I was working in the newsroom on Monday afternoon when I saw a message in my friends’ chat group: “All kids to the nearest house NOW.” A man had been shot on Brookline Boulevard and the shooter had fled into the neighborhood, where my kids and my friends’ kids were scattered on a perfect spring day.

Eventually everyone was sorted into a home, as news and speculation spread across social media. A confrontation between two teens and a man in front of the coffee shop. Characters with known drug involvement. Three shots. Man down. Boys fled. Off-duty EMS on the scene. Victim seriously hurt but alive.

True but incomplete

I know all the platitudes: My neighborhood is comparatively very safe. Drugs are in every community. So are guns. This kind of one-off violence can happen anywhere.

They’re all true. But they’re also incomplete, and don’t make anyone feel better. People in Brookline, and elsewhere in the city, feel a growing sense that public authority is receding. As authority moves out, confusion and, worse, a sense of impunity rush in.

This spasm of violence came at a particularly bad time for Brookline. In recent weeks, concerns about disorder on the Boulevard have nearly boiled over into vigilantism, with some suggesting a civilian corps to set the rowdy teens straight.

We’ve had two community meetings this month addressing public safety. Councilman Anthony Coghill hosted the first, and the second, just seven days before the gunshots, featured Mayor Ed Gainey.

I attended both, and to be honest I didn’t come away feeling like my neighborhood was falling apart at the seams. But I also didn’t come away feeling like anybody really understood how to handle mild teenage mayhem — and specifically how to keep it from spiraling into worse violence — or how to respond to residents’ concerns. 

For instance, at the first meeting city officials touted a new “public safety ambassador” program. A pair of uniformed civilians would walk the Boulevard, keeping an eye on things and serving as a hotline to services, including armed officers. The murmurs in the room were unmistakable: “What would these people actually do?”

Eventually, a child spoke up. He was a student at Carmalt PreK-8, which had recently undergone a frightening lockdown when a stranger was found in the building.

He explained that when the police entered the school, he felt so much better. Maybe, he suggested, the grown-ups would also feel better if they saw police in their community.

It was the smartest thing said in either public safety meeting.

The new beat cop

And it bore fruit. After the meeting, the zone commander told Mr. Coghill the Boulevard could expect an officer walking the beat during the afternoon, when the rowdiness was at its peak.

I saw the beat cop a few times in the following weeks, and that little boy was absolutely right. Even though I’d never had the bad experiences on the street others have described, seeing our cop made me feel like the city was invested in the safety of our community. It was trying to stop bad things from happening, rather than swooping in five or 15 minutes after they’ve happened.

Then, gunshots. Broad daylight. People everywhere. Right at the coffee shop that serves as my second office, where we let our kids meet their friends, where the community gathers.

I’ve tried to find out if the beat cop was working that day, and haven’t yet succeeded. What I have discovered is this: The Brookline Boulevard afternoon beat was an overtime detail, and was only filled if an officer signed up for it. With a police force facing an unprecedented staffing crisis, that was the best they could do.

In other words, a single cop walking one of the most extensive main streets in the city for a few afternoon hours is a stretch for today’s Pittsburgh Police.

Sure, by the numbers, Brookline is safe. Pittsburgh as a whole, for that matter, is comparatively safe.

But no data can explain away the growing unease in my community and around the city. It’s not just chaotic teenagers, who have kicked up trouble since human civilization began.

Bad habits into gunshots

It’s chaos that no one seems to have the understanding or the ability to rein in — not parents, either absent or disinterested or overwhelmed, and not the police, because there’s simply not enough of them.

That means there’s no visible, competent authority to maintain order and to impose consequences for bad actions. So bad habits form, based on the morally corrosive but psychologically thrilling experience of impunity. Then one day, seemingly low-level disorder flares into shots fired. And no one knows when it might happen again.

I’m going to keep going to my coffee shop. The very evening after the shooting, we sent our son for his first karate class on the Boulevard.

But the next day, my eldest daughter wanted to visit her favorite place: the wilds beyond Brookline’s parks. There was a rumor, though, that “the assassin” (as she dramatically put it) had been last seen near the woods. So she stayed home.

Brookline is safe. I know it is. But without more visible authority — without more cops — it’ll be harder and harder to convince others. And, eventually, myself.

Brandon McGinley’s previous column was “Despite Gainey's bluster, the nonprofits aren't chipping in. Here's how they could.”

First Published: March 21, 2025, 3:28 p.m.
Updated: March 21, 2025, 4:05 p.m.