On the same day Pittsburghers protested in East Liberty over the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by police in Minneapolis, the city’s mayoral candidates debated the ins and outs of police funding, disciplining officers and reviewing citizen complaints against members of the force.
The discussion revealed an incumbent mayor, Bill Peduto, who mostly stands by his record of encouraging police de-escalation tactics and better police-community relations, and three Democratic challengers who think they can direct police resources in a more effective fashion.
Asked by WESA reporter and Pittsburgh Black Media Federation board member Ariel Worthy about how the city police budget should be handled, Mr. Peduto boasted of the success the police department has had over his two terms in de-escalating situations, evidenced by the number of complaints and lawsuits against officers declining and the rate of violent crime and homicide going down as well.
“I realize that what happens all over this country, we want to just label as what’s happening here in Pittsburgh, but it’s unfair to be able to ignore the key indicators of the success the Pittsburgh Police Bureau has had,” Mr. Peduto said, claiming that before he took office, the bureau was using stop-and-frisk tactics and “jump patrols,” where officers would “jump out of vehicles and ask people what they’re doing.”
But the incumbent two-term mayor faced pointed criticism from his primary opponents, including state Rep. Ed Gainey, who asked why 63% of arrests — according to bureau statistics from 2019 — were of African Americans.
“That’s just overpolicing, and we can change that,” said Mr. Gainey, who didn’t offer specifics on how he’d handle the police budget but said it should be reflective of how the city wants to improve police-community relations.
Mr. Peduto’s challengers — Mr. Gainey, retired police officer Tony Moreno and community organizer Mike Thompson — agreed that social workers should be utilized to respond to calls, but they differed on how the city should handle officers who have a history of disciplinary complaints.
In response to the mayor insisting that state law limits municipalities on how they can deal with officers, Mr. Gainey said “you can hide” behind state law and talk about homicide numbers declining, but it doesn’t change the fact that protesters were pepper-sprayed in the park last summer. He was referring to a demonstration in Mellon Park that was part of a nationwide protest wave over police brutality.
“When we had a chance to bring the city together to talk about something that really matters, we didn’t,” Mr. Gainey said.
Mr. Peduto said he responded to last summer’s incidents by booting the old commanders who made decisions on use of force and installing new ones, as well as creating a civilian affairs division to work with protesters.
The mayor said he’s worked to have representatives from his office and from the community be involved in discussions around the necessity of escalation of force, and that “we took a position where we stood down after certain incidents unless there was a physical harm that was recognized and not a harm to a building or structure.” He touted training that the city put in place to “work with our officers to de-escalate situations.”
“In all of last year, in all of 2020, there were only two times that an officer took his weapon out and fired it, and after both times, it was after they were fired at first,” Mr. Peduto said, adding later that Pittsburgh was chosen by former President Barack Obama’s administration to experiment with implicit-bias training, which has “proven successful.”
Mr. Moreno, asked by WESA reporter Chris Potter if taking police officers out of the public light — as he previously suggested — was enough considering that they’d remain on the city payroll, replied that if an officer does something “untastefully,” they should be put “in a place where they’re not in public consumption.”
“You can’t police bad manners, but you can take them out of the area where they’re committing infractions against the public. That’s the majority of the complaints that happen through the [Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board] and it’s not addressed at all,” Mr. Moreno said, adding that officers need training on how to be trauma-informed, and not just fired “because they have bad manners.”
Mr. Moreno called the independent seven-member review board, charged with investigating complaints of police misconduct, a “complete waste of money” that does “nothing positive,” and he suggested that the power be put in the hands of City Council members to investigate claims and turn over the evidence to the district attorney’s office.
Mr. Thompson, who said state law won’t be overhauled anytime soon to allow the city more control over the removal or discipline of officers, said the city should de-unionize its police force so it can fire the bad officers and so the mayor has control of the police. He also said the police need to re-evaluate emergency services and should use funding to hire social workers and mental health outreach personnel.
“They know how to de-escalate,” Mr. Thompson said of those types of workers. “They don’t see threats where there are no threats.”
Mr. Gainey made it a point to mention there was a "Facebook posting" in which "police officers from the city of Pittsburgh" talked about "how deplorable Black Lives Matter is and how deplorable" members of the LGBTQ community are.
He has referenced this in past debates and uses it to say that "we heard nothing from Downtown" — referring to the Peduto administration — in response to the postings.
In these instances, the state lawmaker appears to be referring to an Associated Press report in March that revealed the existence of a private Facebook group called the "Pittsburgh Area Police Breakroom," where officers made disparaging, racist and transphobic remarks about Black and LGBT people.
But the report cited no current Pittsburgh police officers as having posted in the group, though it does reference posts by two retired city police officers.
Mr. Gainey also cited a police officer making a disparaging post on Facebook that involved two Black girls holding guns. In this case, he appears to have been referring to Pittsburgh police Sgt. George Kristoff, whose public Facebook page included disparaging memes about Black people and police brutality protesters, according to the AP.
The AP reported that the city’s Office of Municipal Investigations reviewed the case after a complaint from the public, but a public safety spokesman said he couldn’t discuss the outcome of the investigation or whether he was employed.
“If we don’t clean that up by firing them and don’t worry about the arbitration of fighting, we can’t have a police-community relations that’s making sense,” Mr. Gainey said. It wasn't clear which officers he was referring to specifically.
Julian Routh: jrouth@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1952, Twitter @julianrouth.
First Published: April 14, 2021, 2:21 a.m.
