PITTSBURGH - Arrested 911 employees in Greene County will get to advance their claims in court against a police department that didn't even fill up two pages in its own defense.
Pittsburgh federal judge Christy Criswell Wiegand on Jan. 29 denied the Greene County Regional Police Department's motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Gregory Leathers and Robert Rhodes, who were arrested over their response to search warrants at the 911 call center.
It was alleged a 911 employee failed to dispatch an ambulance to the home of a dying woman, leading to an investigation the two plaintiffs claim was motivated by a political battle between former district attorney David Russo and Greene County's commissioners, who oversee the call center.
Russo was overzealous in trying to prove the commissioners were not properly managing county offices, the plaintiffs claimed, and they got caught in the middle. Russo and his chief detective, Zachary Sams, were eventually criminally charged with using their power to target political enemies.
Allegations presented to a grand jury included the seizure of Stop the Bleed Kits from the 911 center pursuant to a search warrant. State Attorney General Michelle Henry said the real purpose of the seizure was to redistribute the STB kits.
They were returned to trained EMS workers after a court fight.
Sams, who was the Greene County regional police chief during the arrest of Leathers and Rhodes, is a defendant in the lawsuit, as is that entity.
Things started in July 2020, when the GCRPD investigated an employee of the 911 center for failing to send an ambulance to help a dying woman. Sams, allegedly working in concert with Russo, served two search warrants.
Leathers, Rhodes and another employee provided requested documents to Sams. Criminal charges followed against Leathers and Rhodes over their handling of the search warrants, including felony and misdemeanor counts of tampering with public records and obstruction of administrative law.
More than a year later and after Russo lost his re-election bid in November 2023, the charges were dropped.
Judge Wiegand refused the GCRPD's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which alleges Monell claims for failing to train and implement procedures regarding search warrants and criminal charges.
The GCRPD's motion is merely one-and-a-half pages, Wiegand wrote. It says a regional police department is a not an entity that can be sued but didn't include a memorandum in which it presented this argument.
The Third Circuit has found municipal police departments are not entities that can be sued but has not addressed regional police departments.
"Therefore, because the department is a regional police department serving multiple townships, it is not clear that such an entity is treated the same as a municipal police department," Wiegand wrote.
"And the department has wholly failed to meet is burden to establish that it should be treated as such and that it is immune from suit."
Greene County did win dismissal of the Monell claim against it, though the plaintiffs are allowed to rework their argument in an amended complaint.
"Here, Plaintiffs have not alleged a pattern of constitutional violations as they do not point to other individuals who suffered similar violations due to the alleged lack of training," Weigand wrote.
"And while Plaintiffs do refer to other instances involving the issuance of search warrants and the filing of criminal charges, they fail to allege that such instances were caused by the Institutional Defendants’ failure to train or were part of a pattern of constitutional violations."