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 tasered her repeatedly, leaving severe burn marks across her back, Obuzor claimed.
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, according to a lawsuit she filed in 2023, not to mention the psychological, mental and emotional distress that continues to affect her today.
Last month, Obuzor got a $62,500 settlement from Allegheny County in addition to a $7,500 settlement she received from the city of Pittsburgh in November 2024 for a total of $70,000, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
The abusive actions against her at the Allegheny County Jail were business as usual, considering an investigation by a local news station last month determined it leads the state in corrections officers using Tasers against inmates – with 43 percent of Taser discharges out all 67 county jails.
And most of this abuse is against Black people or people with mental health issues, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in 2020 that states Black people makeup 67 percent of the inmates at the Allegheny County Jail despite making up only 13 percent of the population in the county.
“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 took place in 2021 when a cop named Keith Edmonds tasered a homeless Black man 10 times who was accused of stealing a bicycle, killing him. Edmonds was fired in 2022 and tried very hard to get his job back but ultimately failed.
Last month, more abuse against Black citizens at the hands of Pittsburgh police surfaced, prompting local officials to demand accountability.
But the department is very resistant to change, considering in 2015, Pittsburgh’s new police chief, Cameron McLay, acknowledged the historical racism within the force and vowed to change it. But he resigned in 2016, obviously failing at his goal.
Obuzor’s Arrest
Obuzor, an executive for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, a nonprofit focused on economic and cultural development for downtown Pittsburgh, was attending a Halloween-themed party with members of her book club on October 30, 2021.
The claim stated she ate dinner and drank three alcoholic beverages over a four-and-a-half-hour period before leaving around midnight.
But on the way home, she decided she was too tired to drive and pulled over to take a nap inside her car, which she had turned off.
Around 4 a.m., she was awakened by Pittsburgh police officers Jesse Clayton and Ross Kennedy, who asked if she needed medical attention, and she told them she was simply tired and taking a nap.
At one point, unable to find her phone to fulfill the officers’ request to call someone to drive her home, she became nervous and placed both hands on her steering wheel.
“Thank you for not shooting me,” she told the cops, which made them mad, according to the claim.
“You’re one of those,” Clayton responded, who was visibly upset, her filing claims.
The lawsuit states that was when their tone shifted, and they began accusing her of being drunk, ordering her out of the car to do a field sobriety test, which is at most 77 percent accurate, according to a U.S. Department of Justice study.
After an eye movement test — which the officers claimed she failed — 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 asserts.
“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,” the claim states.
“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 take her to jail, the cops never informed her why she was being arrested, her lawyers wrote.
The filing describes the abuse as escalating after Obuzor arrived at the Allegheny County Jail, as detailed below:
Once inside the jail, she was ordered by corrections officers to face a wall and place her hands on the wall above her head, which she did. However, at one point, she turned her head to ask the officers a question, and because the corset she was wearing restricted her movements, one of her hands came off the wall.
That was when one of the officers tackled her to the floor and tasered her multiple times on her back. Other officers joined in and ripped her corset off, leaving her only in a bra and skirt.
As they lifted her to her feet, she coughed, so the guards placed 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 were beginning to swell, which was a sign her blood pressure was elevated to dangerous levels, but when she rang the call button in her cell to ask for medical assistance, she was threatened with further punishment.
The guards continued to threaten and intimidate her, with one guard telling her, “Shut the f_ck up,” or he would “beat (her) ass” after she asked when she would be able to see a judge.
She was eventually released after 15 hours, and the public drunkenness charge was eventually 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 lawsuit.
“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 claim also stated.
