If you require the use of a car to drive yourself to your car, you’ve undoubtedly had a good night. But if the car you wish to use is full of the police officers to whom it belongs and you seem to neither notice nor care, you’ve had your good night and possibly a decent share of somebody else’s and probably should’ve called it one a few hours ago.
According to the police report, three Pittsburgh officers were sitting in the car just after 2 a.m. in front of Club Xtaza on Smallman Street in the Strip District, where a 2,500-person after party for Friday night’s Wiz Khalifa concert was taking place.
The officer sitting in the driver’s seat had stepped out of the car to make a phone call while Officer Garrett Spory, sitting in the passenger seat, “was observing a crowd of five to six people in front of our vehicle who had clearly noticed our undercover vehicle.”
A woman in the group, identified as Ria Buford, 32, of Highland Park, walked over and sat down in the driver’s seat of the car. Officer Spory tried to push her out, yelling “Pittsburgh police, get out of the vehicle now! You’re under arrest!”
Ms. Buford informed the officers that she would be taking the car to drive it to her car, at which point the officer in the backseat also started to yell at her to get out of the vehicle.
“We were both terrified that she was going to attempt to drive away with both of us in the vehicle,” Officer Spory wrote the complaint.
Officer Spory got out of the car and ran around to the driver’s side to try to pull Ms. Buford out of the vehicle. A man identified only as John Doe grabbed the officer’s shirt and yelled not to touch Ms. Buford.
For his trouble, Mr. Doe got a tackling and a couple of good knee strikes to the back before his inevitable arresting.
He was charged with public drunkenness, aggravated assault and resisting arrest.
Buford was charged with public drunkenness also, as well as counts of robbery of a motor vehicle and disorderly conduct.