Mayor Peduto shakes up Pittsburgh police units after escalating clashes with protesters

Pittsburgh Police Special Response Teams trained in traditional crowd-control tactics will no longer be the first line of response during protests, Mayor Bill Peduto announced Friday, two days after police clashed with protesters just blocks from his front door.

It’s one of a number of changes Peduto laid out in response outcry over the police bureau’s response to the near-daily protests in city streets. Deployment of the SRTs will only be for “narrowly defined situations when absolutely necessary to protect public health.”

Other changes include appointing a new commander to oversee police response to protests and adding spots for members of the Civil Affairs Unit and Public Safety’s Community Engagement staff at command posts, which is where command staff oversee protest response and make decisions regarding it.

“(They) will make sure that responses to protest activity are not just tactical in nature, but balanced with the essential goals of improving police-community relations and protecting First Amendment rights,” he said in a statement.

He said there will be written guidelines, which are in the works, that detail those narrowly defined situations, and it will set in stone his announcement Monday barring jump-out arrests by plainclothes officers in unmarked vehicles.

Peduto said the guidelines will also bar all police units from wearing military-style camouflage during response to protests.

Once completed, the guidelines will be made public.

“I have repeatedly watched interactions between police and protesters that escalated to uses of less-lethal weapons, arrest methods and other actions that I do not support, and which run counter to our common principles,” Peduto said in a statement. “This is not the reform I wanted, and that I continue to believe in today.”

The changes come two days after a protest outside Peduto’s Point Breeze home ended with pepper spray, chaos and one man arrested.

A group of about 100 protesters had marched from Mellon Park to Peduto’s Hastings Street home around 8 p.m. on Aug. 19 to confront the mayor about what they perceived as inaction and lies, particularly in regard to tense moments with police during protests over the past months.

Police declared the protest an unlawful assembly at about 10:15 p.m. and ordered protesters to leave the area. They were given two routes of egress: “Down Hastings back toward Reynolds Street, back toward Mellon Park,” an officer announced. “You have two minutes to disperse.”

A criminal complaint filed against a man arrested in the ensuing melee did not mention that protesters were given the option of moving toward Mellon Park. As protesters got to the park, police declared that the park closed at 9 p.m. The park’s hours are listed as 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Police say from there they asked protesters to move off the street and onto the sidewalk and then from the sidewalk farther into the park. Authorities say some protesters scuffled with officers, leading to the deployment of pepper spray.

More coverage:

• Lengthy protest at Pittsburgh Mayor Peduto’s house morphs into ‘unlawful assembly,’ pepper spray, 1 arrest
• Police charge Pittsburgh man with assault, riot after protest at Mayor Peduto’s house

Activist Lorenzo Rulli, who has helped lead much of the protesting both citywide and outside the mayor’s home, said Peduto’s statement Friday is “exactly the reason we want him to resign.”

What’s more, Rulli said, is Peduto has not apologized to the Black people affected by the police tactics. He called the statement an attempt by Peduto to make his constituents feel good.

“He made a lot of comments in his statement but he did not talk about Black people,” he said. “He did not include Black voices.”

Zarah Livingston, one of the activists behind the Pittsburgh Protests social media accounts and an organizer with No Cop Money PA, said the past several days have been eye-opening in a number of ways, including “how out of the loop Peduto seems about his own constituents.”

“All I want to see from the mayor and Pittsburgh leadership in any form is proof that they’re listening — proof that they’re listening in a real way,” Livingston said. “We’ve seen countless statements of Bill Peduto’s plans to make the city better, however, what does Pittsburgh have to show for it? What does Pittsburgh offer to its citizens that actually makes it affordable, accessible and felt heard by its Black, brown and immigrated people?”

Peduto also pledged, alongside Pittsburgh police Chief Scott Schubert, to protect members of the media, many of whom were blocked by police from the path of least resistance to their personal and professional vehicles Wednesday night after protesters were dispersed.

“Their presence and coverage are the backbone of transparency, accountability and democracy,” he said.

Schubert and Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich said they respect and support the mayor’s decisions.

“Our officers are as skilled with adapting to change as they are with serving and protecting the people of Pittsburgh day in and day out, without hesitation and without question,” Schubert said. “Their expertise and involvement will be instrumental to ensuring these changes will result in a safer, more inclusive, and more compassionate Pittsburgh.”

Bob Swartzwelder, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Fort Pitt Lodge No. 1, which represents Pittsburgh police, noted that the changes proposed by Peduto aren’t specific as of yet.

“The reforms outlined … are already in place,” he said. “SRTs are covered by specific policies within the bureau of police — they’re only employed when criteria of the policy are met. Whatever changes he’s deciding to make will be interesting to see in print.”

In regard to criticism from city leaders on the handling of protests, Swartzwelder said it’s “politically beneficial to attack the police right now.

“Rather than these politicians offering substantial solutions,” he said, “they just prefer to give general attacks on the police to improve their political standing.”

A summer of largely peaceful protests saw several marred by clashes between protesters and police, including the use of tear gas and projectiles fired by police on groups gathered in East Liberty on June 1.

That incident in particular sparked outrage among demonstrators and supporters — and a number of city officials — because of dueling narratives about police use of force that night.

Peduto spoke at a late-night press conference following the June 1 protest, during which top police officials seemed to indicate that tear gas was not used on the crowd.

Asked specifically about crowd control, police escalation and whether tear gas was used hours earlier, SWAT Officer Stephen Mescan said: “In regards to crowd munitions that are used to help manage or control a crowd, were they used tonight? No, they weren’t. We did use gas on Saturday night [May 30], which you all saw.”

The mayor said the next morning that police radio transcripts from the time did not line up with the information he’d been given.

“Without question,” Peduto said on June 3, “there is a difference of opinion about what happened that day and the appropriateness of the actions of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police.”

More coverage:

• 20 arrested as protests turn violent in East Liberty, Shadyside
• Pittsburgh police say tear gas, in fact, was used to disperse East Liberty protest crowd
• Peduto orders investigation into police actions at East Liberty protest

Twenty-two people were arrested in the immediate aftermath of the protest, and District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. dropped charges against all of them.

He’d previously dropped charges against 39 people arrested in Downtown Pittsburgh on May 30, the first day of protests in Pittsburgh sparked by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police five days earlier.

That first night of protests – which saw two police vehicles set ablaze and multiple officers, journalists and protesters injured — resulted in a citywide 8 p.m. curfew for the next several days.