Peduto: Historic moment ‘much larger than police reform’
Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto on Wednesday says he agrees with activists’ “overall theme” for a need for police reform, but this “historic moment” calls for more opportunities and responsibility beyond changing law enforcement.
The mayor commented further on his response to local Black activists’ demands following a press conference at a firehouse in
Manchester in which he and Public Safety officials unveiled a new alarm system.
Mr. Peduto answered the 12 demands from the Allegheny County Black Activist/Organizer Collective with a lengthy letter Monday in which he said he is “committed to applying a lens of racial equity to all of the initiatives we create and in all of the projects we fund” and listed initiatives, including his administration’s Office of Equity and the newly formed Office of Community Health and Safety and Community Task Force on Police Reform.
He wrote in response to several demands — including those to remove police from schools and to make collective bargaining between the city and police — the singled-out programs are not under the purview of the city, but rather of the state Legislature.
For other demands, he said city police are already following such policies, as in the case of not employing “no knock” search warrants or not communicating with U.S. immigration agents.
“The overall theme of reform within the police bureau we agree with,” he said Wednesday, adding special attention is needed on
recruitment, training and promotions. “We agree that there should be more of citizen participation and transparency. How we get to that we may have some disagreements about, but that’s what democracy is about.”
Mr. Peduto also said he sees current issues as “much larger than police reform” that will require the cooperation of not only government but the private, nonprofit and university sectors.
“What we need is equity, and equity means reinvestment into our lowest-income neighborhoods and into programs that help people, not brick-and-mortar. And I feel that we’re at a moment that we’re over the tipping point, and most people agree and want to be a part of that,” he said.
The mayor also answered questions on recent city news, including the city’s suspension of a policing algorithm program to predict “crime hot spots” and on City Councilman Ricky Burgess’ effort to legislate a referendum onto the November ballot to ask voters whether they support a strong Citizen Police Review Board.
“Back in the 1990s, I wrote the enabling legislation for the Citizens Police Review Board, so I’m very familiar with it, … its limitations and opportunities to make it even stronger,” Mr. Peduto said. “I support a strong Citizen Police Review Board. That being said, state laws preempt even a referendum from having power over anything that would be negotiated between the police or fire unions. So as long as arbitrators continue to put … provisions into contracts that allow or disallow officers’ participation with the CPRB, [no] referendum of the people can overturn that.”
Regarding the city’s decision “within the past couple of months” to halt a predictive policing algorithm program, Mr. Peduto said the city has been in discussion about the merits of the program for over a year.
The program began as a partnership between the city and Carnegie Mellon University’s Metro21 lab to use data and predictive analytics to help firefighters and building inspectors predict where dangerous structures existed, he said.
“We started to use a similar type [of] program to look at crime in the city for Pittsburgh to be able to determine where crime may occur in the future and then putting a police vehicle there or having an officer on the beat at that location,” the mayor said. “However, in studying this over the past two years, it’s become evident that a lot of information is based off of behaviors of police from years before.”
That information, “if taken wrong, can be used to make an area a victim twice — first when a crime occurs and second when [policing] oversaturation occurs,” Mr. Peduto continued. “So, until such time that we can take inequity out of the data, we’ve suspended any program that would be utilized for predicative analytics in criminal activity.”
Activists also delivered the dozen demands to the office of Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald. His office could not be reached Wednesday for comment.