It was around midnight when Joanna Obuzor left a Halloween social gathering with her book club in 2021 and decided to pull over and take a nap because she was tired.
The 40-year-old Black woman ended up roused awake by Pittsburgh police officers who slammed her against her car and arrested her on charges of public drunkenness – despite refusing to administer a breathalyzer or blood test.
And she was further abused at the Allegheny County Jail, which has a notorious history of abuse, where corrections officers stripped her down to her bra and skirt and repeatedly tasered her, leaving severe burn marks on her back, according to Obuzor.
According to a lawsuit she filed in 2023, she was released 15 hours later with several injuries, including burn marks across her back, a sprained wrist, a torn ligament in her left elbow, a fractured right toe, and extensive bruising, not to mention the psychological, mental, and emotional distress that she is still experiencing.
According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Obuzor received a $62,500 settlement from Allegheny County last month, plus a $7,500 settlement from the city of Pittsburgh in November 2024, for a total of $70,000.
The abusive actions against her at the Allegheny County Jail were routine, given that a local news station conducted an investigation last month and discovered that it leads the state in corrections officers using Tasers against inmates, with 43 percent of Taser discharges across all 67 county jails.
According to a class-action lawsuit filed in 2020, the majority of this abuse is against Black people or people with mental health issues. Black people make up 67 percent of the inmates at the Allegheny County Jail despite accounting for only 13 percent of the county’s population.
“These dehumanizing and unlawful conditions have severe and lasting impact beyond the walls of the jail, especially in those communities most impacted by incarceration,” according to the 2020 lawsuit.
“In Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, the overwhelming brunt of the conditions of incarceration at ACJ is born by the Black community.”
One of the most horrific cases involving the Pittsburgh Police Department occurred in 2021, when a cop named Keith Edmonds tasered a homeless Black man ten times for allegedly stealing a bicycle, killing him. Edmonds was fired in 2022 and worked tirelessly to reclaim his position, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
More abuse against Black citizens by Pittsburgh police emerged last month, prompting local officials to call for accountability.
However, the department is extremely resistant to change, despite the fact that Pittsburgh’s new police chief, Cameron McLay, acknowledged and promised to change the department’s history of racism in 2015. But he resigned in 2016, clearly failing to achieve his goal.
Obuzor’s Arrest
On October 30, 2021, Obuzor, an executive for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to economic and cultural development in downtown Pittsburgh, attended a Halloween-themed party with members of her book club.
The claim stated that she ate dinner and drank three alcoholic beverages over four and a half hours before leaving around midnight.
However, on the way home, she decided she was too tired to drive and pulled over to take a nap in her car, which she had turned off.
Around 4 a.m., Pittsburgh police officers Jesse Clayton and Ross Kennedy woke her up and asked if she needed medical attention, to which she replied that she was simply tired and taking a nap.
When she couldn’t find her phone to answer the officers’ request to call someone to drive her home, she became nervous and placed both hands on the steering wheel.
“Thank you for not shooting me,” she told the cops, which irritated them, according to the claim.
“You’re one of those,” Clayton said, visibly upset that she was filing claims.
According to the lawsuit, that’s when their tone changed and they began accusing her of being drunk, ordering her out of the car to take a field sobriety test, which is only about 77 percent accurate, according to a US Department of Justice study.
Clayton then shoved her hard against her car to handcuff her and pulled her arms backward, but movement in her arms was restricted because she had been wearing a Victorian-era style corset as a costume for the Halloween party she had attended, her filing claims.
“Officer Clayton proceeded to aggressively pull Obuzor’s arms behind her back to place her in handcuffs; however, due to Obuzor’s restrictive corset, she did not have full range of her arms and had limited motion to place her arms behind her back,” according to the allegations.
“Despite notifying Officer Clayton that his attempts to pull her arms behind her back were hurting her, Officer Clayton continued to yank back Obuzor’s arms.”
“As a result of Officer Clayton’s brazen use of excessive force, Obuzor suffered a torn ligament in her left elbow and extensive bruising.”
Even after handcuffing her and placing her in the back of a patrol car to transport her to jail, the cops never explained why she was being arrested, according to her lawyers.
According to the filing, the abuse escalated after Obuzor arrived at the Allegheny County Jail.
When she entered the jail, corrections officers ordered her to face a wall and place her hands on the wall above her head, which she did. However, when she turned her head to ask the officers a question, one of her hands came off the wall due to the restriction of her movements caused by the corset.
That’s when one of the officers tackled her to the ground and repeatedly tasered her on the back. Other officers joined in and ripped off her corset, leaving her only wearing a bra and skirt.
When they lifted her to her feet, she coughed, so the guards put a spit mask over her head and placed her in a cell, partially undressed and barefoot, where she remained for five hours.
Inside the cell, she noticed her right ankle and calf swelling, indicating that her blood pressure was dangerously high, but when she pressed the call button in her cell to request medical assistance, she was threatened with additional punishment.
The guards continued to threaten and intimidate her, with one telling her, “Shut the f_ck up,” or he would “beat (her) ass” if she asked when she could see a judge.
She was released after 15 hours, and the public drunkenness charge was later dropped.
“Officer Doe 1’s use of force in tackling and tasing Obuzor, rather than attempting an alternative, lesser means of force or de-escalation technique, constitutes force that is objectively unreasonable and in violation of Obuzor’s clearly established right to be free from excessive force under the Fourteenth Amendment,” according to her complaint.
“Officer Doe 1’s use of force was disproportionate under the circumstances because Obuzor posed no threat or danger to any of the officers or any other person, and was neither actively resisting arrest nor attempting to flee,” the complaint further alleged.
