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Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Pagan's MC Lawsuit Against Drunk Cops Goes to Trial

Pittsburgh, PA, USA (July 17, 2024) - A bar fight in Pittsburgh between undercover cops and members of the Pagan's Motorcycle Club in 2018 will finally be reviewed in court now that a civil suit brought by the Pagan's MC has been approved by a federal judge. The Pagan's MC are accusing the cops of excessive force, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution after a confrontation in a bar suddenly degenerated into violence caused by cops who had been drinking for hours.
 


The city of Pittsburgh wanted the lawsuit completely shut down, and argued for its dismissal. However, surveillance footage that captured the fight convinced a federal judge that the Pagan's MC had a valid point. In a video, a member of the Pagan's MC, Frank Deluca, can be seen arguing with one of the cops. Words are exchanged, there is no audio and Deluca pushes the undercover cop. The other three cops leap into the fray, and hold Deluca against the bar while another man repeatedly beats him and punches him in the face.

Deluca was punched 26 times in the two minute fight and suffered facial and cranial trauma as well as a dislocated elbow. He was then arrested. A month after the fight, the Allegheny District Attorney's Office announced it was dropping its charges against the Pagan's, citing new evidence, the bar's surveillance footage. According to the court documents, earlier in the evening four undercover Pittsburgh cops — Detectives David Honick, Brian Burgunder, David Lincoln and Brian Martin — were drinking at Kopy's Bar on the city's South Side while conducting surveillance on a suspected drug dealer.

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After the target of their investigation left, the cops began pounding drinks; one officer had 15 doubles of liquor, and the other three had 20, 15, and nine drinks, respectively, according to the lawsuit. “When they determined that the subject was not going to return to the bar because he had left, the officers should have just gotten up and left. They didn’t,” Beth Pittinger of the Pittsburgh Citizens Police Review Board said. “They were preparing to leave, but the members of the Pagan's Motorcycle Club walked in, so they decided to stay.”



According to the lawsuit, the cops and the bikers were initially getting along well, and one of the cops even bought shots for two of the bikers. At some point during the evening, the cops began to suspect that their cover had been blown, which allegedly put them all on edge. According to Pittinger, it is unclear why the cops came to that belief. “There was an assumption made that one of the patrons had or I don't even know if this is accurate, it's still a bit elusive to me that a patron had disclosed to the Pagan's MC that the four detectives were actually police officers,” she said.

According to both the testimony of those involved in the brawl and a criminal complaint filed after the fight, Martins revealed that he and his other companions were police. A report from the Pittsburgh Citizens Police Review Board released in 2021 theorized that Martin may have been trying to deescalate a conflict between the bikers and the police by telling the men they were actually law enforcement. Dietz said that city's lack of guidelines regarding undercover police alcohol consumption will be a major issue at the trial. No start date has been set.