From [HERE] A Pittsburgh woman testified that three white plainclothes police officers did not ask whether she knew a young black man or whether he had permission to be on her property the night the man claims he was wrongly arrested and beaten by the officers. Monica Wooding's testimony came Tuesday in the federal civil rights trial of a lawsuit against the officers by 20-year-old Jordan Miles.

"I wasn't asked that," Wooding testified, explaining she knew Miles and his family well.

One of the officers had previously testified at a hearing on Miles' criminal charges that police held a flashlight up to Miles' face that night before Wooding denied knowing him or giving him permission to be on her property.

But Wooding said she's sure that never happened because a police wagon — which she learned days later held Miles — was driving away by the time she opened her upstairs bedroom window to ask police about the commotion in her front yard.

Miles was arrested Jan. 12, 2010, on charges of assaulting police officers, loitering and prowling at night, resisting arrest and escape because the officers claim he fought with them — elbowing one in the head and kicking another in the knee — and tried to get away when they approached him in an unmarked car about 11 p.m.

The officers contend they stopped only because it appeared Miles was prowling near Wooding's home and had positioned his body as though he were hiding a bulging coat pocket that made them concerned that he had a gun.

A city judge threw out the criminal charges against Miles when Wooding testified at a preliminary hearing in March 2010 that police never asked her if she knew Miles, or whether he had permission to be on or near her property — even though police swore in a criminal complaint they had asked Wooding those questions that night.

She repeated that version Tuesday, bolstering Miles' claims that police had no reason to stop him and have allegedly made up the story about the soda bottle to justify his beating. Miles contends officers Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak, rousted him merely because he was a young black man in a high-crime neighborhood and contends he struggled with the officers only because they didn't identify themselves as such and he believed he was being robbed.

Earlier Tuesday, Pittsburgh police Chief Nate Harper testified the officers didn't do anything wrong when they threw away the Mountain Dew bottle they claim Miles had in his coat pocket.

Miles' attorney, J. Kerrington Lewis, was frustrated because Harper's testimony was less critical than a sworn deposition Harper gave last year in which Harper said the officers were wrong not to retain the soda bottle as evidence.

Miles' claims he wasn't prowling but was walking in the street because of the icy sidewalks and talking on his cellphone on his way to his grandmother's, where he'd planned to spend the night.

Miles said a car abruptly stopped near him and three men got out, yelling, "Where's your drugs? Where's your money?" then attacked him.

At one point, defense attorney James Wymard objected to a question about Miles reaching for the soda bottle, when police still believed it might be a gun, after Lewis referred to the police version of events as a "fairy tale."

That prompted U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster to rephrase the question and ask Harper if he had ever heard of somebody "who, while they were being arrested, said 'I sure could use a cold drink right now'''?

Harper said no.