A jury on Wednesday found that several Pittsburgh police officers used excessive force when they fought with and arrested a member of the Pagans motorcycle club during a 2018 bar brawl on the city’s South Side.
The jurors — five women and two men — awarded Frank DeLuca $70,000 in punitive damages, finding that his arrest more than six years ago amounted to malicious prosecution, and that two of the three officers named in his lawsuit used excessive force.
“I was happy with everything except the amounts,” James DePasquale, Mr. DeLuca’s attorney, said after the verdict.
He said the city of Pittsburgh offered to settle Mr. DeLuca’s lawsuit earlier this month, first for $400,000 and later $500,000 over two years. He said his client “instructed me to turn that down.”
“He just wanted to go to trial,” Mr. DePasquale said. “He didn’t care about the money. I cared about the money.”
Jurors deliberated for about three hours.
The lawsuit stemmed from an Oct. 12, 2018, bar brawl that stemmed from an argument between four undercover narcotics detectives and four Pagans, including Mr. DeLuca, at Kopy’s bar on South 12th Street. The officers involved were: Detectives David Honick, Brian Burgunder, David Lincoln and Brian Martin. Detective Martin was not named in Mr. DeLuca’s lawsuit.
The city settled lawsuits brought by the three other men ahead of the trial, which began Monday.
While the jury found that Detectives Honick and Lincoln used excessive force against Mr. DeLuca, they awarded only nominal damages in terms of compensation for lost wages and medical bills. Nominal damages are awarded when a jury believes a plaintiff’s rights were violated but that no real monetary harm was suffered.
In this case, the jurors awarded nominal damages of $3 — one dollar for each officer. T
In terms of punitive damages — money awarded to Mr. DeLuca to punish the officers — the jury ordered Detectives Honick and Lincoln to pay $20,000 each and Detective Burgunder to pay $30,000. Those damages are covered by the city.
“I was socially profiled by dirty cops. They’ve been getting away with it for years,” Mr. DeLuca said. “Now anyone can see that they’re dirty.”
Attorneys for the three officers declined to comment after the verdict was read.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon dismissed Mr. DeLuca’s claims against the city, which took aim at the fact the city had no policy prohibiting undercover officers from drinking to excess while on duty. The city, Mr. DePasquale argued, should have known that such a policy was necessary.
The judge dismissed that claim at the request of the officers’ attorneys after former Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich testified Tuesday that he knew of no other incidents involving undercover officers drinking to excess. Judge Bissoon said that because there were no prior incidents, the city couldn’t have known such a policy would be necessary.
Video footage from inside Kopy’s showed the officers drinking for hours before the Pagans arrived at the bar late on Oct. 11, 2018. The footage showed the men consuming what appeared to be copious amounts of alcohol: Detective Honick around 20 shots of Jack Daniels, Detective Burgunder around 17 vodka sodas in pint glasses, a shot, and a beer and Detective Lincoln about six liquor drinks and a beer.
“Outrageous — it is outrageous that those four police officers got so drunk using taxpayer money and then, like they were a gang, looked for a fight with people minding their own business,” Mr. DePasquale said in his closing arguments to the jury Wednesday morning.
Mr. DeLuca and the three other Pagans — Michael Zokaites, Bruce Thomas and Erik Heitzenrater — were arrested in the aftermath of the fight that Mr. DeLuca contended the undercover officers started when they began arguing and jawing with the Pagans. The brawl broke out when Mr. DeLuca pushed Detective Honick — just as uniformed officers, responding to calls from the undercover officers, walked into the bar.
The Pagans were charged with five counts of aggravated assault on police officers, conspiracy, and riot. The affidavit of probable cause was signed by Detective Burgunder. All charges were later dropped.
Attorneys for the officers stressed to jurors that the hour leading up to the brawl doesn’t matter. The only actions in question are those that came after Mr. DeLuca shoved the detective. That the officers were drinking, attorneys said, doesn’t matter.
“This case is about those two minutes [after the shove] and, for Detective Honick, 10 seconds,” said Michael Comber, Detective Honick’s attorney. He said his client’s actions — a few attempted strikes to Mr. DeLuca’s head of the course of a few seconds — were minimal and, given the circumstances, reasonable.
Albert Veverka, attorney for Detective Lincoln, said the force couldn’t be excessive because it wasn’t even effective — Mr. DeLuca, he alleged, continued to resist arrest for several minutes after he was hit by Detective Lincoln. Mr. DeLuca previously testified he did not know the plainclothes men were police officers; rather, he said, he believed he was “fighting for [his] life.”
First Published: January 15, 2025, 7:57 p.m.
Updated: January 16, 2025, 5:31 p.m.