ALC Releases Report on Apartheid Policing in Pittsburgh, Calls for Defunding Police to pre-Peduto Levels

Select pages from the report, view or download the entire publication below.

December 15, 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Dolly Prabhu, Abolitionist Law Center, dprabhu@alcenter.org

PITTSBURGH – The Abolitionist Law Center has published a report on policing in Pittsburgh, highlighting glaring racial disparities in traffic stops, frisks, warrantless search and seizures, arrests, and use of force by the City’s police force. 

The report notes that in 2019,  Black people made up only 23.2% of the Pittsburgh population, and yet they made up 43.6% of individuals involved in traffic stops, 71.4% of all frisks, 69% of individuals subject to warrantless search and seizures, and 63% of all arrests conducted by the Pittsburgh Police. When it comes to children, the disparities were even more vast: Black children accounted for 83% of all warrantless search and seizures of individuals ages 11-18 and 100% of all warrantless search and seizures of children ages 10 and under. 

Despite these troubling numbers, Mayor Bill Peduto has increased the Police Budget 60% since taking office in 2014, from $72 million to $115 million. It now enconpasses nearly one fifth of the City’s entire operating budget. Furthermore, the year-to-year rate of increase of the police budget went up from an average of 0.75% from 2000-2014 to 8.18% from 2015-2020 under Mayor Peduto, even though violent crime levels in Pittsburgh have been steadily decreasing since the early 1990s. 

The report also stated that the peacekeeping role of police was exaggerated, and noted that only 6% of all crimes reported to the Pittsburgh Police in 2019 were violent crimes, while the vast majority of crimes reported were minor infractions like disorderly conduct, public drunkenness, and vandalism. Even in response to violent crime, police had a very low clearance rate, especially when victims were Black. 

The report concludes by condemning the City’s continued adherence to unproductive and misleading reform measures to address police brutality against Black residents: “Trotting out these tired, ineffective solutions in place of defunding is not a noble step towards change, but a manipulative attempt to feign compliance with activists’ demands while continuing to support police,” says Dolly Prabhu, staff attorney at the Abolitionist Law Center.

Instead, the report calls for an immediate $40 million cut to the City’s police budget, which would return it to just a little over what it was when Bill Peduto took office in 2014. It further demands that these funds are redirected into necessary social services, including education, housing, and health care—measures that would reduce crime more effectively than continuing to increase police funding.

PITTSBURGH’S SECRET POLICE

Portland is not unique. Peduto’s police are no different from Trump’s gestapo. Peduto and the City of Pittsburgh allow their robocops to hide their identities and refuse to identify themselves to community members when asked. Peduto says he “opposes” Federal agents in Pittsburgh – which makes sense if he already has police in our city openly and anonymously terrorizing and surveilling Black community members, activists, and witnesses. Police that collaborate with Homeland Security, the DEA, and FBI to target, isolate, and detain our friends and family members.

Below is a redacted vs unredacted excerpt of Section 4.0 of PBP FORM 290, ORDER #: 42-13  (2/14/19) which outlines the Operational Guidelines of Pittsburgh’s “Special Response Team (SRT)” aka riot cops. It is unclear why the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police have attempted to redact these paragraphs, except maybe to hide fascistic policies that are both embarrassing and jeopardizing to their public image as crime-fighting comic book heroes – particularly in white imaginations. The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police tried to hide its policies allowing its officers to hide their own identities. They didn’t do a good job of hiding it, so we thought we’d share with you all.

Hover and slide the divider below [] to view the unredacted version ⤵️

Hover and slide the divider [] above to view the unredacted version ⤴️

Anonymous riot cops and secret police are not new. We are reminded of COINTELPRO‘s presence in Pittsburgh. We are reminded that anonymous cop brigades evolved from execution firing squads: the identity of the state agent who fires the lethal shot is never to be revealed.

If local agents of state violence remain unidentifiable, then how do we keep them accountable?

While Bill Peduto praises the Pittsburgh Police’s collaboration with Trump’s FBI to arrest activists and alleged petty vandals via the Damage Assessment and Accountability Task Force (DAAT) –they’ve made no effort to identify the following agents of state violence.

We are asking for the public to help the Mayor find his courage and publicly identify these members of our city’s very own secret police:

Hover and click to view footage of the June 1st East Liberty police attacks: