July 19 had all the ingredients to be a landmark day for Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s no-longer-new administration. With his police chief installed after a yearlong search, the mayor announced a press conference to unveil the results of a lengthy police staffing study that had the potential to bring a major shakeup to the city’s Bureau of Police.
Instead, the report landed with a thud and some confusion. Gainey’s handpicked chief of police, Larry Scirotto, flatly rejected the report’s central finding that the bureau has too many patrol officers and should shift 188 of them to other, more specialized roles.
During the press conference, Gainey hailed the staffing study as a crucial document that would guide his police bureau into the future. But when Scirotto stepped to the podium, most of his time was spent talking about how and why he would disregard its key finding.
“I don’t want to reallocate any patrol operations,” Scirotto said as Gainey stood behind him. “…I am of the belief that our police department, all 900 men and women, are community-oriented police officers.”
What will become of the $180,000 study’s recommendations is unclear.
Gainey, who was elected the city’s first Black mayor on the heels of the 2020 George Floyd protests and fierce calls for police reform, made it clear he is more or less giving Scirotto the keys to the department.
Read more: Consultants give Gainey plan to fix ‘overstaffed’ police, but new chief disagrees
Mayoral Press Secretary Olga George initially declined PublicSource’s request to interview Gainey, saying she did so on his behalf and without his knowledge. He was made aware of the request five days later after PublicSource renewed its request via email. Gainey did not grant an interview prior to the publication date of this article.
With progress on one of his signature campaign themes uncertain, the mayor’s supporters in the advocacy community haven’t turned on him — but they may be growing frustrated, nearly halfway through his first term.
“I definitely thought we’d be further along,” said Brandi Fisher, leader of the Alliance for Police Accountability. “I don’t think there’s been much work done with policing. There’s been a lot of planning and a lot of talk about what’s going to be done.”
A mayoral spokesperson pointed to a new disciplinary system, ongoing recruit classes and crime numbers lower than last year’s abnormally high levels as signs of progress.
The city had the police staffing study report in hand long before July, Gainey said at the press conference, “but we wanted to wait until the chief came on so he had a chance to read it, understand it, tell us what he agrees with, which direction we need to go and, as chief, we will follow that direction.”
It’s not fully clear what parts of the study, if any, will be implemented. Scirotto said he agreed with the study’s recommendation to civilianize a number of officers, but his vision is to add civilian employees, not to replace existing armed officers with civilian roles, which is the study’s recommendation. He also suggested he would look at reallocating officer volume by time of day to better align with call volumes.
But without the city acting on the report’s recommendation to shift 188 officers out of patrol, and the numerous proposals that stem from it, reform advocates who helped get Gainey elected say the study is hardly a blueprint for major change to the police bureau.
“Folks who have been waiting are wondering when we’re going to see the changes we so desperately need,” said Bethany Hallam, a progressive county council member who was among few elected officials who backed Gainey’s 2021 campaign. “People are getting restless.”
A validation and a rejection
Fisher, whose Alliance for Police Accountability [APA] endorsed Gainey in 2021, noted that the study’s suggestions closely matched those in a report that a coalition of activists put out two years ago. That 2021 report, authored by APA-associated sociology professor Jesse Wozniak and co-signed by APA, 1Hood Power and other advocates, suggested cutting about 200 officers from the force and allocating resources to community groups.
“For us to have an independent study done that says the exact same thing and for it to still be ignored, it raised the question as to what people’s goals are,” Fisher said. “Some people’s goal is to keep police employed.”
Fisher felt frustration toward Scirotto more so than Gainey but noted that the buck stops with the mayor.
“Hopefully the chief will fall in line with the vision of the mayor, and the mayor stays true to his own vision,” Fisher said. “But if not, we will always side with the people. We are not beholden to anyone when it comes to politics.”
Read more: For police chief, Gainey picks Scirotto, who was fired from Fort Lauderdale job amid diversity push
What is Gainey’s vision? He got into few specifics at the press conference. Mayoral communications director Maria Montaño said during an Aug. 9 phone call that Gainey agrees with Scirotto’s opposition to reassigning 188 patrol officers.
Gainey was never a proponent of defunding the police and, since his 2021 victory, has said his vision is for cops to be more present in neighborhoods, not less. As far as his public statements go, he has a less radical vision than that of some of his top supporters.
“Right now, he thinks that the solution is more police or better policing,” said Muhammad Ali Nasir, an organizer with 1Hood Power, a collective that helped organize protests in 2020 and endorsed Gainey the following year. “So we have a fundamental disagreement.”
Nasir said he’s spent time engaging with unhoused people Downtown and has observed that having more officers on the streets often results in “a whole lot of harassment.”
“The impression is that we’re almost living in a police state where everything that we do is watched and monitored,” he said.
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If the big announcement of the study’s results paired with a partial rejection of them felt awkward, it could be because mayor-police chief relationships can be awkward. David Harris, a longtime scholar of policing who served on the mayor’s search committee for the new chief, said mayors can feel compelled to give a new chief leeway.
“The one thing any chief of police wants above all else, in terms of a job as chief, is to have the choices about how to run their department,” Harris said.
Harris said the study was not available yet when Scirotto was chosen. No matter “how much faith the administration might have put in this study,” he said, if Scirotto was not on board with it, “they’re going to back him up or he’s going to start out in a very weak position.”
Wozniak, who has studied policing as a West Virginia University professor and is involved in APA, said that dynamic is standard in the United States. “I feel for Gainey in the sense that no mayor controls their police force,” he said.
But Gainey’s election was far from business as usual in Pittsburgh, and advocates don’t want to let the status quo seep into his administration.
“It looks like we’re going to have to do some work with the chief of police,” Fisher said.
Wozniak said the historic nature of Gainey’s election — he was the first challenger to oust a sitting Pittsburgh mayor in 100 years — should provide him a mandate to push for change through resistant police brass.
“There was a pretty clear message sent” in the 2021 election, Wozniak said, “that, yeah, the people of Pittsburgh agree that we desperately need change in this. You have promised change. Now is the time to make change.”
Tough love in store
Gainey’s core supporters aren’t in revolt. Interviews with several showed that while frustration is beginning to simmer, they hope to push the administration from its side, not in opposition.
“I still support the mayor and I am giving him space to grow into this role,” said Hallam, who won a resounding renomination this spring and whose opinion carries weight in progressive circles.
Starting a new administration is “a big task,” she said, “and I think he deserves at least four years to show us the progress. I see intent, but I want to see the action.
“He is a great mayor, but it sometimes feels like he is just being pulled in a million directions.”
Liv Bennett, another county councilwoman who supported Gainey ahead of his 2021 win, said she thinks two years is fair to give a new mayor time to learn the role. “I don’t think change is going to happen overnight.” Gainey’s two-year mark is in January.
On policing and a number of other areas, the last 18 months have been a lesson in the realities of governing for progressives who until recently were left outside most of the region’s power centers.
Campaign dreams of police reform, improved social services and a more open city government have turned into a slow-burn start to Gainey’s tenure. The mayor was compelled to focus much of his first several months not on transformation but on simply keeping the bridges from falling down and the roads clear of snow. His search for a new police chief took almost a year.
Hallam felt burned when the county government decided to close Downtown’s Smithfield Street low-barrier homeless shelter in June, and nobody from city hall spoke up in opposition. Hallam and others railed against the move, but their mayor didn’t.
“I was expecting reinforcements from them,” Hallam said. “But it felt like a lot of silence as the county pulled funding.”
Hallam also criticized the police for a recent surge in enforcement against drug users Downtown.
As for the mayor himself, Fisher noted she supported Gainey’s predecessor, Bill Peduto, at first as well.
“I was a supporter of Mayor Peduto at one point, too, and then that changed,” she said.
Incremental progress
While major transformations have eluded the mayor, some say his team should do more to spread the word about what they have accomplished.
“I would encourage them to not necessarily move faster but to tell the story of how they’re succeeding,” Harris said. “I think there’ve been some effective public safety changes, but I want to hear more about them.”
Montaño cited the city’s new contract with the police union, which includes a disciplinary matrix that she said will make it easier for the city to hold problematic cops accountable, a key campaign pledge.
Read more: Rising violence draws $50 million public health commitment from Allegheny County
The mayor announced a “Plan for Peace” more than a year ago, which was aimed at combating gun violence largely by bolstering familiar programs around violence intervention and community outreach.
The mayor’s team has also pushed ahead with a co-response program that sends social workers out alongside officers to respond to certain calls. The program employed three social workers as of this January.
The city experienced abnormally high levels of gun violence and homicide during the mayor’s first year, though homicides have decreased this year. This year’s level is on par with those the city saw from 2015 to 2020.
And for all the noise from advocates about shrinking the police, Gainey has nodded to those in the bureau and in the community at large who want the opposite. He greenlit multiple officer recruiting classes to replace retirees and bring the force closer to its budgeted 900 officers.
Nasir sees progress in areas such as community engagement.
“When you talk about progress, I think it really depends on how you’re measuring it,” he said. “If I measure it by how he’s engaging or representing his constituents, I think there’s been tremendous progress.
“But when it comes to how he’s addressing community violence, I really don’t think a whole lot has changed. I believe that he’s well-intentioned, I just disagree with the tactics.”
Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Alexandra Ross.
