By Margaret Harding
Pittsburgh City Council on
Tuesday approved a $115,000 settlement with a woman who accused a city officer
of false arrest in a lawsuit.
Christine Condarcure, 50, of
North Apollo sued Officer Anthony Scarpine, alleging that he was wrong to
arrest her on charges of witness intimidation and simple assault outside of her
son's preliminary hearing in May 2010. She spent five days in the Allegheny
County Jail accused of hitting a witness, but video surveillance showed that
she only brushed against the witness, according to the lawsuit.
“It's not just about the money,
it's about the fact that citizens' constitutional rights are being violated by
persons whom we have entrusted to enforce the law,” said attorney Tim O'Brien,
who represented Condarcure.
The city could pay more than
$500,000 this year to resolve lawsuits involving officers. Two jury awards this
year against city officers totaled $224,016. A lawyer for a woman who accused
an officer of sexually assaulting her in December 2011 said she has agreed to a
$35,000 settlement with the city. The city has approved an $11,000 payment to a
man who said he was injured when a police car hit him in 2007, and is
considering a $145,000 settlement with a woman who was injured in a 2012 crash
with an officer.
O'Brien said the types of
complaints against police officers his office has received lately remind him of
those that were made before a federal lawsuit against the bureau led to a
consent decree in 1997 that put the police department under federal oversight
for five years.
He said since the consent
decree expired, he has seen a yearly rise in the complaints of police abuse.
Bryan Campbell, an attorney for
the Pittsburgh police union, said he doesn't think the department is in the
same place it was before the consent decree.
“The training today is a lot
more extensive than it was, and the city keeps very, very close supervision
over what the officers do,” Campbell said. “I think nobody today could bring a
suit to show the city has patterns, practices or policies that would lead
officers to think they could violate civil rights.”
Margaret Harding is a staff
writer for Trib Total Media. Reach her at 412-380-8519 or mharding@tribweb.com.
