SWISSVALE, Pa. — Channel 11 started looking into a cellphone video that shows an altercation between a Swissvale police officer and an off-duty police officer after several viewers alerted us to it.
We confirmed that the man involved in the altercation is Pittsburgh police Officer Sidney Bates.
In the video, the Swissvale officer can be heard asking the man for his ID several times. The person recording the video begins to ask the officer why she needs the man's ID.
A woman was allegedly unloading groceries from the car with help from this man.
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"What did he do? He stopped in the middle of the roadway, and she was stopped in the middle of the roadway," you can hear in the video.
Several times in the video, the person recording it says the man the Swissvale officer is questioning is a Pittsburgh police officer.
We asked Pittsburgh police if the man in the video is an officer.
They told us the Pittsburgh Bureau Police command staff are aware of the video and said the issue has been referred to the Pittsburgh Office of Municipal Investigations.
OMI typically investigates Pittsburgh police officers.
Another officer arrived at the scene in the video to try and de-escalate the situation.
He explains that the female officer was headed to another call when she saw the car blocking the roadway, prompting her to ask for ID to issue a citation.
We reached out to Swissvale police for a comment, but we did not hear back.
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