Pittsburgh Police Chief Schubert to retire after audit, transition report question progress on disparities

Pittsburgh police officers during a protest in June 2020. (Photo by Jay Manning/PublicSource)

Following a transition team’s call for new leadership, an audit by the Citizen Police Review Board and City Controller’s Office, required by a 2020 ballot referendum, made nearly two dozen recommendations – and the bureau agreed with most.

by Charlie Wolfson, PublicSource

Update (5/27/22): Pittsburgh’s Department of Public Safety announced Friday that Police Chief Scott Schubert would retire. Schubert, a longtime Pittsburgh policeman, became chief in 2017 under then-Mayor Bill Peduto. 

Mayor Ed Gainey ran for office on police reform and promised to mend the relationship the bureau with the city’s neighborhoods. At the start of his administration, he replaced the city’s Public Safety director but left Schubert in place. Last week, Gainey’s transition committee released its report on public safety, which explicitly called for change atop the Bureau of Police. Gainey said Friday that he did not ask Schubert to leave.

The joint audit described in this story did not directly address Schubert. Gainey said Friday that a national search for a new chief would commence, “centered around the voices of community members,” and take approximately six months.

Mayor Ed Gainey has not done much to change the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police in his first five months in office, but a new audit conducted jointly by the city controller’s office and the Citizen Police Review Board [CPRB] provides a proposed blueprint of sorts. 

A review set in motion by a 2020 voter referendum, the audit contains 23 concrete recommendations touching various parts of the department. Many focus on addressing the racial disparities in Pittsburgh’s policing and increasing transparency around use of force and officer complaints. 

“We don’t need to recreate the wheel,” to improve the police bureau, said CPRB director Beth Pittinger in a press conference Tuesday. “We have the ability now.”

The audit includes a written response by Deputy Police Chief Thomas Stangrecki. Stangrecki wrote “Agreed” in response to 15 of the 23 suggestions, “Agreed in part” to six of them and “Disagreed” to one, which called for certain compliance checks to be moved to an independent agency.

Pittinger cautioned that even with broad agreement from police officials, external factors like state and federal law and union contracts can slow implementation.

Gainey’s spokesperson Maria Montaño told PublicSource in an email that the audit recommendations will “serve as guideposts for us as we finalize our plans” on policing, along with the recently-released transition report and feedback from community meetings. She said the administration “looks forward to releasing our plans in the coming weeks.”

A Public Safety Department Spokesperson said she was not sure if department leaders had seen the audit. The police officers’ union spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Use of force

The auditors found that in 61% of use-of-force incidents in 2020, the civilian was Black. This rate is disproportionate to the city’s population, which is about 22% Black. The same trend is evident in arrests and traffic stops.

Read entire article here

The post Pittsburgh Police Chief Schubert to retire after audit, transition report question progress on disparities appeared first on New Pittsburgh Courier.