Special police units versus saturation patrols
Pittsburgh public safety leaders pledged in the aftermath of Tyre Nichols’ death at the hands of Memphis police officers that no unit like the one that conducted the ultimately fatal traffic stop exists in the bureau of police.
The specialized unit involved in Nichols’ death was known as Scorpion, an acronym for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods. The purpose, according to ABC News, was for the 40 officers within the unit to split into four teams to patrol “high crime hotspots” throughout the city.
“The PBP does not have a street unit like Scorpion, which operated in a capacity to target ‘hotspot’ areas,” read a joint statement Monday from Acting Police Chief Thomas Stangrecki and Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt. “Such a unit will not have a place in the policies or philosophy of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police.”
Indeed, by all accounts, the bureau does not have such a unit that focuses on street crime in specific areas, but the idea of police saturations in areas where trouble could crop up has been employed in the city for years. And last week Mayor Ed Gainey announced he was tripling the number of officers assigned to Downtown because of complaints about crime and unruly behavior.
What’s the difference between Memphis’ hot spot policing — sending police officers to aggressively patrol areas that experience a high volume of 911 calls — and the practice of saturating a socalled trouble spot with officers?
“A saturation detail is the same thing. It’s the same thing as hot spot policing,” said Beth Pittinger, executive director of the Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board, an independent board that hears and investigates complaints
against law enforcement.
Saturation patrols in Pittsburgh, she said, are especially akin to that type of hot spot policing when officers are in plainclothes and in unmarked vehicles. Such patrols were used on the city’s South Side over the summer during a spate of violence, including assaults and shootings.
“That’s what Scorpion did,” Ms. Pittinger said. “They just had a separate unit for it.”
There can be, however, more nuance to it than that, said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh School of Law professor.
“With saturation, you are putting lots of police bodies in a given area, lots of police assets, with the idea that the area is so full of police that crimes will be suppressed [and] people will be less willing to try anything,” Mr. Harris said. “Special units are different. They are set up as, well, special, with a particular set of tasks or objectives: to get guns off the street, target drugs, et cetera.”
Archival reporting contains dozens of references to saturation patrols in the city and the resulting arrests going back to at least the late 1990s and early 2000s.
More recently, in 2018, the Post-Gazette reported on “saturation patrols” the city had run on the South Side for years. The practice saw “as many as two dozen police officers in the area on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, largely to prevent violations that can include disorderly conduct, public urination and assault.”
In 2020, plainclothes officers popped out of an unmarked van during a Black Lives Matter protest march in Oakland and grabbed a protester who authorities alleged repeatedly blocked traffic, created hazardous road conditions and refused commands to stop such conduct.
The “jump-out” arrest — called a “low-visibility arrest” by Pittsburgh police at the time — sparked furious outcry in the city, with thenMayor Bill Peduto saying video of the incident made him uncomfortable. The incident ultimately sent protests to Mr. Peduto’s Point Breeze home over the course of several nights as they decried the arrest.
It was that same type of situation that led to the violent arrest of Jordan Miles, who was a teenager in 2010 when his encounter with police sparked outrage and a yearslong court saga. Mr. Miles, then 18, said he was walking to his grandmother’s Homewood home when plainclothes officers from an unmarked van violently took him into custody, leaving his face and head bloody and swollen. He said officers never identified
themselves.
The officers involved said they did identify themselves and alleged Mr. Miles fought with officers. They said they saw a bulge in his pocket they believed was a gun that turned out to be a bottle of pop. Mr. Miles has said he had nothing in his pocket. He ultimately won a $125,000 settlement from the city in 2016.
Those officers were part of an undercover unit tasked with removing illegal guns from the street.
Such units, said Mr. Harris, the Pitt law professor, are often held up as “targeting units” that take on the toughest and most dangerous assignments.
“And that makes them attractive assignments for the most aggressive officers,” he said.
The concept of hot spot policing is not necessarily the problem. In fact, it’s been shown to work, said David Weisburd, a professor at George Mason University who runs the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy.
“Crime is heavily concentrated in cities and urban areas, and in most cities, about 50% of crime is found in about 5% of the streets,” he said his research has shown. “Twenty- five percent of crime is found in about 1% of the streets.”
“Streets,” in this case, can mean just one intersection or one small section of a neighborhood. And it makes sense, he said, to send resources to those areas to try to prevent crime.
Saturating an entire neighborhood, he said, is a waste of resources and “a gigantic mistake.”
“In that situation when you flood … a larger area, a lot of places are getting a lot of police attention they don’t need,” Mr. Weisburd said. “Police attention can have a negative element to it, right? People don’t like being stopped.”
So one key to using hot spot policing in a positive and meaningful manner is to focus only on the areas that are truly problem spots. Another is to treat the people in those areas — even those who end up being arrested — with respect and decency.
In a study published last year, Mr. Weisburd studied hot spot policing in three cities: Tucson, Ariz., Houston and Cambridge, Mass. In each city, one group of officers was given an intensive five-day course in procedural justice — that is, showing community members in the areas they’re focused on that they’re listening and being fair, even when they’re arresting someone. Another group in each city carried on hot spot policing as they always had.
The results, which included surveys of the officers and residents and analyzing thousands of hours of footage of police-community interactions, showed the group that received the training treated people in a more just way.
“That means they gave them a voice. They listened to what they had to say and they explained to them what they were doing so they would know they have trustworthy motives,” he said. “They tried to show neutrality so they understand [police] weren’t picking on them because it’s a poor or disadvantaged [neighborhood] but rather because there’s a lot of crime there and they’re trying to help.”
Community members patrolled by the procedural justice-trained officers felt much more positively about their interactions with police, Mr. Weisburd said. More importantly, crime decreased — significantly.
“You might have expected that these guys who are softer, treated people better … are not going to get as much deterrence, but that’s not what we found,” he said. “What we found is that there was a 14% relative decline in crime in the [procedural justice-trained] group.”
That’s important, he said, because hot spot policing has already been shown to be effective, “but here all this treating people with respect demographic data; rather, according to a statement, it used only criminal offense data and 911 call data.
Memphis’ Scorpion unit appears to have been less algorithmic but still focused on the same types of data. Memphis Assistant Chief Sean Jones told WATN-TV when the unit launched in November 2021 that the locations unit members would focus on were determined by 911 calls for service.
Policing has been top of mind in Pittsburgh amid a rise in violence, dwindling police numbers and the search for a permanent police chief. Last month it was revealed that Chief Stangrecki told officers to resume making traffic stops for minor violations, a practice banned by a 2021 city ordinance aimed at quelling pretext stops, and some city council members briefly floated the idea of enforcing a youth curfew.
Chief Stangrecki had said low police morale was a reason for reversing course on the traffic stops, though public safety and city leaders later said it was an issue of training that forced the resumption of and dignity, that gave you minor stops. another 14% decline in Those issues now have crime at these places.” the added lens of another
He said that’s the overarching high-profile and horrific incidence lesson when it of police brutality, comes to hot spot policing. this time in Memphis.
“Every time you develop a City Councilmember special unit and send them Erika Strassburger to hot spots, you’re going to broached the topic at a have the kind of problems nearly three- hour postagenda you saw in Memphis,” he discussion Tuesday said. about the state of policing in
Mr. Weisburd conceded Pittsburgh. that the killing of Nichols is “I think about if it’s morale an extreme example of specialized that is one of the reasons hot spot policing for reinstating those certain gone wrong but said the observations minor traffic stops, especially and evidence still in light of the horrific stand. incident in Memphis with
“The idea that somehow Mr. Nichols and his murder, the harshest, most intensive, I can’t help but make a connection violent kind of policing is going in my mind between to have the most deterrence a diminished morale and a — I think that’s traffic stop gone wrong,” Ms. wrong,” he said. “I don’t Strassburger said. think there’s evidence for She continued: “I know that.” we heard again and again we
Pittsburgh has faced its don’t have a Scorpion unit own controversy over the like it existed in Memphis, employment of targeted hot we don’t have a Baltimore spot policing. The program, gun trace task force here in which began as a pilot in Pittsburgh, we don’t have 2017, was a partnership between anything like that — but the city and Carnegie what can everyone here say Mellon University. The latter to assure me that we are not developed an algorithm on a path for something like that predicted “hot spots” for that happening in Pittsburgh?” criminal activity. Police would then proactively patrol Robert Swartzwelder, a those areas. Pittsburgh police officer and
Officials touted the program president of the union representing as a data-driven approach rank and file officers, to policing but pulled told her history doesn’t the plug days after George point in that direction here. Floyd was killed by Minneapolis “If you look at our (Office police in June 2020. of Municipal Investigations) Mr. Peduto cited concerns data, there’s nothing in our about racial bias and said OMI data that supports the city would shift the focus that,” he said. of any data-driven programs “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, to deploying social services Ms. Strassburger, rather than law enforcement. but when we talk about incidents that are very horrific
Carnegie Mellon’sin law enforcement across Metro21: Smart Cities Institute the country, I prefer to stick said at the time its algorithm to incidents that occur did not use any racial, within the Pittsburgh police,” socioeconomic or other he said.
“I think about if it’s morale that is one of the reasons for reinstating those certain minor traffic stops, especially in light of the horrific incident in Memphis with Mr. Nichols and his murder, I can’t help but make a connection in my mind between a diminished morale and a traffic stop gone wrong.”
— City Councilmember Erika Strassburger