Transcripts - PH2003-08-26a
Public Hearing
08-26-03
Pittsburgh, PA August 26, 2003
COMMITTEE ON HEARINGS
The Committee met.
Present: Mr. Bodack, Ms. Burns, Ms. Carlisle, Mr. Hertzberg, Mr.
Motznik, Mr. Peduto, Mr. Sciulli, Mr. Udin, Mr. Ricciardi, Chair
BUSINESS FROM COUNCIL
The Chair:
Good evening everyone and welcome to this public hearing. I would like to ask our Clerk, Linda Johnson-Wasler if she could read the purpose of this public hearing and the bill before us.
ROLL CALL
Nine (9) members present.
The Chair discussed.
Bill No. 2221: Petition from the residents of the City of Pittsburgh regarding the possible closing and/or consolidation of Zone 3 and 4 police stations.
The Chair:
Thank you.
I believe in order to have a fine productive public hearing, if we could please take a second and ask our Chief McNeilly if he could please join us at the table. Chief I would ask you to stay within three to five minutes and maybe give us an overview of your plan. This way we could put that in better perspective in terms of the testimony from the residents before us today.
Chief McNeilly:
Councilman and Councilwoman, thanks for your invitation.
I'd like to start by saying that I know that the Mayor, City Councilmembers nor I as the Chief of Police want to have fewer police officers in the City of Pittsburgh. The national league of city survey of 322 municipalities shows that 1/4th of municipalities are downsizing their police agencies. Due to the budget situation that has been 30 plus years in the making in the City of Pittsburgh, we're also looking at doing the same thing.
Downsizing the bureau includes the closing of two duty locations and a reallocation of personnel. The placement of a station has nothing to do with public safety and I'll explain why. If people remember where Zone 1 used to be, 1301 Federal Street, I worked out of there for a couple of years as a lieutenant, one block on either side of that station was a very high drug trafficking and violence prone area. It's no longer that way, there's no police station there, that didn't have anything to do with it. The fact was that many, many blocks were torn down and rebuilt and that has changed the way that looks right now. Zone 2 in the Hill District, 2000 Centre Avenue, I worked there again for two years. For decades drug trafficking and violence was within blocks of that police station. Zone 4 used to be up in Mt. Washington, it used to be the Number 8 for those of us who remember that, that was almost as far from the West End boundary as the South Side station is now.
If placement of a station in a community really had something to do with crime in the community, then it would be logical to assume we should put 90 police stations in the 90 communities and have nobody on patrol. I think that that's ridiculous. I think everybody realizes that. What does impact public safety is having officers in the communities. What does matter for quick response is the assignment of patrol cars to sectors. Each police vehicle in each district is assigned to certain neighborhoods they patrol, they're called sectors. The police dispatchers at the emergency operations center are supposed to be assigning calls by sectors. The cars assigned to sectors we are requiring to remain in those sectors. So, for example, if there's a car assigned to a sector in Mt. Washington, it should be in Mt. Washington unless it's called out for something else and then there should be another car in the next sector who can respond to calls in that area.
The supervisors of those zones should ensure that the cars remain in their sectors. The more calls that are available for 911 response should ensure a quicker response for emergency calls. With the station closing, we're actually going to put more officers on patrol considering that we're losing 102 to potential furlows. The reason why I say that is and doesn't seem to make sense at first, but I ask you to listen to what I have to say on that.
Talking about 102 furlows, that averages to about 17 police officers that will be furrowed from each of the six patrol zones right now, 17 officers will not be available for response to 911 calls with 102 layoffs unless we do something to change that. What we have done, as the management to the Bureau of Police, looked at all of the options that were available to us. We got to remember 17 officers in each district is approximately 20 percent of all the officers responding to 911 calls. If they're not replaced, that means response time would automatically increase by about 20 percent.
With the changes we've made, we have been able to successfully put about 85 to 90 officers back in their places by doing different things like taking some detectives out of investigations, put them back in patrol, disbanning some units like mounted, putting the SWAT officers back out in patrol and including closing one station. There's 23 people that are tied up in that station that don't do patrol, there's a commander, there's four lieutenants, there's nine sergeants, there's an equivalent to five full time equivalent officers sitting on that desk around the clock 24:7, there's a crime analyst, there's a crime prevention officer and there's a couple of clerks. Right now, we have police officers working clerical positions because we don't have enough clerks. So, we're talking 23 people. That 23 people, if you divide that, that's almost four officers that it could replace in each of the six patrol zones. So, if we don't close the station, that absence of two to three officers short in a zone that we're going to be after they furlow will increase to 6 to 7. If we alter any of the other changes, we start getting back to that 17 officers less in each patrol zone.
We looked at many factors when we tried to make the decision as to which zone we should close. There were many factors to consider. I know there was a study in the mid-80's that recommended one of the South Hills stations being closed. When we looked, we saw that the priority calls around Zone 3 were much higher compared to any of the other patrol sectors in both Zones 3 and 4. There were three of them particularly, including the South Side Flats, that there were over 9,000 priority calls last year. Most of the other sectors had anywhere between 1,500 to 3,000 or 4,000 priority calls.
Let me assure you that I would not do anything to jeopardize the people of Zone 4. I live in Zone 4, my sister lives in Zone 4, my niece lives in Zone 4, my daughter is going to live in Zone 4. There's a lot of other people in the police command staff that have families that live in Zone 4. We're convinced that unless we make the necessary changes what we have planned, response times to 911 calls will have to increase.
I did point out that each station has 14 supervisors. We have to remember that includes 1 commander, 4 lieutenants, and 9 sergeants, we had the same number of supervisors 10 years ago when we had almost 1,300 officers. We had 1,275 officers 10 years ago, we don't have that now, we're going to be down to 900. If you think about streamlining the operation, that's exactly what we're trying to do. Make sure we have the supervisors needed for the size police bureau we're going to be having after Friday.
I looked at other municipalities to see departments that were similar in size or municipalities that were similar in size. We made some comparisons, I have copies that I'd like to pass out. I think if you look at them, you'll see that when you compare Pittsburgh to many of these other cities, you'll see that we are either about the same or less in square miles or roughly around the same or less in populations if you look at the number of patrol zones. We have 55 square miles and we're contemplating five patrol zones. Cincinnati with about the same population has 78 square miles, five patrol zones. Indianapolis has almost twice our population, 86 square miles, much more than we have, with five patrol zones. Toledo, about the same size population wise, 84 square miles, three patrol zones. So, you can look down that list and see how other departments do it. We've been used to size zones and we think we have to have six zones but, in effect, what that actually does is leave less officers on the street for patrol.
In the mid-1980's, the City of Pittsburgh reduced the number of police stations from 9 to 6. The same concerns existed about the response times and distances from the stations. Over the past 15 years, we have seen that Pittsburgh has remained one of America's safest cities. Let me just say that we anticipate returning each officer furlowed as soon as possible as well as returning each supervisor to their current ranks as soon as the openings become available.
Thank you very much.
The Chair:
Thank you, Chief. Just one question from myself and then we'll open it up to colleagues. Several of your officers and detectives testified this morning at our legislative meeting and they stated that patrolling sectors just doesn't work. Obviously, they gave examples. So, maybe once again, just talk about the sector, not policy but the program and how exactly it works and why some of your officers are saying it just doesn't work. As a matter of fact, your officers stated that we've always had a sector policy here in the City of Pittsburgh and it's never been followed.
Chief McNeilly:
We always have had sectors and cars were assigned to sectors. The only time a car should be out of their sector is when they're called out for some other type of call. There should be another call to fill in for them close by the way the computeraided dispatch system is set up. Yes, there's always going to be times when there's more times for services then there are cars available. However, cars should be taken off low priority calls and dispatched to the higher priority calls as they come in.
All I can say is that the sector system is the best system and that's why people employ it. There's no full proof method to ever guarantee that you're going to have a police officer sitting and waiting for a call from service when it comes in. However, the high priority calls do get first attention. All I can say is that if we keep the station open that automatically takes those 23 people back off the street and therefore each zone has four more fewer officers than we already will have because of the furlows of the 102 officers. The response time will increase.
I know emotionally people think well the patrol zone is close to my house that the police car will show up sooner. That's not true, that's far from the truth. What makes a difference is how many cars you have available for calls. The more cars you have available, the faster the response. The fewer cars, the longer the response. This is an effort to put 102 back out. We can't get the whole 102, they're being furrowed. We'll be lucky to get 85 to 90 back out on the street with all the changes we're making. If we start to widdle away at that, we're going to have even further.
Mr. Udin:
Mr. President, if I can get the chair back, I'll defer to Mr. Hertzberg. But, hopefully you'll come back to me.
Mr. Hertzberg:
Mr. Chairman, Mr. President, I hope we can keep this brief. There's an extremely large audience. This is a public hearing and I'd like to hear from them. I want to make some brief comments, that's all. I'm not going to go through a question and answer with Chief McNeilly at this time. I do want to keep the public informed as to my efforts at trying to keep Zone 4 open and kind of give you my perspective before I hear from you and I'll try to be as brief as I can.
I would begin by saying that I had absolutely no input into this decision. I found out about it by way of the news media. Zone 4 is located in my council district and I am the Chairman of Pittsburgh City Council's Public Safety Services Committee. I was not consulted, I had no input and I would have strongly opposed this effort. However, I think other people, and I'm not going to go into this, but I think there was other discussions with other people. I can tell you there was an extensive letter writing campaign and, frankly, I don't blame the people in Zone 3 for doing that. But, they were aware that they were being targeted somehow. They did their best to end up with the decision that was made here.
But, I would note that Zone 4 in its current configuration already is the largest zone in the whole City of Pittsburgh of the six existing zones. The proposal to merge Zone 3 into it adds about 50 percent larger area than we already have. I think the decision that was made was by and large a political decision. I would turn again to the decision on Zone One which Chief McNeilly referred to. Zone One was located on Federal Street and was in the way of the Federal/North redevelopment project. Zone One, however, did not shut down. Zone One we were able to find another facility in the same neighborhood. I'm telling you this decision is about, unfortunately, pitting one neighborhood against another. I don't want to do that and I'm not going to do that. I think whatever needs to be done here can be done without closing either Zone 4 or Zone 3.
That's my effort, my effort was in the courtroom this morning. We presented our case. We're waiting for a decision, the decision will come from a judge tomorrow. We've been told that he will deliver the decision at 2:00 to be there in the courtroom at 2:00 for that decision. But, what will happen with the closure of Zone 4 is the reduction in services to the community in the West End and to all the western neighborhoods there's no doubt in my mind that that will happen. We have the signed agreement of the Mayor that services are not to be reduced in these 12 western neighborhoods, everyone virtually in those neighborhoods received a bill for $20.00 for the assessment district in the west and with that billing came the promise that services would be maintained at the level that they were at on January 1st.
Closing of this station, undoubtedly, reduces those services. I can go over a few reasons it does. We can argue here about sectors, we can argue here about how many people are on patrol but that facility provides more services than patrol. The facility has supervisors there on a regular basis. Those supervisors, I know members of the community, the Zone 4 public safety council, the different community councils that are here tonight have gone there and have been able to meet with the supervisors and talk to them about crime problems in particular areas and how to solve them. They won't be able to do that at Zone 4 if we close that station. In Zone 4 there's investigation of crime. Things including interviewing witnesses that can be done much more conveniently at a particular location near those communities. Also, if someone nearby is in a violent situation or an abusive situation, there is at least a safe place in Zone 4 where the police are.
Finally, if you need to report a crime, you can go right down the street to the police station when it's there. There are a whole list of other things that Zone 4 provided to the community that with the closing the services won't be provided. This will reduce our level of services. The agreement, the City Council resolution and the state law all will be violated. That's the basis for the case in court to have an injunction to stop the closing of Zone 4 and we will see what the next phase of that is tomorrow at 2:00.
Mr. Udin:
Thank you, Mr. President.
I'd just like to ask a number of issues that can be answered sometime during the week, I don't want answers now. I also want to hear primarily from the public who came to speak.
But, there are a number of questions in my mind. One, assuming that you do decide that in order to compensate as much as you can for the 102 layoffs that you have to close a station, why number 4? Don't answer now I just want you to make a note of that or maybe the Clerk can get the Chief a list of the questions I'd like to have he answer. I'd like to know what criteria you used to choose that one.
Secondly, in the city comparison, I appreciate the comparison that you gave us. I'd also appreciate knowing to what extent the typography of these cities are similar to the City of Pittsburgh in terms of the narrowness of streets and hills and bridges and traffic, etc., that we face in the City if they have similar conditions as well as similar size.
Thirdly, let me congratulate you on taking this opportunity to reorganize the way we are deployed. A lot of people think that I guess it's like if we send more troops to Iraq somehow the job that we have to do there can be done better. I think it's a question of how we deploy our forces, not how many we deploy. You can deploy more forces badly and still get the same bad results. I'm very concerned about the spike in homicides and crime throughout the City and what impact the reorganization may or may not have on it. I'd appreciate knowing how the redeployment of officers will attack this fight in the crime rate that we are experiencing. Those are my questions.
Thank you.
Mr. Motznik:
Chief, thank you very much for being here. I want to also thank the crowd for coming tonight and taking time out of their evening because they care about the neighborhood that they live in.
I represent the neighborhoods of Beechview, Brookline, Overbrook which are in Zone 4. I have a few other neighborhoods Carrick and Bon Air and a piece of Mt. Washington is covered by Zone 3. It affects my neighborhoods like it affects Councilman Hertzberg's neighborhood. We took a tour of the facilities, myself and Councilman Hertzberg, to see if there was a better way or if there was a better zone that could be closed or not. We're still going over what we saw and what we want to talk about.
But, first and foremost my stance right now today is that we don't want any zone to close. Obviously, these people here today feel the same way. You don't want to see a zone closure. I know that if we weren't in our severe financial situation right now that we wouldn't be having this discussion, that we would keep the six zones the way they are if we could afford it. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes to have to go through all of this. I've had dealings with you and I really appreciate your professionalism and what you do
I'm sure that as you see this last month or so go down according to how the finances are you wouldn't want to be in our shoes putting up with some of the problems and situations we all deal with. I'm confident at the end of the day when state legislature and the senate comes back to work that hopefully with some new taxes coming into the City of Pittsburgh that when the new year starts we can resolve all these problems. We can bring our people back. Hopefully if Councilman Hertzberg's lawsuit hold, maybe that will hold the zone in place for a while until we see some finances come in to keep six zones.
Having said all that, I'm very frustrated that I was on among council now for two and half years and I was on council before that working with Councilman Michael Diven for roughly three years. We've always had a concern at Zone 4 residents that we were always the biggest zone with the least amount of police officers. We put in request after request after request that we needed some sort of minimum staffing level to make sure that we had enough police officers in our zone and the response always that the crime is not there. There's more police officers out in the East End or wherever because there's more crime there. It's tough for me as an elected officials to go back to the people who pay taxes and tell them we don't have the same amount of police officers in our neighborhood because we don't have enough crime and someday if we get to that level we'll have the police officers. We don't want to get to that level and that's why the people call me, we don't want to get to that level. We pay our taxes just like everyone else in the City of Pittsburgh. I think there needs to be a minimum staffing level.
Just like Councilman Udin said I don't want an answer from you today, I don't want to put you on the spot. I just wanted to get some comments out. There needs to be a minimum staffing level in every zone. No matter what zone you're in, if it's my zone or your zone, if the crime is there, the crime is there. But, there still needs to be a minimum staffing level to make sure that there's enough police presence to deter crime also, not just to send it there after the fact. But, to try to help and make sure that crime doesn't occur. I'd appreciate talking about this further. I wanted to just throw that out there. I believe that there needs to be a minimum staffing level. I'm always open and willing to work with you on everything we have to do and I look forward to doing that.
Thank you.
The Chair:
Thank you and thank you for your patience.
We would like to start the public hearing with our guest speakers all in opposition beginning with Ken Heiss. I'm sure the Chief has a number of things to do. Chief, you can be excused. If you'd like to come back, that's fine also. We're on the monitor and I'm sure the Chief will have opportunity to watch most of the testimony.
You have three minutes. Please give your name and address for the public record. If you'd like to give your first name only, that's fine also.
Mr. Heiss:
My name is Ken Heiss. I live in Mt. Washington and I run a business in Lawrenceville here in the City of Pittsburgh.
Over the years in my business, I've had to make some painful cuts to survive some dyer times while we waited for better times or hoped for better times. I learned the difference between cutting to make things better and cutting to make things look better. If reducing our Zone 4 police station would save money, perhaps it might be an argument, however I don't see that. I see more difficulty in deployment, I see more difficulty in operations, I see less places to house criminals and people who have to complain, I see a shrinking of the geographic territory that headquarters the police.
So, I think if you're going to spend more money in gas, in vehicles, in time loss, and here we're talking about efficiencies, what efficiencies? Were we doing such a poor job before that all of a sudden we can rearrange everything and cut 20 or 30 or even 10 percent and still have a viable city? Forget the other cities that compare to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh has about 750,000 people in it during the day and in the evening about 400,000 of those people leave leaving us with the bill of course, most of it, to pay the bills. This is not a city of 300,000, this is a metropolitan area that serves closer to one million.
I don't see the opportunity to create that much efficiency unless we have had it right along. No smart businessman or mayor should stonewall any plan that would get us around this. There's money out there and some of our esteemed councilpeople have suggested ways, but I don't see anyone acting on them. I think it's time. The only thing our Mayor can do if he follows through with this ridiculous plan is to fire as many criminals as he does law officers then the safety budget could go down in this land of fantasy. I think it's time to reconsider because it involves the safety of everyone in this city.
Thank you.
Ms. Nixon:
I'd like to face and thank you all of my neighbors in this room here for coming here today. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with me, this is one thing that we can say about the City of Pittsburgh we begin the whole resurging of freedom. If we don't do this, we're going to loss it. When you get home tonight take time to thank the people who came before you.
One of the things that I found it very interesting that our city councilperson talks about the whole democratic process in terms of how you develop public policy. When we, for the last year, have been trying to have input into this, public hearings and everything, he totally ignored us. He said what does that got to do with what we're talking about. Do you know what we call in our community? We call this drive by with a pen. We use public policy. Now, that this individual is running for public office that now it's a issue.
It reminds me in the early '70's, I was so lucky to come from a NOW organization, those of you who are younger than me may understand, it was a woman's movement. I happen to stop in visit my great aunt. I was calling home to see if my children, was still calling me mom because we were out there in terms of trying to fight for the freedom in terms of females and I looked at a calendar. It was a calendar that was put out by some Hebrew group. What they did was, was very fascinating. They did a historic perspective of public policy and how the individuals lost their rights. It scared me, it was so profound. You say what does that mean, when I began to take a look at what was happening in my city and when in the common denominator was land use, it has nothing to do with public safety but to create a environment of fear and chaos. So, when you want to control, you create fear and chaos.
But, when we went to talk to our city council president to talk about what was happening in our community in terms of how we wanted to deal with this they had how many, five public hearings, he never come. People said what does that have to do with that, what does that have to do with it. What it has to do with look at the common denominator, isn't that funny with all the brains we have in the City of Pittsburgh I find it interesting that we are now have a problem with budget. The common denominator again is land, they get us all afraid about our safety. Look at it, now that we no longer -- I just find it very interesting. In order for our councilperson to develop this particular, we have programs that we're talking about. He was in cognizant with the Mayor, but now its something as important as --
Mr. Galavich:
Thank you, Mr. President.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Mike Galavich. I reside at 1211 Clearhaven Street in Crafton Heights section of the City of Pittsburgh.
I'm here this evening to voice my opposition to the closing of the Zone 4 police station in the West End and the merger with the Zone 3 on the South Side. It's common knowledge that the present Zone 4 has the largest area to cover in the City of Pittsburgh. By eliminating Zone 4, we will be increasing lag time between officers leaving roll call and getting to their assignments. During this change over, how long will our area be without coverage? When inclement weather occurs, how much more time will be lost? Those extra minutes could be the difference in a suspect being apprehended, a shooting, a home invasion being prevented, a life being saved. How much of a cost saving is there by closing Zone 4? The building is still going to be opened because the EMS station is still there. So, other than a few employees, not much.
The increase of vehicles at an already overcrowded Zone 3 will cause problems for the residents who live in the area surrounding the present Zone 3. Councilman Ricciardi has made a stop gap proposal to prevent layoffs and closures, the Administration turned it down immediately. This administration seems to be determined by its attitude that quality of life issues are unimportant to them by laying off workers, closing recreation centers, senior centers and police stations. How is a city are we to survive when the basic foundation of our city's services are being gutted before our very eyes.
Ladies and gentlemen if you think people are moving out in droves now, imagine when Zone 4 is closed. Where is the incentive to do business in our area or to live in our area with no police station, longer in response time? This can only bring a further exodus of taxpaying citizens and businesses. We need to keep Zone 4 opened. Thank you.
Mr. Lydon:
My name is John Lydon. I live at 1700 Stratmore, 2nd council district. These are my opinions.
Again, the second district is being dumped on. First, the unwanted WEHAV tax and now the closing of Zone 4 police station. I was just thinking, since we're a blighted area now, all of us, bring in the other eight and make them enjoy this WEHAV tax. You, Mayor, you're not here are playing political football with the lives of the people in my district and you, Mayor, will be held directly responsible for any calamity that may happen in this district.
Introduced Aug 26, 2003· City Council