Pittsburgh's soaring homicide rate leaves officials baffled

Pittsburgh police said Thursday its officers have investigated 59 homicides to date in 2022 — the highest rate in at least seven years and a 25% spike year over year.

There have been nearly 700 homicides in Pittsburgh since 2010, county records show. Homicides in Pittsburgh hit 60 in 2015 and 70 in 2014; figures were higher in the early 1990s, a Pittsburgh police spokesperson said, but the department could not cite specific figures.

“It’s been happening all over America since the pandemic ended,” said Brandi Fisher of the Pittsburgh group Alliance for Police Accountability. “I don’t think it’s a policy issue and I don’t think it’s a police problem. We need to talk about preventative measures, and I don’t think the police are ones to stop things from happening. … We need to do a public health approach. We cannot incarcerate our way out of this situation.”

Homewood is the neighborhood with the highest homicide rate since 2010. Nearly 9 of every 10 homicides in the past 12 years involved a firearm.

Pittsburgh’s homicide rate, however, fares well against its municipal peers, according to the same data.

Pittsburgh had 16.7 homicides per 100,000 residents from 2010 to 2018, compared to a 19.3 rate from Cincinnati, whose population is similarly sized to Pittsburgh’s, and a 21.1 rate in Philadelphia, county records show. Detroit and St. Louis have some of the highest homicide rates, at 42.4 and 42.5, respectively.

Regardless, Pittsburgh police are attempting to enlist community members and the public in what is increasingly becoming a spate of homicides each week.

This week alone, a teenager was shot in the head and died in Beechview, a man was found dead in Garfield in what police called a homicide, and 18-year-old Omar McCord Jr. was pronounced dead after a shooting near an alley in Highland Park. There have been no arrests in any of the three cases.

“I hear people talking about the shootings, talking about the number of shootings,” Fisher told the Tribune-Review. “It really needs to be looked at in a systemic way (until) the perpetrators are found.”

“Obviously, it’s concerning,” Pittsburgh Council President Theresa Kail-Smith said. “We can see what’s happening in our city — there’s a visible increase in violent crime.”

Pittsburgh Councilman Anthony Coghill was at the scene of the Beechview shooting and praised police officers for their professionalism.

“We really have to bolster our public safety,” said Coghill, who wants to see more rank-and-file officers patrolling streets. “Our police are some of the best in the world — but I don’t know what can be done to stop this violence.”

Mayor Ed Gainey — who campaigned, among other issues, on reforming the police force and who is tasked with appointing Pittsburgh next police chief — was unavailable for comment Thursday, his spokesperson said.

Coghill, however, said he has confidence in the direction Gainey is going with the police force.

“His next chief? I would prefer a local, someone who knows Pittsburgh,” Coghill said. “It doesn’t have to be someone from Pittsburgh but at least someone from Western Pennsylvania.”

Coghill said he had more questions than answers about stemming the rise of homicide rates and crime in general in Pittsburgh.

“That’s the big question, let me tell you,” Coghill said. “I say we invest in the future, invest in children and get them at an early age, just teach them — that’s the root of it, I believe.”

Kail-Smith said Pittsburgh City Council has invested in a new class of city officers as well as social workers to help bridge the gap, but more needs to be done.

“There’s work happening simultaneously on many levels, but I think we have to look at the low number of officers (on the street) and the increase in violent crime,” Kail-Smith said. “A lot of people are doing a lot of great work. But the results are what matter.”