WPU fights draw police, dogs

A Friday night dance party in the William Pitt Union erupted into violence that required… A Friday night dance party in the William Pitt Union erupted into violence that required intervention by campus and city police, whose dogs bit at least one student early Saturday. The adviser to Phi Beta Sigma, the group that hosted the event, said the conflict developed when a group of eight men, at least some of whom he later identified as Pitt football players, clashed with partygoers.

Both Pitt police Chief Tim Delaney and Phi Beta Sigma adviser Nathan James described the event as positive and peaceful until the trouble developed at about 1:15 a.m. when, according to James’ brother, William, one of the newcomers shoved a partygoer and was punched in retaliation. Fraternity brothers restrained the man who was punched before he could fight back, according to both Delaney and William James.

Delaney and William James said Pitt police officers took the newcomer into the lobby and pinned him into a corner. James further said the man was handcuffed and then later let go.

“Somehow, he never made it to jail,” Nathan James said.

But Delaney said that, to his knowledge, the man was never handcuffed. Rather, the crowd that numbered between 300 and 400 began emptying into the lobby and the officer who was pinning the man released him in order to deal with the crowd, Delaney said.

As the crowd flooded into the lobby, according to Nathan James, the fighting between the rival groups rekindled.

It was at that point, around 1:20 a.m., according to Zeta Phi Beta member Summer Haston, that a Pitt police officer punched her as she was leaving.

“He just came and cracked me,” she said. “He just hit me across my face.”

As Pitt police radioed for backup, Delaney said, Zone 6 Pittsburgh city police picked up the call and came to the Union with a K-9 unit containing several police dogs, which Nathan James said were barking at students.

“Once they got everybody out of the Union, people were pretty much just hanging around, that’s when they brought the dogs out,” Nathan James said. “They wanted people to basically just go home, so they brought out dogs.”

Lieutenant Michael Piasecki, the acting commander of Zone 6 police, said having K-9 units at a fight with a crowd as large as the one that night is normal.

“It’s standard procedure to bring as many people as we can,” Piasecki said, adding that with a situation that threatens to get out of control, any units, K-9 or not, would be called in to help if available.

Haston and Nathan James said the crowd was scared of the dogs, which Haston and James characterized as out of control, as police directed the dogs toward fleeing partygoers in an effort to get them to disperse.

According to Haston, “one of the police officers said ‘get out of here before I get the dog on you,’ and when he said that, the dog attacked him, and I’m like ‘you don’t even have your dogs under control,'” she said.

“The dog literally just turned around and jumped on this officer and started biting him, and he’s like ‘down, down, down!'”

William James said that, as he walked by a K-9 police officer, a dog jumped at him. Then, he said his friend from Pennsylvania State University-Erie, identified by several sources as Khalif Rhodes, stepped into the dog’s path and was bitten. As the dog was biting Rhodes, William James said another of his friends, Gerald Stevens, pushed the dog off and was bitten as well.

“It seemed like they were in the mindset of ‘let’s crack some heads,'” William James said.

He added that both Rhodes and Stevens, as well as another person named Robert Allen Carter – nicknamed “B.J.” – who was hit with a police baton during the night, were arrested and taken away, despite their efforts to calm down the crowd and reason with police.

“If you did talk, just like Khalif, B.J. and Gerald, you were getting arrested,” he said. “They were just looking for people to take to jail.”

Piasecki said he had a record of Stevens’ arrest for failure to disperse, obstruction, defiant trespass and taunting a police canine, and Delaney said Pitt police arrested Carter for inciting a riot and failure to disperse, and cited a Pitt student named Corey Alston, but neither had any record of Rhodes or his arrest.

Piasecki also said Stevens, after being bitten, was taken to a hospital in accordance with protocol. He said any threatening gesture made toward the dog or the dog’s handler could have resulted in the dog reacting violently.

Nathan James said a third fight then began outside of the Union, near the bronze panther statue at around 1:45 a.m., and that afterward, a member of the football team made a call from his cell phone and told the person on the other end to “bring the shit,” which Nathan James said he took to mean guns.

“What happened was they lost the fight, so they were very upset because they lost the fight and they’re the football team and they’re really not supposed to lose the fight I guess,” Nathan James said.

He said after 2 a.m., he and some of the brothers went to the Original Hot Dog Shop, where members of the football team who had been in the fights met them, and lifted up their shirts to reveal guns.

“They went and got guns and chased us around campus,” he said.

Nathan James said the fraternity brothers then ran out, and went back to convene in Litchfield Towers lobby, where they told a Pitt police officer about the gun-wielding football players. He said the officer gave a noncommittal answer, but did not radio for help or to look into it.

Nathan James said he heard the name of a specific Pitt football player brought up during the evening as one of the men with a gun, but could not identify him firsthand. Haston also provided a description of one of the players she said saw, and said she heard a nickname spoken during the fight that she knew to be a name used by one of the football players.

“There was a lot of no-names, but everybody knew they were on the football team,” William James said. “Basically, every time I’ve been over there, it has been the football team. They’re constantly at parties, no matter whose party it is … They just don’t know how to act. They bully everybody, they try to push people because they’re the football team.”

Nathan James also said the only Pitt football player he recognized came into the Union “to try to make peace” and keep the two groups from fighting. He said the player is the one who informed him of the other football players’ identity as student athletes. He also said he and the player plan to meet this week to discuss how to keep future altercations from happening.

“He was really trying to calm the situation along with me,” Nathan James said.

National Pan-Hellenic Council President Nicole Cofer said NPHC will conduct its own investigation in order to prevent future problems.

Nathan James said he and others were at the county courthouse from 3 a.m. Saturday to 10 p.m. that night, where he said the judge released Rhodes of his own accord and Carter on $3,000 bail. He called the judge’s behavior during the hearing “completely inappropriate,” and said the judge made jokes about Stevens’ injury and used profanity in the courtroom, then asked the clerk for a bail recommendation. Nathan James said the clerk then replied, “$5,000 for taunting the dog,” which was then the amount served as bail to Stevens.

According to Nathan James, Stevens was never read his rights but detained until 10 p.m. as well. His hearing is Oct. 29.

Haston said that, after she was hit, she asked the officer for his name and badge number. She said he refused to give them at first, and then gave her a false name and number.

She said that, when she got outside, a city police officer, upon seeing her sorority shirt, identified himself as a “Kappa,” meaning a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, and asked her what was going on. She said she told him about the officer who had hit her, and the city officer said the behavior sounded like a specific officer in the Pitt police force.

Haston said she intends to file charges against the officer, which, according to Delaney, will be handled under the protocol for internal investigation of a civilian complaint, a standard procedure regulating how complaints are managed. He said he will meet with her tomorrow.

Black Action Society President DeShaun Sewell called the actions of the Pitt and City police “unacceptable.”

“This is not 1965,” she said. “There was no need for people to be punched in the face.”

She also said the use of dogs was unnecessary and that BAS supports any actions taken by National Pan-Hellenic Council, but expressed concern about Pitt’s role.

“An administration that allows this to happen is clearly one that does not care about the needs of black students,” she said.