PITTSBURGH — Wednesday night, Jim Rogers’ family’s attorney, Todd Hollis, held a public showing of nearly an hour of police body and dash camera video of Rogers’ October 2021 arrest.
Channel 11 first reported on this video Monday when Hollis initially released it to the public.
“We cannot expect to have transparency in secrecy. We can’t have real change while just the policymakers, the so-called important people, are making those decisions in closed corners,” Hollis said. “For that reason and that reason alone, it was important to me to release the video to everybody.”
The video shows Rogers being tased by Pittsburgh Police Officer Keith Edmonds several times.
Rogers asked to go to the hospital, asked for help, said he couldn’t breathe, or said he needed air 15 times over 31 minutes.
He was not checked out by medics on scene, and it took 40 minutes from the time he first asked for medical attention for police to get him to Mercy Hospital.
“Watching it is so painful but the only way that we can get to a place where we can correct our mistakes is by facing the hard truth, and that’s essentially where we are,” Hollis said.
Some of Rogers’ family was in attendance Wednesday. It was the first time Rogers’ uncle, Billy Joe Jordan, watched the full video.
“That hurt, man, that was hard. I can’t probably sleep tonight because that was hard. I could not take it, watching that. I couldn’t take it, I really couldn’t,” Jordan said.
Jordan hopes the video becoming public will encourage District Attorney Stephen Zappala to take a fresh look at potentially filing criminal charges against the officers involved.
“Somebody should be indicted, one or two, at least three people, if not more. It should be some indictments. What the charge should be, manslaughter, second [degree], whatever, somebody should be charged for that,” Jordan said.
Three of the four officers fired after Rogers’ death have been reinstated with back pay. Edmonds is currently in arbitration, seeking his job back.
Hollis represented Rogers’ family in a lawsuit against the City that recently resulted in an $8 million settlement.
Hollis says he plans to publicly release more information connected to the case as early as Thursday.
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