City: South Side issues escalate
Large crowds and hostile situations are becoming a “regular” problem on the South Side, city officials said hours after three people were seriously wounded in shootings on East Carson Street and an officer was assaulted early Friday.
“We are having serious problems. It doesn’t matter if the officers are there or not, there is just ongoing violence,” Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich said Friday afternoon during a news conference Downtown.
“We diverted a situation where an officer potentially could have been shot last night, or other individuals being shot with the officer’s weapon or the individual’s weapon.”
Police on Friday said a 15-yearold from Clairton has been charged as an adult with attempted homicide, aggravated assault and other offenses in connection with the South Side shootings. They declined to provide a name for the suspect, however.
Several shots were fired around 1:30 a.m. near the intersection of East Carson and South 18th streets, and the victims were found nearby — one of them was
shot in the chest, police said. A section of East Carson Street was closed for several hours and reopened by 5 a.m. Mr. Hissrich said all of the victims remain hospitalized in stable condition. He declined to say whether or not the shootings were connected or whether the shots were fired from the same gun.
In addition to the shootings, Mr. Hissrich said a police officer was assaulted while pursuing a suspect in a separate incident. He said at this time they have no indication that the officer assault and shootings are connected.
“Two officers saw a suspect punch a victim to the point that the victim was knocked unconscious,” Mr. Hissrich said. “The officers pursued the suspect and a female accomplice. A scuffle ensued and the suspect lost his weapon. [The suspect] also failed to obey the officer’s command and started reaching for the officer’s weapon. While that was occurring, the female accomplice was also punching the officer.”
City officials cautioned that this type of violence is increasing.
“This is becoming a regular event where officers are trying to de-escalate the situation, to no avail,” Mr. Hissrich said.
He said he arrived as officers tried to secure the scene while asking people to leave. Dozens of police officers were present on the South Side on Thursday night, most of whom were in uniform, officials said.
Mr. Hissrich said the problem is not with the amount of manpower. He said police could dispatch between 30 and 40 additional officers and they would still have the same issues with violence and the verbal abuse toward law enforcement.
He said he could “not repeat” the language used toward officers by civilians.
“It’s almost like certain individuals want to escalate the situation and pick a fight with the officers,” Mr. Hissrich said. “The officers, in one case, told an individual ‘you’re going to be arrested,’ and the person responded back, ‘go ahead and arrest me.’ ”
Officials said the investigation into the South Side shootings is ongoing. The 15year-old teen was one of four people detained early Friday.
“We’re still reviewing a lot of the video, and we still have some suspects out there,” Mr. Hissrich said. “Something triggered the shootings, and we have to find out what triggered it, then we’ll go from there. I will say there were two bullet holes in the window of PNC Bank. There were construction workers in that bank, and they came very close to getting shot. They had nothing to do with the entertainment, they were in there trying to remodel the bank, and next thing you know, they had bullets coming at them. They would have been totally innocent victims here, so we should be thankful for that as well.”
Mr. Hissrich said there are typically dozens more police officers on the South Side during the weekends than throughout the week. Thursday night, he said, all six police zones responded to the South Side when they learned shots were fired. Police officers assigned to the South Side during the week typically have “normal patrols,” he said.
“But when shots are fired and you have potential officers injured, we basically emptied out the city to respond,” Mr. Hissrich added.
Surveillance was “beneficial” to police early Friday, Mr. Hissrich noted, adding that police are limited in the number of cameras they can have in the city, so they have to move cameras from one part of the city to another. Additional cameras will be moved into the South Side, and more light towers also will be added as early as Friday night, he said.
‘Nearly impassable sidewalks’
In recent months, city police have expressed concern for an increased volume of people on the South Side with “nearly impassable sidewalks, pedestrians flowing into the road amid traffic, and parked vehicles blocking safety lanes.” Authorities also noted a spike in fistfights, pedestrians being hit by vehicles and gun violence.
According to Deputy Director of Community Affairs Shatara Murphy, the problems are “on the street” as South Side businesses have expressed their willingness to work with law enforcement.
“We are trying to do our best in identifying weapons that people should not have and confiscating them, but that’s a process,” Ms. Murphy said during Friday’s news conference. “We’re urging [people] to just care about each other a little more.
“This isn’t worth your life; this isn’t worth making that bad decision. And if not, unfortunately you will have law enforcement to deal with. This is not a situation that we want to enforce our way out of. We don’t want someone to come to South Side and on every block you have 10 officers. That’s not fun, and in optics, that doesn’t look that great and it [would] look like South Side is a dangerous place, and it’s not.”
Public safety officials earlier this month, in response to an increased volume of people blocking sidewalks and passageways on the South Side, said they would be handing out warnings and citations. Violators could be subject to physical arrests and citations could carry penalties of up to $300, plus court costs, police said.
Mr. Hissrich said Pittsburgh Public Safety has been working with PennDOT, state Sen. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, City Council, the city Public Works Department and the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure with the hopes of changing the traffic pattern on East Carson Street.
“It’s not locked in stone yet, but we’ll finalize it next week,” Mr. Hissrich said. “The idea is to try to limit some of the vehicle traffic on Carson Street to allow more space for emergency vehicles and pedestrians off of the sidewalk. The sidewalk is only 3 feet across. It becomes a gridlock situation when pedestrians start to filter into traffic.”
Mr. Hissrich said they are considering having traffic flow across the Hot Metal Bridge, the Birmingham Bridge, and the 10th Street Bridge. It would be too soon to implement it this weekend, he said.