City commits to further police reform
Mayor Peduto working with local organizations
Leaders from Black and police accountability organizations say they have received “concrete commitments” from Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto’s office to pursue sweeping police reform.
At a news conference Monday, Tim Stevens, chairman and CEO of the Black Political Empowerment Project, shared a letter from Mr. Peduto dated Oct. 9 that addressed 20 points of concern outlined to the mayor in July.
B-PEP created the list in partnership with the NAACP’s Pittsburgh branch, the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh and the city Citizen Police Review Board.
“This has been a long time coming,” Mr. Stevens said. “It is our hope that these announcements of agreed upon police reform will — as we end this tumultuous year of 2020 — provide some sense of hope for the citizens of Pittsburgh.”
Some of the recommendations agreed to by the mayor included:
• Increasing recruitment of a diverse set of officers.
• Studying and possibly doing away with the 60-hour college credit requirement for new officers.
• Building relationships between police and young people and adults in neighborhoods.
• Implementing policies and procedures to eliminate bias among officers.
Eliminating processes that inhibit the bureau’s ability to hire Black officers.
Improving the oral panel process that leads to hiring, including adding residents to the panel.
“Hopefully with the work that we’ve done, we will begin to build a new future so that kids aren’t afraid of the police, the police aren’t afraid of the kids, and people are treated with respect,” Mr. Stevens said.
Some of the changes already have been made, said Beth Pittinger, executive director of the Citizen Police Review Board.
As an example, she said, the city has ended “hot spot predictive policing.” That involved an algorithm created by Carnegie Mellon University to predict areas of the city that could have high criminal activity. The city discontinued the practice in the summer, citing the potential for racial bias.
Ms. Pittinger also said the city now requires an annual report from the Office of Municipal Investigations, which looks into citizen complaints of alleged misconduct by city employees. The investigations are conducted by fire, police and EMS personnel as well as by building inspection employees, sparking concerns that the departments investigate themselves.
One of the recommendations to the mayor’s office was to add city residents to the investigative panels.
“Over time [this annual report] is a good source of information for the public,” Ms. Pittinger said, adding that the report will also be used to centralize and regulate disciplinary actions across the police force.
“We often hear, and the public doesn’t often understand why, some officers are disciplined one way and others are not for what seems to be the same kind of offense,” Ms. Pittinger said. “This will help make it more consistent.”
Pittsburgh also has enacted a regulation requiring officers to document all pat-down searches, with justifications for the searches in incident reports, Ms. Pittinger said.
The mayor’s office, in another letter, this one dated Sunday, acknowledged the developments, saying, “There’s a baseline of efforts already underway that can and will have a difference.”
No one from the mayor’s office or the police bureau attended the news conference Monday evening.
“Of course there’s going to be some bumps and lumps to get over, but in retrospect we’re getting there, and things are going to get done,” said Richard Stewart Jr., president of the NAACP Pittsburgh Branch.
In the Sunday letter, Mr. Peduto said that he was “committed to working with B-PEP and the larger community on reimagining 21st-century policing. We will work together on new initiatives and to learn best practices from around the world.”
Mr. Stewart said he believes this means the city will to reach out to other departments nationwide to help it identify best practices that are working elsewhere.
“We are proud to announce today the progress which has already been committed to which will help bring about a new level of police reform policies and procedure for the citizens of Pittsburgh,” Mr. Stevens said.
He said the “next step is action” and actually implementing all promised reforms.