “victim driven”, meaning it isn’t just a vicious circle of arrests leading to an influx of cops leading to more arrests, but no details were given. The crowd became impatient and the specialist hurried to finish up.
Next up was a speaker from the Pittsburgh Police major crimes unit, who explained the procedure for handling officer-involved shootings. His main point was that since the beginning of 2018 the Allegheny County Police have been in charge of investigating shootings committed by the Pittsburgh Police, reiterating Lando’s argument that any premature release of information could compromise the investigation. The crowd was pretty impatient with him too, but the relevance of his remarks would become all too disgustingly apparent as the meeting progressed.
Lando then took the floor again for the meat of the presentation – the so-called timeline of events leading to Mark Daniels’ death. He had very little to add to the information that had already been released to the media, and had nothing to say regarding the witnesses whose media testimony contradicted his story. He began by claiming that Daniels had, when first seeing the two cops who killed him, taken an “aggressive stance”. Pressed on what the hell that meant, Lando resorted to a goofy pantomime meant to imitate Daniels’ behavior from the surveillance video. The video itself was not shown because, you guessed it, the Allegheny County Police hadn’t released it yet.
The two then proceeded to shadow Daniels in a parallel alley, where they couldn’t have seen him. On emerging at the other end they were supposedly met with immediate gunfire from Daniels, but Lando refused to say how he knew Daniels was the shooter, hiding yet again behind the Allegheny County investigators. WTAE has reported that a witness saw Daniels holding up his hands and screaming “It wasn’t me!”, but Lando didn’t mention that either. After shooting Daniels the two supposedly followed his blood trail to a nearby house. Another witness saw them drag Daniels down the steps of the house and handcuff his hands behind his back. Lando claimed the handcuffing was necessary because Daniels’ gun hadn’t yet been found and he might have still had it. He did not address the dragging at all, but did claim the officers “rendered assistance” to Daniels. He did not specify what assistance was rendered, but the same witness who saw the cops drag Daniels down her steps reported that no CPR was done until EMTs arrived.
A few more details:
– Lando claimed the gun supposedly fired by Daniels was found the same night as the shooting, not two days later. He did not explain why it took two days for the gun’s discovery to be announced, or what the cops with dogs were looking for in the neighborhood the next day. Supposedly the gun matched the bullets fired at the cops, but no evidence tying the gun to Daniels was provided, per the standard excuse.
– A woman close to Daniels asked why his family had been told at UPMC Presbyterian that he would live, then made to wait four hours before being informed that was dead. Lando replied that he had no control over what the hospital did, in the face of reported statements by hospital workers that the cops wouldn’t let them release any information.
– Early media reports stated that the cops who killed Daniels were responding to a call about a man with a gun. Lando blamed this inaccuracy on reporters misunderstanding what they heard on the police scanner. None of the maligned reporters were present to respond.
Not all questions were about the chain of events. There was some discussion about police-worn body cameras and why the cops who killed Daniels didn’t have them. A woman from the Citizen Police Review Board made the useful point that even if there had been body cam footage the cops were under no obligation to release it.
When Lando tried to promote Zone 5’s community policing program, bragging about his cops participating in peace marches, one woman spoke movingly and at length about feeling frightened of the cops anyway, of being harassed by them in front of her kids, and about having to call on “strategic white people” to be present with her when she had to call 911.
Toward the end of the event Brandi Fisher made a short speech backing up Lando, cautioning attendees not to expect any more information soon, and hinting that none might ever be forthcoming. This was Fisher’s first public statement about Mark Daniels, as far as can be told from APA’s web site and Facebook page. Tim Stevens also spoke briefly, advocating greater transparency without criticizing Lando for his near-complete lack thereof, and urging that no stone be left unturned. Ed Gainey, as part of a discussion about the community response to non-police murders, asserted at some length that matters are improving, although there is still a long way to go. This concluded the event.