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Beware a drunk, off-duty armed cop

Beware a drunk, off-duty armed cop

The South Side can be a very strange place on weekends. Like Bourbon Street in New Orleans or South Street in Philly, Carson Street fills with people who don't need an excuse to drink to excess just as night falls.

A sober-minded citizen who lives in the neighborhood would need extrasensory perception to differentiate an off-duty cop from an ordinary patron staggering along Carson.

Kaleb Michael Miller probably didn't notice anything strange about the man who approached him at Sidney and South 20th. After all, living on the South Side means accommodating a certain amount of exuberance on the part of inebriated people during the wee hours.

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It was a few minutes after 2 a.m. Saturday, when Mr. Miller first laid eyes on Paul Abel, an off-duty Pittsburgh police officer in his early 30s who had been carousing on the South Side that night.

The air was clear and the humidity low despite rain the previous day. Mr. Miller was very close to his home on Sidney Street. As of last evening, the 20-year-old South Side resident hadn't spoken publicly about what went through his mind at that moment. But it isn't hard to imagine.

Imagine looking up from some late-night reverie only to be confronted by a man holding a gun. What would go through your mind?

Now, imagine a stranger shouting at you as if you were somehow supposed to know who it was staring out at you from his bleary, watery eyes. We don't know what Kaleb Miller was thinking, but he was probably feeling a combination of terror and indignation.

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We don't know if Officer Abel, who was not in uniform, identified himself as a cop as he shouted at the young man.

From Mr. Miller's perspective, it didn't matter whether he was being robbed or arrested. He was old enough to know that if a man points a gun at you, raising your hands to signal cooperation is the only smart move given the awful possibilities.

So imagine Kaleb Miller's shock when the first blow from the butt of the gun crashed against the back of his skull. Imagine how long it would take for your knees to buckle under repeated blows like that.

Mr. Miller quickly dropped to the ground, his brain a jumble of fast-moving images and pain. He was experiencing the most elemental of terrors as he faced the pavement because he probably didn't know whether he would wake up from that nightmare and live another day.

Then came another blow and the sound of a gun discharging, followed by a piercing, burning pain in Mr. Miller's hand. That's when he knew it wasn't a dream. He had been shot.

Writhing in pain, Mr. Miller was probably glad to see the arrival of two uniformed police officers. They had been working a detail at the Town Tavern. They got to the scene as soon as Cassandra Abel, the officer's wife, told them a cop had been assaulted.

Officer Abel told his colleagues that before his encounter with Mr. Miller, he had been slugged by one of two unknown assailants as he sat in his car.

The two men fled into the night, according to the officer. He drove around searching for them. For reasons unknown, the two-tour veteran of Iraq fixated on Mr. Miller, whose clothing did not match that of the assailants, police say.

You can imagine the scene down at police headquarters: Officer Abel trying to make his colleagues understand that the shooting of an innocent man was an accident and the pistol-whipping he administered to the victim before shooting him, well, was unfortunate, but understandable in all the confusion. And it wasn't a racial thing, either: Both Officer Abel and the victim are white.

Officer Abel's blood alcohol level was 0.111, well above the state's DUI threshold. He was arrested for aggravated assault and drunken driving. After he was booked, he was released on his own recognizance.

At a hastily called news conference on Sunday, Pittsburgh Police Chief Nate Harper announced that Mr. Abel had been removed from duty without pay pending a thorough investigation. "The gentleman who was in the physical altercation [with the officer] is an innocent victim as far as we can tell," the taciturn chief said. "He was just walking."

Kaleb Miller was admitted to UPMC and treated for his wounds. He's in stable condition.

Meanwhile, Mr. Abel will have an opportunity to tell his version of the story during a preliminary hearing on July 8. A news story today brings in new details about the officer's less-than-stellar record. Between now and then, he can think about how much using violence against an innocent civilian will cost him and his family for years to come.

First Published: July 1, 2008, 4:00 a.m.

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