Arts Community Targeted During G20 Enforcement Sweeps

Erin Carey, performing with the Zany Umbrella Circus.

On Wednesday night, Erin Carey — a 31-year-old aerialist/trapeze artist who performs with the Zany Umbrella Circus — found herself surrounded by law enforcement officers as she attempted to enter the circus’s studio space located in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Some of the officers were Pittsburgh Police, others she couldn’t identify. Carey had just parked her car in front of the Lawrenceville Corporation offices on 43rd street, and began walking toward the Zany Umbrella studio when approximately a dozen officers approached her.

“They were converging on me,” Carey says. “It felt very intimidating.”

But why were police in the area? It turns out that Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has a robotics lab — The National Robotics Engineering Center — just across the train tracks from where the Zany Umbrella studio space is located, and police were patrolling the site on a tip.

Police informed Carey the CMU lab was considered a “high-value target” and asked what she was doing in the area. She was then detained for nearly an hour while police questioned her; photographed the contents of her vehicle; and ran her vehicle plate and driver’s license. When her trapeze was spotted in the back seat of her vehicle, the commanding officer — whose name and badge number Carey forgot to request — asked if she was with the Greenpeace protesters who repelled from the West End Bridge earlier that day.

As the commanding officer continued questioning Carey, she asked, “Is there a problem officer? I work at this building and we have a space here.” According to Carey, the officer appeared agitated that she had asked why the police were interested in her. The officer then asked Carey to show them what was in her car. When she asked again if there was a problem, the officer asked if she “had something to hide,” adding that she was suspiciously parked in front of an abandoned building (i.e. the recently renovated Lawrenceville Corporation).

The commanding officer also told Carey she was suspicious because of the way she was dressed: “You aren’t exactly wearing jeans and a t-shirt.”

“What I was wearing,” Carey says, “was a tank top and leggings with a little jumper dress over it — because I was rehearsing earlier. Yeah, I didn’t have business attire on, but I don’t know why I should be targeted for that.”

After questioning Carey at length about the trapeze in the backseat of her car, police asked to see the Zany Umbrella studio “because they thought there were maybe people hiding out in our space.”

Carey briefly showed officers the studio space, and by this time another resident of the building had arrived and vouched for her story, then stayed with her for support. Carey wasn’t told what would be done with the photographs and information the police gathered — just that it would be put on file. As the police finished up with Carey, the commanding officer left her with a final warning: “If you show up at any of these [protest] events, I’ll hunt you down.”

On a related note, earlier in the week, the residence/workspace of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse Writers Collective — also located in Lawrenceville — was targeted. Full reports on that incident here and here. More to come…