Pittsburgh police commander takes over as Ross Twp. chief
Cristyn Zett, a wellknown commander in the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, will become the first woman to lead the Ross Township police department when she is officially sworn in Tuesday night.
“I think that it has been a long time coming to see women take more prominent roles in law enforcement, especially in southwestern Pennsylvania,” Chief Zett said in a short media briefing Tuesday afternoon.
Longtime Ross Chief Joseph Ley is retiring, according to township leaders.
Chief Zett started with the Pittsburgh police just shy of 23 years ago, and she was promoted to sergeant in 2010. She has led the Zone 6 station in the city’s West End since 2019. Before that, she oversaw Zone 2 operations, which included Downtown, the Hill District and the Strip District.
She said the deaths of fellow officers in the region and across the country were formative moments in her career that drove her to work on new ways to support officers and their mental health, and now felt like the right time to move on from the city.
“They do a pretty good job with a lot of that,” she said. “It was time to move on to somewhere where I have skills that will be needed. Pittsburgh has a lot of really great people who will pick up that slack.”
Ross Commissioner Dan DeMarco said pointed to Chief Zett’s “impeccable background in law enforcement” and said the decision to bring her in to lead the department was unanimous.
Chief Zett said the fact that she will be the first woman to lead the department is not lost on her, and she noted that a friend’s young daughter planned to attend her swearing-in ceremony “because she wants to see a female chief get sworn in.”
“It’s a very difficult job for women to do based on traditional roles and the ways that we expect people to behave, and so we lose a lot of female officers who are amazing to taking care of families, to pressure to be more and be everything,” she said. “I came from a department that was very supportive of female officers, so those were things that allowed me to succeed in places where some other people have not.
“I’m looking forward to setting an example that you can have two kids and a husband and a social life and still be a police officer and even be a leading officer in an agency,” she said.
Chief Zett takes over a department that has been in tumult for several years.
In early 2022, the union representing Ross officers voted they had no confidence in Chief Ley due in part to his handling of complaints against an officer.
Union representatives said at the time that a sergeant mishandled explicit video of a minor during an investigation. A letter from the township police executive board to township commissioners alleged the sergeant had the video on his personal cellphone and was laughing and joking about it and showing it to other officers.
Another sergeant made a complaint with his shift supervisor, who ran it up the chain of command to Chief Ley, who officers said “attempted to minimize” the incident and “took an adversarial approach” toward the reporting officer.
It was the second no-confidence taken against Chief Ley. The first came in fall of 2020.
Conflicts had been brewing for years, with commissioners meeting multiple times with department and union leadership to try to resolve conflicts between police brass and the rank and file. Ronald Smeal, a police management consultant, was hired in November 2020 to try to sort out the issues within the department.
His report, released by the township only after it was ordered to do so, found myriad communication issues, outdated training and education requirements and a “definite split” between sergeants and the lieutenants and chief. Mr. Smeal also managed the search for a new chief.
Commissioners also restructured the department, adding a new position between the chief and the lieutenants: deputy chief. Detective Sgt. Brian Kohlhepp, a 20-year veteran of the department, was promoted to the newly created position.
Chief Zett’s departure comes as the city police department, too, finds itself in choppy waters.
The number of sworn officers has dipped to around 830, about 8% shy of a full complement of 900. One recruit class is set to start this spring, though police officials said recently there are only three or four rec r u i t s in that class. Another academy class for new recruits will begin later this year, but those officers will not be on the streets until 2024.
The bureau also remains without a chief. Former Chief Scott Schubert retired in July, with deputy chief Thomas Stangrecki named acting chief at that time. City officials contracted with Public Sector Search and Consulting to assist in the search for a chief, with the initial hope being that a chief would be in place by the end of 2022.
Officials said last week the job has not yet been posted.