Mayor says police must track cases of domestic violence by city officers
Pittsburgh police are not tracking allegations of officerinvolved domestic violence in the manner required by city law, more than a decade after city officials reformed the way such allegations were handled.
The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police is required to keep two electronic databases that detail officer-involved domestic violence incidents and protection-from-abuse orders, according to a policy passed into city law in 2007 as part of a wider reform of the bureau’s reporting system.
But following inquiries from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the wake of a recent case involving an officer charged in a domestic dispute, city officials said last week that no such databases exist. Mayor Bill Peduto on Monday ordered the police department to create the electronic databases by theend of the week.
“There is zero tolerance for domestic violence in the police bureau and all city regulations regarding it must be fully implemented, including those on
electronic databases,” spokesman Timothy McNulty said. “While Mayor Peduto is confident the police bureau is tracking all domestic violence cases among officers, he has ordered the bureau to address this matter immediately.”
In a response to an openrecords request and appeal filed with the state Office of Open Records by the PostGazette, Deputy Chief Thomas Stangrecki said in a letter dated Wednesday that he could not find any electronic databases and could locate only a printed Excel file that waslast updated in 2014.
That file included a short description of the type of offense, status of the investigation, names of the involved officers and the bureau’s efforts to monitor the involved officers’ behavior, Deputy Chief Stangrecki wrote in an affidavit.
The bureau is supposed to track much more in its electronic databases, including names of “protected persons,” addresses of residences, disposition of cases, any court-ordered restrictions on firearms and other information.
Mr. McNulty said the creation of the Office of Professional Standards within the police bureau in 2015 changed the way the bureau tracked officer-related incidents and “likely led to the lack of updates in the 2014 spreadsheet.”
“There are computer drives containing domestic violence documentation on officers that was never transferred to OPS after its creation, ”Mr. McNulty said.
Despite failing to maintain the electronic databases, the bureau does keep track of officer-involved domestic violence cases and protection-from-abuse orders through the Office of Municipal Investigations, Deputy Chief Stangrecki wrote.
The Office of Municipal Investigations looks into every allegation of domestic violence involving police officers and creates paper reports that are put in the officers’ personnel files, Deputy Chief Stangrecki wrote. All paper files will be immediately entered into the bureau’s computer system, Mr. McNulty said Monday, and the bureau will create a new spreadsheet to track the cases.
OMI does not keep a database of officer-involved domestic violence incidents, manager Erin Bruni wrote in an affidavit. It does, however, have the ability to electronically search OMI cases for all city employees by the employees’ names, allegation, investigator, case status and overdue cases, she wrote. Those could include domesticviolence incidents.
The Post-Gazette’s appeal with the open-records office remains pending.
The bureau also does hold quarterly meetings of the Domestic Violence Review Board, which was also created in the 2007 legislation, to review abuse allegations involving police officers, said Shirl Regan, president and CEO of the Women’s Center & Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh.
The board includes Ms. Regan, a city-contracted psychologist, the director of Personnel and Civil Service, a police commander, three assistant chiefs, Deputy Chief Stangrecki and Director of Public Safety Wendell Hissrich.
Ms. Regan said the group reviews a stack of cases. There are typically eight to 10 names on the list at each meeting, she said, although some of those names remain on the list for several meetings, and sometimes the officeris the victim in the case.
The board exists to make recommendations to the police chief about training, policy, discipline and safety regarding officer-involved domestic violence, according to city law.
“A police officer is required to uphold the law, and domestic violence is a crime,”Ms. Regan said. “And so we need to make sure that thosewhose job it is to uphold the law are also following the lawin their own life.”
Ms. Regan, who helped push the 2007 legislation into law following the promotions of three officers accused of domestic violence, feels the bureau is concerned about the issue.
“I would say the command staff, the people in the room meeting, take this seriously,” she said. “It’s not like they have brushed it aside. That is one of the things that everybody was afraid of, because it’s not talked about very much.”
She supposes that the failure to keep the electronic databases is more of an oversight than a deliberate attempt by police to ignore bureaupolicy and city law.
Elizabeth Pittinger, executive director of Pittsburgh’s Citizen Police ReviewBoard, said Monday that the failure to keep the electronic databases is “unfortunate.”
“I don’t think there is some effort to go back to pretend that domestic violence doesn’t happen with our cops,” she said. “I just think it’s sloppy inattention, and it just fell through the cracks.”
The databases would allowthe bureau to track the total number of cases over time and monitor their outcomes, as well as provide aggregate informationto the public.
“They can’t give names, but they could tell us that in the last quarter they reviewed so many cases involving officer-involved domestic violence,” Ms. Pittinger said. “Thatthey can do.”
In 2017, Pittsburgh police officers were involved in four domestic disputes — one in which the officer was an assault victim, two of which involved verbal arguments and one involving an officer’s arrest, Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Alicia George said.
This year, she added, there have not been any officer-involved domestic incidents.