Daniel D'Ambrosio photo

Jeff Bartos will volunteer for an anti-war group to fulfill his community service.

After six hours zip-tied in plastic cuffs with his hands behind his back, former Army medic Jeff Bartos of New Britain — arrested at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh — says he lost all feeling in his hands. But his pleas to Pittsburgh Police and Pennsylvania National Guard officers to re-cuff him fell on deaf ears.

Bartos was arrested at about 11:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 25 in Schenley Plaza near the University of Pittsburgh, where he had gone to provide medical support to protestors. It was 5:30 a.m. on Saturday, according to Bartos, before an officer with the Department of Corrections — Bartos was being held on a prison bus — changed out the cuffs for metal ones with his hands in front of him.

“It was probably the best feeling I’ve ever felt being handcuffed,” says Bartos.

A member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Bartos was a gung-ho soldier until he began wading through the carnage being inflicted on Iraqi civilians.

“Every day we stay there supposedly winning hearts and minds we’re creating enemies,” says Bartos. “You kill one person’s brother and that person is going to be angry no matter how many schools we build. We just killed his brother.”

Bartos says he and his partner were flushing out the eyes of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photographer who had been pepper-sprayed when they were caught up in a mass arrest by an overwhelming force of police in riot gear.

“They look like storm troopers right out of Star Wars,” says Bartos. “Some wear Ninja masks so all you can see is their eyes. They’re designed to intimidate.”

The Army jacket Bartos was wearing made him a target. He says a Pennsylvania National Guardsman told the driver on the prison bus that Bartos was to be the last one off after Bartos complained again about losing feeling in his hands. He was assumed to be a deserter or an impostor.

“I said ‘No, I’m a combat veteran, I have two honorable discharges,” remembers Bartos.

Once off the bus, Bartos says he was confronted by another National Guardsman and about eight other law enforcement officers.

“They stripped all the insignia off my uniform, tore it in a few places,” says Bartos, demonstrating how the patches on his jacket are attached by Velcro.

Diane Richard, spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, declined to address Bartos’s specific charges, but says police handled the protest in a “lawful manner.” She says police didn’t know what to expect, given the violence in Seattle in 1999 at a meeting of the World Trade Organization, where 50,000 protestors turned up. Police estimated there were about 5,000 protestors in Pittsburgh.

“They sustained an awful lot of damage and civil unrest [in Seattle],” says Richard. “We had our share, but our officers acted in a professional manner.”

Not according to Vic Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, who says there will be litigation arising from the actions of law enforcement in Pittsburgh.

“We’re quite sure that many of the constitutional amendments were violated, not the least of which were the First and Fourth amendments,” says Walczak.

As for Bartos, he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and failure to disperse, rather than driving three more times to Pittsburgh for court dates. He was sentenced to 50 hours of community service, which he says he’ll spend doing extra work for the nonprofit Iraq Veterans Against the War.

“I don’t know how the judge will feel about it when they get a letter from the national office,” says Bartos, “but that’s what I’m going to do.”