Support truly
independent journalism
A wild bar brawl in Pittsburgh between undercover cops and members of the Pagans Motorcycle Club in 2018 will finally be reviewed in court now that a civil suit brought by the bikers has been approved by a federal judge.
The Pagans are accusing the police of excessive force, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution after a confrontation in a bar suddenly degenerated into violence – allegedly caused by police officers who had been drinking for hours.
“We’re ecstatic. We cannot wait to bring this case to trial. I think that if people pay attention that they will be enlightened during the course of the trial,” Marty Dietz, an attorney representing the Plaintiffs, told WPXI.
The city wanted the lawsuit shut down, and argued for its dismissal. However, surveillance footage that captured the brawl convinced a federal judge that the bikers had a point.
In the video, a member of the Pagans, Frank Deluca, can be seen arguing with one of the police officers. Words are exchanged — there is no audio — and Deluca pushes the undercover officer. The other three cops leap into the fray, and hold Deluca against the bar while another man repeatedly beats him and punches him in the face.
Deluca was punched 26 times in the two minute fight and suffered facial and cranial trauma as well as a dislocated elbow. He was then arrested. A month after the fight, the Allegheny District Attorney's Office announced it was dropping its charges against the Pagans, citing new evidence — the bar's surveillance footage.
According to the court documents, earlier in the evening four undercover Pittsburgh police officers — Detectives David Honick, Brian Burgunder, David Lincoln and Brian Martin — were drinking at Kopy's Bar on the city's South Side while conducting surveillance on a suspected drug dealer.
After the target of their investigation left, the officers began pounding drinks; one officer had 15 doubles of liquor, and the other three had 20, 15, and nine drinks, respectively, according to the lawsuit.
“When they determined that the subject was not going to return to the bar because he had left, the officers should have just gotten up and left. They didn’t,” Beth Pittinger of the Pittsburgh Citizens Police Review Board told WESA. “They were preparing to leave, but the members of the Pagans motorcycle club walked in, so they decided to stay.”
According to the lawsuit, the cops and the bikers were initially getting along well, and one of the officers even bought shots for two of the bikers.
At some point during the evening, the officers began to suspect that their cover had been blown, which allegedly put them all on edge. According to Pittinger, it is unclear why the officers came to that belief.
“There was an assumption made that one of the patrons had — or I don't even know if this is accurate ... it's still a bit elusive to me — that a patron had disclosed to the Pagans that the four detectives were actually police officers,” she said.
One alleged explanation is very simple – Detective Martin telling everyone they were police officers.
According to both the testimony of those involved in the brawl and a criminal complaint filed after the fight, Martins revealed that he and his companions were police. A report from the Pittsburgh Citizens Police Review Board released in 2021 theorized that Martin may have been trying to deescalate a conflict between the bikers and the police by telling the men they were actually law enforcement.
Martin is not named as a defendant in the civil suit.
Either way, the tensions between the two groups boiled over and ended with Deluca bruised and bloodied at the hands of drunken undercover police officers.
“It’s unequivocal that these officers were on duty and it’s unequivocal that they drank obscene amounts of alcohol for somebody that’s working on duty,” Dietz told WPXI.
Dietz said that city's lack of guidelines regarding undercover police alcohol consumption will be a major issue at the trial.
No start date has been set.
