How family learning experience became a nightmare
When Charles Bryant Jr. got home from his job as an investment banker on Monday, June 1, his fiancee, Nicole Rulli, and her 13-year-old son were busy making protest signs.
The family had decided to head that afternoon from their Castle Shannon home to East Liberty, where crowds were peacefully protesting police brutality. Two days earlier, another protest Downtown had turned violent.
“It looked very peaceful; it looked very happy. Regardless of other protests, that particular one looked like a very American experience,” Mr. Bryant, who is Black, said Monday, roughly an hour after his family and four other plaintiffs filed a federal lawsuit against Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and top police officials for their actions in violently dispersing demonstrators that day.
“Just historically, being that we’re African American, we wanted him to participate in the progress of our culture. We wanted to have an opportunity to be on the right side of history,” Mr. Bryant, 36, said of the couple’s son. He and Ms. Rulli thought it was important for the teenager, as a young Black man coming of age in Pittsburgh, to see a peaceful protest firsthand and appreciate the “appropriate” way to express dissatisfaction with the government.
“It was just a learning, educational experience,” Mr. Bryant said.
But by the end of the evening, the learning experience had turned into a nightmare.
Pittsburgh police officers in riot gear and camouflage confronted the protesters, ordered them to disperse and then attacked them using tear gas, pepper spray, beanbag rounds and rubber bullets, according to the lawsuit. Police have denied the use of rubber bullets.
Ms. Rulli and Mr. Bryant, who has asthma, were overcome by tear gas. Ms. Rulli told her son, identified as A.F. in the lawsuit, to run. They were separated for a time as the teen made his way to a Giant Eagle, where other demonstrators helped him.
The family was left traumatized. A.F., who is going into eighth grade, said he now suffers from minor PTSD. He’s scared of loud noises and tries to keep his distance from police.
“I don’t know how I think about them anymore. I’ve always tried to believe there are some good police officers in Pittsburgh, but I really haven’t met them,” A.F. said.
“I was seeing the protest on the news, and I’ve seen protests throughout history,” A.F. said. “There were a lot of different groups congregating together. They all wanted one thing: equal rights. I thought that was great.”
Ms. Rulli, 35, who is white, said she has two African American daughters, ages 6 and 7, in addition to her son. In explaining her decision to have him attend the protest, she referenced the “talk” — the warning Black parents give
their children about interactions with the police in order to keep them from potential harm.
“I didn’t have to have that talk with my parents, but I have a young Black son. I had to have a talk with him. I thought, ‘You need to see. You need to see what reality is. You need to participate, and we need to stand up for your rights, as well as our family’s rights.”
After dropping their girls off at their grandmother’s house, the family headed to the East End, familiar territory. Ms. Rulli, a sales clerk, said she is often there and has friends and family in the area. Earlier that day, she said she had seen a neighborhood Starbucks boarded up and asked a police officer about it. The officer said it was in advance of the protest.
“I had no reason to think Monday would be any different from the previous day, no matter what happened on Saturday,” when vandals torched two police cars Downtown, Ms. Rulli said.
“Had I seen anything that day prior on the news before we left, while we were there, anything like that, I would not have come. While we were there, before the police got violent with us, if I saw anything that I thought was unsafe or put us in jeopardy we would have left. When the police told us to leave, we left in the way and direction they told us to go to, which we believed would be safety, then were attacked. We were a block from the car.”
When the situation deteriorated, Ms. Rulli said, people screamed and ran. She said she heard dogs and worried they were being loosed on Mr. Bryant.
“Whenever the initial attack happened, we were just walking to our car. When they initially threw the tear gas canister, it took me about two seconds to comprehend what happened,” A.F. said. He heard an explosion. “Then my mom tells me to run, and I run for a bit, and then the tear gas hits, and I can’t breathe so I can’t muster the energy to keep running. Then I speed-walk up the street until I just couldn’t anymore.”
At Centre and Penn avenues, several blocks from the chaos, SWAT officers exited an armored vehicle and threw a “chemical gas grenade” at the family, according to the lawsuit.
“The grenade hit Rulli’s foot and immediately began spewing gas in her face; SWAT officers threw two more chemical gas grenades at the family,” the lawsuit said.
Ms. Rulli yelled for A.F. to run. He did. A legal observer called 911, asking for an ambulance. None came; no police officers rendered aid, according to the lawsuit.
Mr. Bryant searched for A.F. and asked a police officer if he had seen a 13-yearold boy without his parents.
“That’s on you,” the officer said, according to the lawsuit.
Ms. Rulli bristled at the suggestion the family did anything wrong.
“As a parent, it’s very upsetting because I’ve heard people already judge me on bringing my child that day, telling me, ‘You should have followed directions. You should have left.’ But I did. We were attacked for no reason. We weren’t violent. No one was.”
Also attending the protest was plaintiff Christopher Wilson Juring, a 23year-old food service worker from Highland Park.
“The whole day we’d been marching around East Liberty, and it was really powerful and a wholesome protest,” Mr. Juring said Monday.
People chanted and sang. Then the group got to Centre and Negley avenues.
“I was surprised to see the riot police lining up and the officers in camouflage and in military gear,” Mr. Juring said.
He saw they wore riot helmets and carried batons.
“There was no provocation,” he said. “We were chanting literally right before they started shooting at us, ‘Hands up, don’t shoot,’ and, ‘This is not a riot.’”
Around 7:17 p.m., the lawsuit said, a police officer addressed the crowd through a loudspeaker. He declared the assembly unlawful — without explaining what was unlawful about it — and ordered protesters to disperse immediately or risk arrest or “other police action,” which could include the use of riot-control agents and less-lethal munitions.
A line of police blocked Centre Avenue on the inbound side. Officers deployed a sound cannon to emit a painful tone and warned protesters not to advance. The lawsuit said demonstrators remained at least 30 feet away, although videos filed with the lawsuit clearly show several protesters much closer to the police line. Some demonstrators knelt with their hands in the air and chanted, “Join us.”
As police were giving their “sixth and final warning” to disperse, with a SWAT truck and other emergency vehicles rolling up behind the police line, officers rolled a canister forward that emitted a loud sound — the lawsuit identified it as a flash-bang grenade — prompting protesters to throw objects as most of them scattered down Centre Avenue.
“I can’t say I was all that surprised, but it was incredibly disturbing and upsetting,” Mr. Juring said. “As soon as they started all that, everyone started running. I just stayed calm and walked away. I unfortunately walked directly through a thick cloud of tear gas.”
Mr. Juring said he had trouble breathing and wasn’t able to think clearly. He said he looked back and couldn’t see through the acrid white smoke. And he said he’s sure the police couldn’t see him.
“I don’t think there was any way they could have seen what they were shooting at.”
Mr. Juring was struck four times by rubber bullets, which left bloody, gaping wounds on his legs and back.
He was able to escape from the chaos, making it home while his adrenaline surged.
But that night, as he coughed from the gas and tried to stanch his bleeding wounds, he said he saw the mayor and other officials on television blaming the violence on a small “splinter group” of protesters who threw rocks, bricks and water bottles at police, who responded with “smoke.”
The next day, police confirmed tear gas was used.
“The only people I witnessed committing acts of violence was the police,” Mr. Juring said. He said he couldn’t walk for several days and considers himself lucky his injuries weren’t worse.
“One of the main takeaways from this is they’ve made it abundantly clear that in Pittsburgh we can’t peacefully protest without fearing for our health and for our safety, and that feels just fundamentally wrong.”
Ms. Rulli and her family were also astounded at what the mayor and police officials said on TV.
“That night, whenever we got home and we looked at the news, the first thing before the news was even gone, my father said, ‘Expect them to lie. Watch what happens,’” A.F. said. “And that’s what they did.”