Good afternoon, and welcome to the pre-agenda interviews for Wednesday, January twenty eighth, two thousand twenty-six for the Chief of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police and for the Director of Public Safety.

Would a clerk please read the title of the bills?

Bill seventeen, resolution appointing Jason Lando as the chief of the Bureau of Pittsburgh Police in Bill number twenty.

Resolution appointing Sheldon Williams as a director of the Department of Public Safety.

And thank you very much.

And for the record, we are joined by Councilman Wilson, Councilman Coghill, Councilman Sharlin, Count Councilwoman Select.

And Councilwoman Warwick.

If you would both be willing to introduce yourself, give us a little bit of background about yourselves, and why you're interested in being willing to serve.

So first of all, thank you, Counsel, for giving me the opportunity to come and be interviewed for this.

Um a little bit about me, one is this um, as you've heard in our interviews for those that I had the opportunity to interview with.

Um my excitement for coming back is because my love to serve.

Um, I served in the military right out of high school.

Immediately following that, I started serving in public service.

Um, first as a paramedic and then as a police officer, cross-trained in various other aspects of public safety.

I think you're fully aware based off of what I have reported to you and also in my bio.

Took a retirement from uh Pittsburgh Police to continue serving in my community as a pastor and did that for twelve years at a fairly large church on the north side as it's focused towards community, not only in my ministerial responsibilities.

And then after filling a time that I had accomplished some of those ministerial goals, I started serving the act in academia, serving students to continue on with that.

So that common thread is who I am.

It's what I've done my whole life, and coming back in this role is a continuance of that service.

I look to serve the members of the public safety, the men and women who work in public safety in all the bureaus and all the department, my administration that I'm responsible for.

You've heard me say many times, or may have heard me say I'm the bridge.

I feel that I'm the bridge and the connected piece, both to our public safety sector, to the community, to the administration and our public safety sector, but also my responsibilities also to those elective officials as you all are, the bridge to that as well, and making sure that we're accomplishing the goals of public safety and that we that I fully onboard the load, bridging those components, making sure that I'm sharing that responsibility broadly, and we're accomplishing the goals that we need to accomplish.

So thank you again for allowing me to be here and to be interviewed, and I look forward to the opportunity.

Hey, good afternoon.

I actually uh prepared a few comments if that's that's okay.

Uh President Lavelle and members of council, uh first of all, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

Uh I'm deeply honored to have been nominated to serve as your next chief of police for the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police.

Uh, and I'm really grateful for the trust that has been placed in me by Mayor O'Connor and his team.

Uh returning to Pittsburgh and to the Bureau of Police feels very much like coming home for me.

As you already know, uh I'm a Pittsburgh kid.

Born and raised in the city and a proud graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, I served as a police officer so far for almost 26 years.

For 21 of those years, I've had the privilege of serving the people of Pittsburgh in a variety of roles, learning firsthand the values, the challenges, and the strengths that make the Pittsburgh community a unique one.

Leaving Pittsburgh in 2021 to become the chief of police in Frederick, Maryland was definitely bittersweet for me.

It was an amazing experience where I had an opportunity to build new and innovative programs and learn the intricacies of the police chief's role.

I would not trade anything for my time uh in Frederick, but in the end, it was not home.

Since returning to Pittsburgh several weeks ago, I've had an opportunity to reconnect with many of the dedicated people I worked with during my career here.

And we've already begun the important work of moving the Bureau of Police forward on a number of different fronts.

Downtown safety, responding to and supporting our unhoused population, rethinking how we respond to mental health emergencies in the community, and of course, those dreaded abandoned cars.

This work requires a leader who knows and is closely connected to the Pittsburgh community.

Throughout my career, I've worked hard to build strong, authentic, and trusting relationships with the communities I've served.

Those relationships have led to programs and initiatives designed to care for those in mental health crisis, engaging marginalized and underrepresented groups, building relationships with our youth, and ensuring that our police officers have the tools and the support they need to do their jobs with both professionalism and compassion.

Equally important to me has been a focus on police officer wellness and resiliency, and I know I had the chance to speak with all of you about that.

I firmly believe our officers cannot take care of this community if we are not taking care of them.

Supporting their mental health, their training, and their professional growth and development is not just optional, but it's essential.

As excited I am, as excited as I am for the future, I do feel the need to address an incident that occurred in the recent past.

Over the last two years, as you are aware, I was the target of uh relentless harassment from one of my former officers in Maryland.

After holding that officer accountable for his unacceptable behavior while he was still employed with the police department.

I ultimately responded to this former officer in a way that is out of character for me.

As you are aware, I was cleared of wrongdoing and the matter has been closed, but I still felt that it was important to address that here today.

I'm very proud of the reputation I've earned working closely with the community members and police officers, both in Pittsburgh and in Frederick.

However, I am human.

I do regret my mistake, and I can assure you that was a very unique situation.

Uh it was a first in my career, and I can also assure you it will not happen again.

Moving forward, if given the opportunity to serve as Pittsburgh's next chief of police, my priorities will be clear.

I will focus on reducing violent crime and quality of life issues that impact residents' sense of safety and well-being.

I will work to support staff wellness, accountability, and professional development at every level of the Bureau of Police.

And I will seek innovative and forward-thinking approaches to recruitment and retention so that we can continue to attract and retain dedicated professionals who reflect and understand the community they serve.

I'm proud of my roots in Pittsburgh, very proud of the profession I have chosen, and I'm committed to serving the city with integrity, humility, and transparency.

Further, I'm committed to Pittsburgh and to the Bureau of Police for the long term.

I left a pretty amazing job to come back home, and I did so because Pittsburgh is my home, and I do not intend on leaving the city anytime soon.

I look forward to working in partnership with council, city leadership, department members, and our community to keep Pittsburgh safe and welcoming for all.

Thank you very much for your time and your consideration.

Thank you very much.

Let the record reflect we've also been joined by Councilman Schraussberger as well as Councilwoman Gross.

And before we can allow you to answer questions from members, you are both aware that your testimony has to be under oath.

So I now actually have to administer an oath to you.

So I'll begin with Mr.

Shot and Williams.

Do you, Mr.

Sheldon Williams, solemnly affirm that the testimony you are about to give before this council shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and do you further affirm that you will while and you will faithfully discharge the duties of the Department of Public Safety to which you have been nominated?

I do affirm.

Thank you very much.

And for the chief, do you, Jason Lando, solemnly affirm that the testimony you are about to give before this council shall be the truth, the whole truth, or nothing but the truth.

And do you further affirm that you will faithfully discharge the duties of the Bureau of Police to which you have been nominated?

I do.

Thank you very much.

With that, I'm gonna open it up to our public safety chair, and then we'll start at the top and work our way down.

Councilman Carcule.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Uh welcome, gentlemen.

I appreciate you being here.

Appreciate your service or your willingness to serve the city of Pittsburgh.

Um I'm gonna just start with most of my questions are gonna be for the both of you.

So I didn't know if we were gonna both take you together or singularly, so I'm glad you're here together.

Uh so we don't have to repeat.

But my first question is um just to be clear because of the issues we had in the past.

Neither one of you are going to take secondary employment, a salary from somebody else while working as chief or public safety director for the city of Pittsburgh.

Absolutely not.

I won't take another salary, but I want to make you aware that I'm still an instructor.

I had worked out with the uh mayor's office, I teach a class at at the university.

Um, but that's the commitment of my extra work.

No, I I understand that, Mr.

Williams, and and that does not include in my eyes, at least training.

Uh I know Chief Jones also, you know, we we like to spread our expertise around to other municipalities if we can, and if it requires a paycheck for accommodations for you to go somewhere to train or do something as you just said, that's not a problem.

I'm talking full-time job that's going to take you away from your duties here.

So full-time commitments to the city of Pittsburgh understood others.

Understood.

Absolutely.

Great, great, great, great, great.

So I'll start with you, Chief Lando.

You've been acting now for a month.

Pretty much.

Yes.

About a month.

So what is what do you see the needs or deficiencies or attributes?

Just your perspective as to the Pittsburgh Police Department, what we might need to do to improve it, things we can improve on.

Just a general some summarization.

Yeah, in all the meetings and events that I've been to, I really hit on four key points.

And one is to continue to drive down both violent and quality of life crimes.

I was very happy uh when I came back to see the the numbers, the violent crime numbers are down significantly, but that doesn't mean we just you know stop.

We have to keep on it.

Quality of life crimes uh as well.

Uh a second priority that I talk about a lot is officer wellness.

Um I think in the past several years, you've seen a lot of things come out that show that um that we need as a profession to do a better job of taking care of those that are taking care of the community.

Um back in Frederick, we were able to build a pretty innovative program and bring in a full-time individual whose entire job it was to take care of the mental health and wellness of our officers, and that is one of my goals here.

Uh third is professional development.

Um we have a lot of young, new supervisors, and I want to make sure that they're prepared not just to supervise, but to truly lead.

So those sergeants and lieutenants and commanders that we're putting out there are leading the right way, and the officers that we recruit into the department have true role models to look up to.

And then finally of the four kind of key pillars would be the recruitment and the retention.

So recruitment's great, but if people come here and they're not seeing something that they like and that they're comfortable with, they're going to go somewhere else.

So I think the recruitment and the retention piece are both equally as important.

We want to make sure that we are building a department that people want to stay at for twenty or more years, and that we're not uh, as people have referred to, we're not the farm team where they come here, they get great training, they get great experience for two or three years, and then they go off to the suburbs.

Uh and so uh looking at those four things are going to be the big priorities over the next year or two.

Good deal.

Just elaborate a little bit on the wellness uh officer.

I know you had that in Frederick, and I know you're a big believer in it, and I know a lot, if not most major municipalities have such a person, professional person.

And that is in my eyes, and correct me if I'm wrong, that is a person to deal with if a police officer, one of our police officers in a is in a uh shooting or is um you know, a fatal shooting or whatever it is, just the rigors that come along with the job, it's kind of like a therapist for them to talk to.

Is that correct?

Right.

So this isn't someone that they that we just you send an officer to after a critical incident.

This person, and the reason I feel so passionate about bringing them into the agency is making sure that they're embedded as part of the fabric of the agency so they're they are uh known and uh officers feel comfortable with them.

And I I should say that there is someone doing this work on a part-time basis now, uh and and she would be a very integral part of the team, so I don't want to take anything away from the work she's doing.

But to have you know one part-time person doing this for seven or eight hundred people, it it just isn't enough.

So this person would coordinate um all of the wellness programs and would also be a an actual clinician.

Um they would go to roll calls, they would go out on ride-alongs.

They really need to get to know the officers so the officers feel comfortable talking to them.

Um I can tell you that when we implemented this in Maryland, um initially, you know, people were like, oh, we don't we don't need that here.

And and uh and by the end of the first year, we had several officers actively signed up for regular therapy, which I never thought we'd see.

And so it just shows that it is badly needed, even if people don't really want to admit it.

Um but this person's role initially would be to build the program uh and to be a clinician, and then as we're able to grow it, the goal is that this person would kind of be the manager or the director, and we'd have several clinicians, but that's gonna probably take years to bring to full fruition.

And we talked about that in private as we talked about all things considered.

It comes with being the chief.

Uh does that person have to have a license of some sort?

Is this or is this a professional, you know, yes, this is not a sworn member of the department.

This is a licensed clinician and a licensed clinician.

Clinician.

Is that the licensed clinician and also um HIPAA?

Uh it's important to say HIPAA would apply.

So um if someone signs up to have, you know, if they're doing a ride along and they're just having a conversation, that's one thing.

But if this person signs up to actually seek regular ongoing therapy, then like the chiefs and the director, no one would get to know who that is.

It would be they'd be HIPAA-protected.

Yeah, but because the person is a clinician.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And that is one of the things that you you you had in Frederick.

You had a full-time We we were able to do that for uh my my last we were able to onboard that person in my last year, so I I got the chance to um write the job description, interview on board the person and be there for for a full year to kind of watch um to watch the program come to fruition.

And it was just really um it was it was really neat to see how uh officers began to um change their views on mental health and to warm up to this person and you know, someone brand new comes in, you know, the cops.

I say there's two things that a lot of cops don't like the way things are right now and anything different.

Um and so but you see, like over time, this person we we picked the right person, and I think that's key is picking the right person.

Right.

And um and it got to the point where this person would just jump into cars and go out on ride-alongs, go show up at roll call and was accepted and and welcomed into the agency.

Right.

And so that would be the goal here.

I'm glad to hear that officers and Frederick were reluctant about it as well because I've gotten the same thing from the rank and file here.

I will tell you, we don't need that person, right?

Who do we need that person for?

Uh you know, I don't need a therapist, I don't need a psychiatrist, whatever, you know, the impression of it is.

So I'm glad to hear that they were reluctant, but then warmed up to it, and you find it to be a vital piece.

And as I told you in private, I'll do everything I can because we want you to succeed in the way you feel.

You know, you need to succeed in the in the city of Pittsburgh.

So um whatever that position or positions um come with as far as financial, you know, uh payroll, um, then we'll try to get you that position.

Um you said we have one part time now, and that's great and fine, and whether we elevate her or get you somebody else that's uh yet to be seen, but you'll have my commitment that we'll try to get you that because I want you to have everything you need to succeed.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

And Mr.

Williams, I'm not gonna go on too long because there's a lot of members here, of course, but um I want to specifically talk to you and obviously I want you to chime in, Chief afterwards.

Um recruitment and retention, you know, I have had this conversation.

I love what you say about it.

We do not want to be a farm club.

Um I've been battling this for the longest time, whether it's um this goes back to Wendell His Rich and then through Lee Schmidt.

We can't somehow find a way.

For me, it would be when you sign up for the Pittsburgh police and we decide to put you through our expensive training, best training, best training.

I I feel like we have amongst any police department, at least in the state of Pennsylvania.

I would like a commitment, you know, a five year commitment from that recruit.

Um apparently we can't do that legally right now.

Um I would just like that commitment from you because I know you feel strongly about it as well.

And I also want you to address retention.

How do we keep from losing police officers?

We say retired, but truth is 80 percent of our police officers that retire take employment elsewhere, and because you know, they're going on the greener pastures, they qualify for our pension and now they're gonna work for the county or uh the DA's office or some other municipality.

I know because I know a lot of the police chiefs, and it's an ongoing kind of humorous joke with us.

You know, we got got another one of your men or women this week, you know, and that's I'm like, well, thanks a lot, you know, just leave them alone for a little bit because we're suffering in numbers.

And so I would like to know, number one, are you committed to trying to get new recruits to stay?

Number two, what your strategy is to keep the officers that have been here for a long time.

So I I will say first of all, um my efforts in recruiting.

Um I've done that previously, um, participated with um with with HR and and working alongside them to cre find creative ways to to do recruiting before I got into this role.

This is when I was a police officer, um, actively participated, um, and try to think through some ways.

I worked alongside director Kellerman um back in the day before she was director, um, and trying to have some of these creators.

So I say it because I feel it was important about getting out and very, very strategic about how do we go out to really communicate that this is a a great place to work where people will want to come.

Um so it's gonna be very important.

I'm in exactly what I said.

I I I struggle, and I say struggle to be kind with words, um, to see the investment we put into our public servants, specifically our police officers, and then they go off someplace else.

I think Pittsburgh is one of the best places to work, not because I'm a Pittsburger.

Um there's just all the cross opportunities you have within the department for which is one of those valuable reasons why people handpick individuals from our department.

So one of the big issues is that, you know, when it comes retaining them, yes about retention, they're they're going on to other things.

It's not because there's other areas that they just desire to work, some of it has to do with the pay and stuff like that.

And so I want us to be looking and addressing some of those burdens that our police officers have for wanting and desiring to be here.

I also want to have some better opportunities of communicating to our own residents who who vibe here and with the city of Pittsburgh to make sure that they make this a career choice with through all of our bureaus, like our police fire in the EMS and and want them to find that as an attractive career opportunity.

We see across the board, all across the country, people aren't going to public service like they used to.

When I took the test, there was about three thousand people that took that test.

We don't see those numbers anymore.

So I want to bring back the interest.

Um, and so if we do that, grow the interest, some of the ways of of doing that is like not just doing career fairs, like you know, can we do mentoring or modeling type of where we can demonstrate that these are the different ways, not just on a one-on-one, give you a pamphlet and say this is police work, like can we really intro and find a way to to really give them a good look into what police work is or the opportunities that exist that might grow some interest, and then follow on on with that, like who's tracking these individuals who have shown some initial interest and are we still incubating that interest within them?

And I say that broadly.

Um also too, like if we can have some better on ramps.

I know we have some veteran officers and stuff too, and again, it gets to be difficult to say, you know, for some of the reasons why officers are leaving, but that's fine if there is a pool of individuals who want to come here, and we can find some easier ways to get some of those who are already trained to come to serve with us as well.

So growing our department is gonna take some work, but I want to put intentional work to have people who do this who might be doing it more so than just one-offs that have a heart and a passion towards recruit recruitment and give them the tools necessary to go out there and to be able to attract those who want to come and work for us.

But and my thoughts on that, just so you know, and we shared this together is number one the Pittsburgh Police Department has opportunities where you could elevate to a sergeant, a lieutenant, a commander, a chief.

Um, you know, if you're going to Bethel Park or Mount Lebanon, you're gonna make more money.

We can't compete with them, their salary.

We just can't do it, and it's gonna be a long time if we can ever do that.

So we do have opportunity here that you don't have another, you're just basically a patrol person in those other municipalities.

Um you might have sergeant or something of that nature, but there's not a room for an advancement like we have in the city of Pittsburgh.

So that's attractive.

But I think we need to aggressively recruit.

I'm glad to hear you say about job fares.

I don't think they're effective.

I think we need to get into our schools and to just you know the communities.

I'd like to recruit from the inner city, like to create recruit Pittsburgh residents to and and really you got to teach them what an admirable profession it is, and that's taking a hit over the past five years at least.

Okay.

Um so there's a lot of challenges there.

And as you said, used to be that convention center would be filled, two, three thousand uh, you know, applicants.

Now, you know, there's maybe maybe thirty, forty if we if we're lucky to show interest.

So the profession in general has taken a hit, and you know, for a lot of reasons.

Um but salary, we have a hard time keeping up with you mentioned you were a pastor.

Um is that full time?

Is that just that's just on you still are you still doing that work?

I'm not pastoring right now.

No, I do some mentoring for younger pastors who like to come on and vet their call, but not I'm not pastoring at all.

Okay.

I'm mundane still.

But okay, and I'll just uh give you a chance and then I'll see to other members to um comment on the recruitment and retention if you if you want to add anything.

I mean, just add one thing.

So we've already started the work of creating unemployee advisory committee.

I think it's really important.

I think one of the things, you know, if we can't afford to to pay more and and do some of like the the shiny things, I think something that means a lot to our officers is just like having a say in how their police department uh operates and hearing some of their frustrations and just being available to them.

So we uh we've already put out the solicitation uh for anyone who's interested, and we're gonna pick representation from across the entire police department, and we're gonna meet monthly, and this is gonna be our frontline staff, so police officers and our civilian staff meeting with the chief and the assistant chiefs.

Um and that's so we can hear directly from them like what do they need out, whether it's out in the street every day, you know, if they're detectives, uh, you know, in their daily work, what do they need to feel more supported?

And I think when when they feel like they're being heard and they have a voice in how their own department operates, the morale comes up, and I think morale more than money is one of the biggest things in policing.

That people I don't you don't see a lot of people that leave departments to chase dollar signs, they leave for better working conditions.

And so the whole point of this employee advisory committee is so we can hear directly from them, unfiltered what they need to be supported, and and and the chiefs can start implementing those things.

No doubt.

And I just got a couple comments.

Um you come with a very good reputation.

I didn't know you before you came here, but I do know a lot of the rank and foul, and it's hard for me to find somebody on the in the rank and file that has a bad word to say about you.

So that is a big big bonus.

And you know, usually those voices come out, even if you know, so I haven't heard any negativity.

You come with a uh stellar reputation.

You were one of three finalists when we did the national search.

Um it was me who called you after we lost the chief.

You remember that?

So I take some credit for bringing you here.

I remind the mayor of that, okay.

And I told him you were willing to come back, as you told me on the phone that night.

So uh he wasn't the mayor then, but of course, so I'll take some credit for that.

Um and uh and Mr.

Williams, our mutual friend, uh, you know, with EMS that I told you I would call.

And you know, you and I didn't know each other either, but I've seen you had good conversations with you so far.

I've seen you in public.

I appreciate and I think you have good leadership skills from what I know and what I see.

He gave you a ringing endorsement, I will tell you, as you suspected.

So uh so that's all good.

One final question, and then I'll let move on to somebody else.

What do you see as a right size police force?

I believe we're somewhere around 740 right now.

My personal opinion is 900.

I would just like to know your thoughts on that or just throw a number up.

So I mean without actually you know doing an analysis and getting in a number so just anecdotally you know I would like to see us back at 900 um if that's possible.

Just as I go around to all the stations and and all the work units um if we want to be able to provide all of the and I perhaps the extra stuff isn't the right word but for lack of a better term you know you know I'm really big in community engagement.

We have to make sure we're out in the street answering the calls um responding to emergencies before we do any anything else.

If we want to get back to that point where we can be everywhere doing all of the things that the community expects I do think that um you know 900 and that will also help with uh you know overtime and wear and tear and exhaust with with officers.

I mean right now they're being forced certain overtimes I will say one other thing I heard you were chasing criminals in the Southside on foot since you've been back we need you to be healthy.

We don't need you to pull up with uh you know a pulled hamstring or anything on the job so I know you can't help yourself but uh but good work and uh yeah so uh that's it for me now Mr.

President I I appreciate you both being here I find you both highly qualified and you know um very very uh looking forward to working with you thank you sir thank you very much Councilman Schlossberger thank you Mr.

President thank you both for being here and thank you for your um willingness to serve in your respective roles thank you um I know that neither of them is easy and so I'll start with a question for both of you and this is something that you that I discussed with each of you when we met one on one and that's discussing how you approach not just community engagement but community trust building during a time when I would say that trust in law enforcement could be uneven at best.

What's your approach?

What are some strategies that you know work what are some ideas that you can bring from previous experiences or that build on that we you know uh building on existing programs or ideas that we have here going.

Thank you council member um Shawzberg um I will say first of all that um uh in experientially um as a younger person growing up in and around uh Pittsburgh um and also with work and I also navigated some of the more adversarial times we had between our public servants and our communities um and working towards those getting to those healthier places I can tell you as an attestment to the work that has been done in our public servants um even moving forward I saw us grow um through some of those tough times but the continual work even after I departed the department uh I had reached out um he was commander then Jason and I have history um well before he he worked with the police department um because he had a start in EMS as well not with the city um but I reached out because we were we were friends and I commended him on his great work in a very tough place to be able to build those relationships.

I say that because I have firsthand experience my wife being born and raised in an area of the city that saw some of those more troubling type of relationships and seeing that um though what had existed um in her experience and my experience back then and see where it is now.

But that speaks to the great effort not only just with um Chief Lando it's also with the the men and women that worked alongside us so I embrace all those efforts um and growing with community but I'll say that any philosophical approaches that I would bring to what we do to make sure that we continue to connect in community I've expressed to you as that philosophically I'm gonna say from a broader there are three ways I think that we can engage with community and especially how we roll out and we do things with community we can do for the community we can do to the community but I want us to do things with the community.

And I'm gonna search and find those collaborative and cooperative ways.

And it's not just with one off programming like really trying to to strategize ways to strengthen what works well but also grow these opportunities when you talk about the trust bonds they exist.

I was pleased to see and I mean this across all the zones that I went to I mean I have uh I'm looking intently and hearing listening intently to what people were saying and across the board what I say stepping into this there's great work that has been done across our zones all of your districts where I've heard people just make you know the how much they they embrace and I understand there might still be some some challenges out there but it is a healthy thing to be stepping into given some of those things that I talked about historically.

So to that, I want to preserve that and grow it.

And that's what I say from a very philosophical approach.

What are we doing with our community?

And that's embracing these opportunities that our public servants feel that they're integral, they're a stakeholder in our communities.

You know, and when we serve, we're doing this because we do this because it is our not only is this our duty, it is also how we care because we're part of the community.

And I want to make sure that that's that's embraced and emboldened in ways that our our citizens understand that our public servants are right there beside them.

Thank you.

Uh, two words that come to mind um are partnership and uh transparency.

And I think that's something years ago our profession wasn't particularly great at.

Uh like the director uh talked about, we did things to the community and and for the community, but not necessarily with them.

So one of the things that I'm really big on is partnering, um partnering with the community.

So when I was the zone five commander, we established uh what was called the commander's cabinet of community leaders, uh, where every other month we would get together and we would do something just to touch on what what's happening in policing right now, what questions do people have?

How do we build better relationships, just really be open and transparent so the community could ask questions?

When I went to Frederick, uh we kind of uh did the same thing in we created the chief's community advisory board, and every quarter we we brought in about 50 community members and we really let them decide what they wanted to hear about.

We would put a survey out ahead of time.

If there was a high profile use of force incident somewhere in the country, that would maybe be the focus of the the topic that evening.

We allowed the entire group to run through shoot, don't shoot, shoot scenarios so they could understand um from a unique perspective what an officer faces when they're in a situation where they have to decide whether or not you know to to fire their weapon.

Um so we did a lot of education and they educated us as well.

It was a two-way street.

So a lot of transp uh transparency uh in in those partnerships.

Um of the other things that we did uh that that I thought was was phenomenal, and I'd love to look at implementing it here is we started uh multicultural liaison unit and we picked five different communities from around Frederick that we felt had the most strained relationship with the police, and it's gonna be different in every city.

For instance, in Frederick, one of those communities was the deaf and hard of hearing community because the Maryland School for the Deaf was in Frederick.

That might not be one of the communities that we select here necessarily, but um our LGBT community, our our um our uh African American community, our Hispanic community, and our Asian community were the five that we identified.

And we um we made sure there were officers that volunteered to be liaisons to those communities, and they would go to meetings and events.

If there was a high profile incident, they would go out and they would do some of that that work uh uh after the incident to uh you know figure out how we could do outreach or rebuild trust, whatever it was.

So I think identifying liaisons to certain marginalized communities um is really important.

It makes those helps those communities feel like they have a voice in the police department.

So again, a number of examples, um, but it all comes back to just being willing to be a partner and be open and transparent.

Uh, just one last thing I want to touch on because I'm really big in it, is um is youth outreach and engagement.

Um of the things that we did in zone five when I was commander there was we built a uh a youth outreach program where we would actually go into some of the schools, we went into Westinghouse.

It was really cool how how it worked out, but we knew a lot of these kids when they would see officers in uniform, they'd feel they they'd be apprehensive.

So we would take 10 officers at a time, about 10 officers, and we'd go into the library and we would meet with 10 or 15 students, and this was all worked out with the school ahead of time, it was all predetermined who the kids would be.

But we didn't wear uniforms, and uh, and we let the the kids come in, and all they knew is that we were the guest speakers for the day.

And we ate lunch with them and we hung out with them, and after about a half an hour, they're like, Yeah, you guys are pretty cool.

So, who are you?

And then we'd say, Oh, okay, here I'm gonna introduce myself.

My name's Commander Lando, I'm the Zone 5 police commander, and like the like the room just fell silent.

And then the next person, I'm Sergeant So and so, I'm officer so and so.

And by the third person, it was always, are you all cops?

And we're like, Yes, we are.

And they're like, but you're cool.

So, like, how can you all be cops?

And we're like, see, that's the thing.

Like, you only know us as police, you don't know us as human beings.

And so um, I'd love to look for ways to um do some of that youth out, you know, get back to doing that youth outreach work.

Again, we talk about staffing.

I just right now I don't have ten people to take into a school, they're out answering calls.

I'd love to get back to a place where we have the staffing to do innovative programs like that.

Because we at the end of the day, when we would talk to these kids and compare their comments to the beginning of the day, it was it was unbelievable to hear their comments.

And that was after spending three hours with them.

So can you imagine if we had like a really robust program where we had them for weeks or months at a time, um, how we could impro improve those relationships?

So that would be one of the goals.

Thank you both.

This next question is um I think mostly for acting chief Lando, but acting director, please step in if you'd like as well.

Um, on the mind of many of my constituents, um, and many more residents throughout the city is the presence of federal agents in the form of ICE, border control, and adjacent agencies and the possibility that many more agents could come to our city in the future.

Can you clarify the policy of the Bureau of Police and with regard to cooperation with ICE and with regard to information gathering or sharing of a person's immigration status?

Yes.

So as I said, I I've been a police officer for going on 26 years now.

In my entire career, I've never asked someone's immigration status.

This is not a new thing for the Bureau of Police.

Um it's unfortunate to see what's happening now, um, but it's not a new thing for the Pittsburgh police.

Um you know, it wasn't for most police departments, I think they have very similar most major city police departments have very similar policies.

Our job is not immigration enforcement.

Um I've never like I said, we've never asked someone's immigration status.

Our job is to protect and serve the residents of Pittsburgh and to respond to crimes in progress or you know, follow up on crimes.

Um it's just not I I'm just trying to think of the best way to convey this.

We we don't have an interest in in immigration enforcement.

Um if we were to be called to a scene during a crisis situation or an emergency, like some of the things you see on TV.

We have a legal and a moral obligation to respond, assess the situation, and then get out of there as quickly as possible.

And that's that is what we have told our um our officers.

And as a matter of fact, should I get on the radio?

Well, they don't have our radios, but should they call 911 and and request us to respond?

A supervisor must go and assess the situation.

And if it's not a life-threatening situation or a situation that needs to be um addressed right now, like they're just calling for a transport, let's say we leave, we don't do transports.

Um I just want to be very cautious about not putting police officers in a situation where they could be charged or investigated or or held accountable by the federal government because um they are refusing to respond in a critical incident.

And so the only time that Pittsburgh police would ever go is if someone's yelling for us in an emergency, and that would just we would go to assess the situation and make sure that no one's getting hurt.

Um, and then that is it.

Um there was one other thing I wanted to to touch on with that.

Oh for me, I think it's very important that I want everyone in the city of Pittsburgh to feel comfortable picking up the phone and calling 911 if they need the police.

I don't ever want to hear about a situation where someone didn't call for help because they were so worried that the first thing the Pittsburgh police were gonna ask when they got there was immigration status.

And so and the other thing is we we've spent so much time and so much effort trying to build relationships in our communities.

This would be like us throwing that all out the window and taking steps backwards if we if I were to say, yeah, we're gonna take up immigration enforcement as one of our duties.

We we just don't do that.

But I just wanted to be really clear about we we also can't intervene and prevent federal agents from doing their jobs to do so would risk our police officers being federally charged with with a crime potentially, and as their chief, I can't put them in that situation.

And I simply want to, as a matter of record for your hearing, but also as a matter of record, that everything that the chief has said, I openly endorse and embrace.

Um this mayor's been very clear.

Mayor O'Connor has been very clear that he wants a welcoming city, that we will not collaborate or coordinate any efforts with ICE or these federal law enforcement officers, and you will not get an edict from me that would change from that.

Um exactly what the chief's approach is to ensuring the safety.

Um it's incumbent upon our public servants to do that.

Notwithstanding, we want across the board and all of our public safety bureaus, but this one being challenging for our law enforcement officers.

We want to be a welcoming city.

And anybody who would embrace something differently that we would challenge that firmly and to ensure that that we're carrying that out to the fullest extent.

Thank you.

I know some of my colleagues my other colleagues will have questions on that topic.

So I'll leave that topic for now and if there are any other questions I have second round, I'll ask them.

So shifting gears to my next question.

I we've talked about recruitment.

Um in 2020, 2021, there was a lot of discussion in the city and on council around strategies for recruitment to attract officers who are committed to a guardian mindset versus the you know the the warrior mindset.

And so um it I wanted to get your thoughts on the best ways to go about doing that and finding the people who are um uh are gonna fit that that character, a characteristic.

So several years ago, I was actually asked to I was one of the lead instructors on Pittsburgh's procedural justice initiative where we trained the entire department in the concepts of of procedural justice, and we talked about just those things.

Um I think you know, obviously recruitment and finding the right candidates are very important.

Um, but I also think the way we run our training academy and and our field training program is equally as important.

We want to make sure from day one we're instilling those values in the officers.

Um I have to just anecdotally I'll just share with you that since I've been back, obviously there's a lot of people I know and I remember, but there's a lot of fresh faces.

Uh I joke around, I was stopped by a call in the Hill District yesterday, I think it was yesterday, and uh five officers arrived as backup because it was supposed to be a violent domestic and they got out of their cars, and I was like, I've never seen any of you before.

Um but I kind of just took a step back and let them handle the situation and I watched the way they de-escalated and the way they talked to the the um the female half and the male half, and there was a child involved and the way they uh you know were kind of um protecting the child.

And I was just so impressed because I think back to 25 or 26 years ago.

I mean, we spent almost 45 minutes in the House trying to de-escalate the situation.

I just don't remember that 25 years ago.

I remember like, all right, like someone's going to jail now because we we need to get on to the next call.

So I know that's just one example, but I use as that example because I think that our academy staff right now is really doing the right thing to make sure that these officers hit the street with that guardian mindset.

And every call that I've been on and stopped by the past few days, the past few weeks, I've just watched the officers operate, and I'm like, wow, these guys and ladies get it.

Like they're they're really good.

So um I think it goes back to the training, and then the other part of it is holding officers accountable when they don't do the right thing.

Um I haven't had very much disciplinary action come across my desk in the past month that I've been here.

Um the stuff that has been mostly like discourtesy type stuff, and that is the conversation I have with those officers is like the trust in our the police department rises and falls on how people feel they're being treated by the police, and so I don't the discourtesy stuff does not work for me.

Um but again, I just I think that our academy is really on point in doing the right thing, and uh, that's just something that I I know we need to stay on top of.

Thank you.

I would echo that as well.

I mean, um and making sure and ensuring that care, what does care look like for our constituency?

It's not just in your duties, but how we care for people.

I just would be very um forward-leaning into making sure that we had a culture that that cares for people and any efforts that would devalue people, even in the in the commission of doing your duties would would be a stand against that.

And so um I uh openly embrace and and um what Chief Lander was saying, but I want to say this too that that is the number one complaint against police officers, not use of force, it's discourtesy, you know, and sometimes how our approach is and just in interrelating with people.

And so um by making sure and ensuring that how we continue those relationships, and again, uh there are times where things escalate.

Some people don't like to be told firmly sometimes.

That's not the times I'm talking about.

Um, but just being careful that how we relate them with one another, sometimes and those exchanges could stop or thwart a lot of things just based on how people experience how you care for them.

So I would continue to to encourage that.

Thank you both.

Last question.

Thanks to my colleagues for indulging me.

Um I know that we all know that part of public safety is um traffic safety and feeling safe and comfortable when you're traveling our streets, regardless of the mode of transportation.

Um we also know that between 2018 and 2022, fatal crashes increased by 71% in Pittsburgh while homicides decreased.

So what can we do to ensure that officers are helping to rein in unsafe driving all over the city?

Um we've done great work engineering our roads and continuing to engineer our roads in our traffic uh intersections to make them safer, and there's much more work to do, but part I do I do believe that part of that um is is enforcement, ensuring that people know that they're going to they're going to pay some sort of a price if they are driving recklessly, are speeding, are passing people onto lane roads, are running stop signs and red lights and just putting people's lives in danger.

What can we do to to to um bolster that further?

Um I'm gonna sorry no go for it.

Um I'm saying specifically, and I know um councilmember warwick will um ask some questions, but because you raised that and she had raised it in our meeting that um I embrace the concepts of having these methodologies um where we're trying to uh be more safe on our streets, and I know that it comes with some burden from some people um in our communities, but I witness myself like uh how fast people travel around our streets, and it's unsafe for our kids and and stuff like that.

It's part of public safety.

So I want to I would approach it with a very balanced approach and make sure that public safety is participating in those conversations, getting our heads around the understanding why they need to happen, and also bringing forth some of the issues that public safety would have as we're putting some of the traffic calming measures in and work collaboratively.

And so I just want to give you my assurances um from somebody that has to lead those departments broadly that I embrace the concepts of that because it is a aiding public safety, but I want to make sure that um I'm also bringing to the table some of the concerns and stuff that public safety was so that we're working collaboratively with those teams that are rolling these things in.

So that's my commitment.

Uh thank you.

Just two things come to mind.

First is making sure that our supervisors, when we get complaints, um that those uh complaints are being assigned and addressed in a timely fashion.

Um, you know, I say officers like enjoy doing all types of different things.

Not everyone likes to do traffic, but it is part of their job.

And so if we have traffic complaints um that they're assigned by the supervisors and they're held accountable for addressing those complaints.

And so I think that's um that's one thing.

The other thing is um that goes to safety for both the officers and the motorists is looking at new technologies that are out there.

I know uh right now there's discussions about red light cameras.

Um just today before I came here, I was on a meeting with a tech company that um does, and I don't know how they do it because I'm not a tech person, but they they literally can do like real-time speed mapping over uh an entire geographical area.

So uh we can is the as law enforcement we can go on and see like okay, right now what are what are the what are the speeds on the certain roadways, where are the the where are the red, orange, yellow, green areas, where are the red areas that we can send people to right now because we're seeing people are uh exceeding the speed limit, driving dangerously.

Just so you know, this is uh this was the first time I heard of this, it's pretty interesting.

It has nothing to do with cameras or monitoring or anything.

They're they actually use technology that's already like in vehicles that that are out there drive.

Have you heard of this?

It's pretty interesting.

Um they're out there driving around and they can aggregate this data and say, hey, like right now on Route 51, like we're seeing the average speed is 60 some miles per hour based on pulling all this data from actual motorists.

And that'll allow us to say, okay, well, it five o'clock today, this is where we're seeing the the issues, this is where we're gonna send our resources.

So it helps us kind of as a force multiplier to address those those traffic issues.

So I think for us it's just being diligent, staying on top of those things.

That's great.

Thank you.

Look forward to the uh finding out the average speed of Bigelow Boulevard.

We'll see them here.

So okay.

That that exhausts my questions.

I appreciate you both answering the questions and being here today.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you, Councilman Wilson.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

I apologize.

I'm gonna ask one question.

I have another engagement to get to.

Absolutely.

And uh with that, I want to ask each of you uh what's something that happened in your career that uh changed how you lead.

So what's something that happened in your career that changed how you lead?

Um for me, I'd shared with a couple of council members.

Um become becoming a pastor actually helped and I think helps me in this capacity where I'm at now, and I'll and I'll share.

Um I have a pretty you know wide array of public service experience.

You see that um serving in that capacity actually widen my perspective when it comes to care, and I think that informs me differently, like having a different opportunity to really get into the lived experience with people, walking alongside people and and and journeying with people along a timeline that's different than when he just going and serving, serving him as a public servant, um, really gave me a wider perspective of what does care mean.

I mean, and and then two, you've done something like that.

And I'm also a therapist, you know, um, I retooled as well, have a counseling and master's in counseling.

So it it just widens a perspective for me.

And that's one thing that changed in my leadership because I think I it it allowed me to have some additional tools to inform how I lead Brian because of what it my requirements are, especially with so much that is required in public safety as I'm coming to learn.

Um there's so much that's involved there.

So about me having those opportunities, I think just having that experiential opportunity to walk as that has been a better informing aspect that helps me to lead today.

For me, I would say it was when I was promoted to commander uh back in 2014.

Uh up until then I was an officer, a detective, a sergeant, and a lieutenant.

I was very internally focused.

So uh, you know, whether it was working with officers, leading officers as a sergeant, leading shift as a lieutenant, you tend to be very internally focused, and you um and you think about like more of the law and order side of policing, you know, hey, let's go out there and write some tickets today, let's make we're getting complaints about drugs on this corner, let's go make some arrests.

It wasn't until I became a commander and I went out to zone five where you really start you're that's the first time you're really in a position where um you are with the community just as much as you're with your officers.

And that definitely changed my perspective on things because when you hear from the community, they say, yes, we don't want guns on our street, we don't want drugs on our street, but we also feel like sometimes when you're in our neighborhoods that you're an occupying force and we're just as scared of the police as we are of the bad guys.

And the first time I heard that I was like, what?

You know, it just it opened my eyes.

And as you start to build those relationships with the community, you realize, and that's why I go back to it has to be a partnership, like we really have to start viewing the community as our partners, and that's why we did so much of that work back in 2014, 15, 16.

Um, I hope I got the years right.

I'm pretty sure I got the years right.

Um, and and I'm also very proud now to see these younger officers are having that instilled in them at a much earlier age because it took me a long time to learn that.

And um, and so I think watching these officers and the way they operate now, and they they have that community caretaker mindset rather than the we're gonna go out and police over the community, we're gonna police with them.

Um I wish I would have had that a lot younger on the job, but when I became commander, and I'm not gonna use any names here, but I know this person's probably watching and gonna text me and say, you know, that's me that taught you that.

Um a very close community member out in zone five.

Um but that's for me, that's what shifted in in my career.

So thanks for those answers.

And I look forward to uh working with each of you, and we'll definitely work through a lot together uh in the coming years.

So thanks for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Sharle.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh thank you guys for being here today.

Um thank you for your willingness to serve.

Um as I said the zone three public safety meeting, you know, these are the the most important hires of Mayor O'Connor, and I think that there's a reason why all of us felt the need to dig out our cars and and get here today.

Uh you know, for for your your meetings here, because the you know the often after the um, you know, after the the mayor himself, it's it's you or you know, the individuals that that a lot of folks interact with and see as the city and and are in front of the cameras.

So these are you know really important positions that I think we all we all take very seriously here.

I'm gonna set up my questions.

I I've got some for uh acting director Williams and some for acting director Lando, and then a couple for for both of you, um if that's okay, and we'll start with uh Mr.

Williams here.

Um so one of the things that uh as we've kind of all talked or uh as other members have asked questions here, um we've talked a lot about policing.

You you've brought up policing a lot.

But policing is really only a portion of the role that you take.

You've got all the other bureaus, fire, eBas, animal control, all the other things that are in your department there.

How how do you plan on making sure that you know uh although I've heard you talk a lot about policing that uh you're not a second police chief.

So um, and don't choose to be either um I'll leave you get it.

Um so uh I g uh one of my aspect and when we talked about because some of the question was kind of geared towards that, and so um I also tried to say philosophically how would lead across the bureaus.

Um one of the things that I one of the things that I value bringing to this position is I've served in multiple aspects as a paramedic as a police officer.

I did very minimal amount as a I'm a trained national firefighter as well.

Um and I did very minimal with that, and I've told my fire counterparts that um I respect what they do and I will stay away from it because of it, but I experienced with um fire fighting.

But reason why I mean I'm I'm being somewhat emergency management as well in Hazmat.

I mean I was one of the few, if not the first.

I don't know that for Pittsburgh's team.

I was the first police officer, I think, to be um actually a member of our goal team.

Um I don't know that to be absolutely accurate, but I pressed to be a part of our hazmat team.

Why did I do those things?

Um I like interoperability and interagency cooperation is one of the reasons why I went forward.

I had an understanding of some things.

Um I went back to get trained in fire, and I explained in my interview.

Um it was after 9-11.

One of the things that I sh that that impacted me the most was that um the the interagency cooperation, and I'm not criticizing it, but um did that contribute to um not being able to do some of the rescues and stuff because of some of the things that the burdens of how people connect.

I look forward to the opportunities to do that to across the board to weave together our bureaus to work more collaboratively.

I talked about making sure back when I was um in a bureau, we had um training opportunities where we had all the resources coming together to train together.

I want to provide those opportunities moving forward, but also I think I have a sensitive ear.

I can hear things differently, not somewhat from a siloed one bureau only.

Um I can hear from them and understand some of the language.

I don't know all things um when it comes to those different bureaus to even include policing, uh, but I do have a sensitivity.

But my antenna raises high based off of certain things that they say.

So I think that's the value I bring is this my experience, um, not just being trained.

I've traveled around this country for 14, 15 years training not just police officers, training in EMS, fire, military, and so I bring these experiences, the the the plougher of those experiences to this position and thinking of ways where I can weave those together to make sure our bureaus are the best they can be.

Well, uh you know, and thank you.

And I I understand the just the nature of of this that we're gonna probably talk a lot about police, but uh it you know it is important that um you know it they are they're not the only uh employees under you here.

Um so I I do want to talk a little bit about the um Office of Nighttime Economy.

So that is one of the things that you'll be overseeing here.

Uh since we had our conversation and um in your time here, what is your your vision for what the Office of Nighttime Economy under your public safety should be doing and and how have your conversations with uh Alison Harden gone?

So I'm still I I have a lot of individuals and and and I have not sat down, I met them, we've had some planned preliminary conversations, um, but as I explained to them, I want to know what's working well, and I also want to know what we can do better.

Um I know that there's a big some challenges to some of the things that are involved with nighttime economy, and you and I talked about some of those, but uh I want to grow our opportunities.

I mean, we have to be a place that that's attractive to people to want to to come and to have some of these opportunities that include some places in your district.

But I want to have those healthy ways, you know.

We we we know some of the issues in the and the great work that has been done to to protect um um the uh South Side after some of the issues and and and I have given you some assurances in our meeting that I want to worked with alongside those those teams and to grow that to give some other opportunities, some of your concerns you raised, like you know, uh that needs to be uh a destination spot for people to want to go and some of the problems that you bring up, if there are ways in my department that we can come around alongside that to to deconflict some issues or try to provide some opportunities that can encourage healthier ways of participating so that we don't have some of the inflection points or some of the issues we have, I'm gonna encourage those.

So I d don't have all of the ideas that nighttime economy, but they because I haven't gotten to that part yet in the short amount of time I've had um since coming on, but tackling some other responsibilities.

But um uh my executive assistant will assure you that that was one of the first things that I said.

I want to meet with each and every group and I meet with them individually to find out what are they doing that works well.

I want to know how can I support you to do things better?

And nighttime economy is gonna be on one of those where I'll get to connect with them to figure out some things.

To be clear, you haven't met with them yet.

I just met them, having met with them as a group to figure out no.

Um another although I guess not now not technically in your department, but something you'll have a lot of oversight over is the disruptive properties program.

Uh what is your view for disruptive properties?

How will public safety interact with that?

What will we be doing in the future uh with this program?

Yeah, um I have not uh eager to meet with me again.

All these departments are very eager to meet and and and we give an assurances that they're we're not uh I'm just walking through some other components on our board.

They've all been clamoring, that's one of the departments.

Um she has let me know specifically she's rated me about you know disruptive properties.

Here's what I can tell you.

Um one of the issues, if there are things that I can move out of the way that we can move things along so we can have um some positive resolve of some of these issues, that's what I'm going to encourage.

So I understand um we have these issues.

I also understand why these are um issues that go unresolved that they can cause um citizens and and and cause issues in our community.

I want to move these things.

If it's a if it's uh administrative, you know, choke points and stuff like that, I want to remove those barriers and move on these things and execute them to get these different things, these different nuisance properties out of the way.

So uh I haven't connected with her as well, just because of all the other things I've been doing for the last three and a half weeks, but it is on my goal as well to make sure that I hear her through that.

And again, my commitment to them is to ensure that whatever I can do to make sure they can encourage them to do their jobs better, that's what I'm gonna do.

Okay.

So you haven't met with them either.

Um what have you met with the Office of Community Health and Safety?

So I've I met with Laura a couple times and who look she um, you know, she's great, first of all, with ideas, and again, in our talks, we have not strategized on moving forward, but what we have done is start having some preliminary talks about what that office does.

And and so that council was very clear that I'm I didn't come in with a you know a broad, you know, aspect of all these different strategies.

That's just not my leadership style to do that.

Um I come in and I said with when I meet with individuals, and that's why I want to spend the time, I come in with a very big ears and a small mouth.

I really want to hear what's happening in those places and and I'm using that as an analogy because when I can see, if I'm calling to leadership, I want to know what we do and what we need to do and what they're doing well.

And if there are problems that they that I could resolve that would make them better, that's what I want to work alongside them to do.

So what Laura and I have talked about was some mutual interests and some things.

Um I do feel like from my talks and some of the things that I've learned and just what I'm looking for down the line for some vision for um some of these efforts, I think there's some capacity for us to do some things and expand upon those.

But I haven't sat down to start strategizing it.

I'm forming teams, we're having meetings, you know.

Um some of the things like one of the priorities I said just as an example, one of the priorities that I brought forward is the the issues of youth and the youth surge, I called it.

I came in on day three and said we have a youth surge problem.

But I what I wanted to do is to make sure that we provide an an opportunity for youth to participate.

We want healthy opportunities for our youth to participate.

But when we see some of these other issues, how are we going to address it from a preventative from a proactive stance and not having our law enforcement in um uh law enforcement only going around chasing around these kids around these different places?

Part of that to your question is I've asked Laura or not office, can is there ways that they could be participating, trying to be more creative thinking through.

And so I'm my commitment is just bringing up members to the team to help me to think.

I know what I do well.

I need to have members around me to have skill sets and thoughts and stuff like that are different from mine, so we can create opportunities to be able to address some things.

Okay.

Um have you so I understand you know you you've only been here since the the O'Connor administration has has taken office.

Um have you had the opportunity to to meet with uh with fire?

I met I'm I'll meet with the Chiefs.

Um I met with the fire union.

I met with the all all the unions and the chiefs, I meet with them regularly.

So I started those regular meetings, just understanding again um trying to understand what their their vision is and kind of sharing back and forth.

So I've had some of those meetings.

What what are the what are the challenges that we're seeing right now in in the fire bureau?

Um and what are your your vision to to kind of address those?

Yeah, so I think we have uh um, you know, the issue with the battalion chiefs is a is an issue.

I think our chiefs are bearing responsibility and load, um, because there was some changes, I'm understanding what uh the position of battalion chief and not having that that level of supervision.

So I've heard that directly from them.

Um hopefully we can move through a process so that they can even out that load of responsibility.

I've also heard too, like I mean, some of these um uh some of these issues that because we don't have that level of supervision there too, there are some other things like I've heard from our PIOs and working with them.

So uh hearing their their situation about that was one that I parked and said, okay, how do we address that?

And that may be, I mean, there's some contractual things and stuff like that, but I do want to try to figure out how we de-stress some of this process so we're not missing things.

Um I have full confidence in in what I know of, you know, Chief Jones and and the and the other assistant chiefs.

I have full confidence based based off of what they expressed, but I'm asking them where my support for them.

Another thing is like they expressed to me like some of the community um like their cares program, they mentioned to me that they would like to bolster that.

As I listen to their cares program, this is one of those community approaches that I embrace as well.

So I want to figure out ways that I can help them along with that as well.

So um didn't hear a lot of the equipment or facilities.

This is what I'm hearing from our public safety broadly.

But this is I mean, these are major issues that points to what the chief said about morale, that's where you come in about uh this can impact morale across different bureaus and you know, where there are places to work and you know, even getting simple facility requests, you know, um tracking those facility requests of a Veliki faucet and stuff like and I'm I know I sound like I'm just minor stuff, but this is may not be so minor that a person has to work in those spaces.

Talk to the fire union.

Um, you know, they expressed to me that their whole desire to make sure that you know we're attractive, that you know, they want to uh be a d a diverse fire department and and and and it was it it really was energizing to hear them say that they want to work together to make sure that we can find ways to attract other candidates to be a more diverse um um fire bureau.

But one of the challenges we have is we don't have bathrooms that would support that.

And so where my role is to start thinking through these and starting to have some opportunities was going to come to this table is we look at that's how we support them, is that these are the things that matter to them that I need to raise the alarm on these things that are pertinent and make sure that we have a process to try to get them what they need so that um they don't have the issues before.

Yeah, I mean we always hear uh you know fire, specifically fire and EMS, they don't they don't just work in these facilities, they live in them.

Yeah.

Um I wanna but I do want to ask the same question with the MS.

Have you the opportunity to meet with the EMS chief and and uh what what are what are the challenges that you see there and what are the struggles you see there?

Well, one was so again vehicles being one um one of those issues.

But also too that there was an issue, I mean a bigger issue about um, you know, with what Chief Lando said for his department about wellness and I think we got um some of our our personnel numbers up where they weren't required.

A lot of forcing over time and cancellation of past days and stuff like that because you have to fill shifts.

I think they've resolved that, and you know, kudos to Chief Gilchrist and her team too, um uh with the EMT program, and that's kind of a mentoring aspect.

So kudos um to those efforts.

But I think that's one area that was addressed.

I want to make sure that it doesn't become another issue.

Um but the biggest one I think right now is this in their in their vehicles and um that's being a bigger one that they can't have the vehicles to be able to respond, and so we're moving towards that as well.

You all have done things to help us along with that as well.

Yeah, I mean the the Freedom House program is one of the I think shining stars of the city and something that we should uh fully, you know, fully celebrate uh how great that's work to get our EMT numbers up.

We still do have a medic problem.

Um and you know that continues to be a a challenge here.

Um but regardless, uh again, I'm I'm more interested in kind of hearing your your thoughts and how your um your vision is going as you're uh you know, um embracing the this role here.

is one of the I think shining stars of the city and something that we should uh fully you know fully celebrate uh how great that's work to to get our EMT numbers up we still do have a medic problem um and you know that continues to be a a challenge here um uh but regardless I again I'm I'm more interested in kind of hearing your your thoughts and how your um your vision's going as you're uh you know embracing the this role here uh have you met with animal control I have I met with the leadership actually they had a death um in their ranks um not too long ago right after the Baumort I personally went down there they'd never met me before thought it was important for me um I went down there to be with them um and I'm glad I did that that um I walked on there and I told them I didn't know their their colleague I didn't even know any of them um but I didn't want them to be processing this alone so I stood with them spent some time with them let them know it wasn't just a drop in just say hey we're sorry and leave out I wanted to spend some time give us some assurances and for as much as I was able um you know I told the supervisor um at the time that I fully support whatever he needs to do to care for them you know whatever whatever we needed to do because of its impact so um I met with them um and I shared some some um good stories as well I mean back when I was in SWAT back in the day when animal control went out of service they put us in service I greatly appreciate animal control and what they do because I did not like doing those animal calls whatsoever it's not for me so I thank them I was very very grateful for what they do.

So just to let you know I I connected with them and that's it's not one offs for me council member uh Charlotte um as much as I'm able I tell the staff you know with me as much as I'm able I want to be in community connecting with those bureaus and those as much as I can with the personnel.

I know it's a a lot I have responsibilities but um as much as I can I want to be as tangible and accessible and that's what I look forward to doing.

Okay.

And I just want to ask you mentioned this wasn't one of my original questions but you mentioned um your teaching responsibilities what kind of uh time commitment is that yeah so I have uh one person and in-person class on Thursdays and I do an on uh two two online classes um that's that's asynchronous um that's the spring and the fall the spring and the fall is the in-person class and so I do those two nothing in the summer and I do nothing one class that I'm in person and two asynchronous classes that I I built so they run kind of automatic on their own.

There's not much input on my part with those except some grading responsibilities and stuff.

Well so what what kind of hours are we are we talking?

It's uh two and a half hours.

Okay.

On a Thursday.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right uh if we can if I can move to uh acting chief landau here um I I wanted to obviously we're gonna talk a lot about recruitment um and there have been a lot of there have been lots of efforts made in recruitment um over the last couple years here there one of the things that I'm I'm kind of worried about as you're you're talking about your uh industry recruitment is that we are going to throw out some of the strides that we've made previously so we've we've invested pretty heavily in uh having officers doing recruitment they have a car um there's a apparently a very cool video that is is being produced um I I want to make sure that your your efforts are to build on those and not to replace those I think one of the the big mistakes that we can make in a new administration is is throwing out everything that that was done before um if if it's working well have you had the opportunity to uh engage with those yes uh absolutely I mean I'm a I am a big believer in the officers that are out there every day doing the work uh being part of the recruitment efforts a lot of times you'll see agencies that have like a recruitment unit and that unit and nothing against those officers uh but that unit that's all they do uh and so I love the fact that we actually have officers that are out there doing the work that can speak first hand to that I think that's when if someone's interested potentially in a career in law enforcement they want to talk to someone that's out there every day answering the calls doing the work.

So uh yeah 100% I've seen the video um really uh love it we made a few edits and now we're just uh we're just waiting on I think we have to talk through a couple administrative things before we can get that released and put out but I I'm very appreciative of the work that went into that I had nothing to do with it it was finished by the time I got here but I watched the video and I thought I I want to apply oh wait a minute I work there um so it's one of the best recruitment videos I've seen and I think for me it's just um constantly looking for new and innovative ways um to to do that recruitment for instance there's one one thing now some people have mixed feelings on it but you know we have the ability to to to geofense areas um so if we find out that there's like a police department uh right now that whether they're doing layoffs or whether the officers don't feel supported and and we we expect those officers to be um leaving the department looking for work elsewhere we have the ability to do social media campaigns where we actually geofence an area and if we're gonna spend money doing that let's make it a targeted effort um and we can we can geofence that area and push the Pittsburgh police out push that video

So if we find out that there's like a police department uh right now that whether they're doing layoffs or whether the officers don't feel supported and and we that we expect those officers to be um leaving the department looking for work elsewhere, we have the ability to do social media campaigns where we actually geofense an area and if we're gonna spend money doing that, let's make it a targeted effort.

Um and we can we can geofence that area and push the Pittsburgh police out, push that video out to potential candidates, um so we're not just kind of wasting our money doing these random media blitzes.

Um I think someone talked about job fairs, the statistics show that job fairs really don't do much.

People come, they get free handouts and fun stuff.

We don't see a lot of applications.

So I think for me, um partnering with institutions of um I say higher learning, I mean partnering with high schools and with colleges, um, I think is also important uh so we can get our officers in there to start kind of making regular visits, building relationships, um, but these like one-off job fairs, they don't they don't seem to be um hitting the mark.

Um but to your your earlier point about like throwing out what's been done, um that's something I I that was a question I faced when I left here to go to Maryland, and I try to be very, very intentional about.

I think I might have some good ideas, but other people might have already had really good ideas, and I want to be respectful of those ideas, so we're not just coming in saying, well, we're gonna just throw away everything that's happening and start fresh.

So you have my word that that's not gonna happen.

And kind of on the same vein, um you obviously have a lot of familiarity with um with the department, but uh in your time here since uh you you became acting chief.

What are some of the things that you've learned from command staff um you know, just in this you know, month period here that um that you know maybe made you think differently um about how how you want to run the department.

So I'll tell you that um in all honesty, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much really thoughtful and good work has been going on behind the scenes.

I uh I I'll tell you it was conveyed to me by by some individuals like boy, when you get when you when you get in there, you're inheriting a mess and you're just gonna have to start all over.

That's not the case.

Uh I meet on an almost daily basis with the commanders.

We have a weekly meeting with the chiefs specifically where I try to stay closely in touch with all the work that's going on.

Are you familiar with OSAR?

So just I met I had my initial meeting with OSAR to find out the projects that they're working on.

Um we actually just set a monthly recurring meeting so I can go over to OSAR and stay briefed on what they're doing.

I've been really impressed with like the amount of work that's going on that the public, I don't think has any idea.

Um innovative things, whether it's new technology, review of um policies and procedures and the way we're doing things, uh, I've been very impressed with this command staff and how collaborative they are with each other.

Um I know we didn't have a chance to work together, you know, prior, so I'm not sure how familiar you are, but I I remember a time when that wasn't always the case.

And I do remember a time where there was some clashing and some infighting.

Um no, I mean, no, no, I'm not gonna comment on that or no judgment on that.

But um when I came into this role a month ago, and I, as we go around the room, we talk about okay, what's everyone working on right now?

Just the way it's like, hey, I'm working on this, but but so and so is helping me.

We have a meeting next week, we're gonna meet with our community partners.

And I just sat back and I thought that they have it together.

And so I think it's been very refreshing to see, and I think we need to publicize that more because the community needs to know that that collaborative work is going on.

So one of the things that came up a lot in the you know, in the zone three public safety meeting, and uh and this is no I don't think this is a fault of yours by any means, but a lot of the answers to a lot of questions were you need to talk to your commander, talk to your your command staff.

And I'm always fearful of a situation where we've got folks in conference rooms on Grant Street making decisions without talking to people that are actually boots on the ground, you know, and uh I just want to reiterate how important it is to make sure that you know these are these these commanders are the ones that are are dealing with a problem of you know parking in front of Miss Judy's house and uh the abandoned cars that we have in Mount Oliver and you know that we're not making decisions in police headquarters that sound like they work but aren't actually uh understanding and respectful uh of the authors are actually doing the job.

And uh, you know, I think that's a problem in all institutions.

Uh there's another another major department that we're dealing with pretty closely right now that I think that is some some of an issue with uh as we go through the snow removal.

But you know, I I I do want to make sure that's something that is always brought to the forefront that these commanders, you know, they they they and the the officers underneath them do have a lot more impact on on day-to-day life than than you or anyone else that would be over in the north side.

Um I I want to make sure that that's something that's always brought to the forefront and always something that's that's you know in the front of your mind.

Yeah, I actually think that's exactly why I made those comments in the zone three meeting is people were asking me questions about um zone-based issues.

And for me, it's well, though the zone commanders and their officers are the ones that are addressing those issues, so I didn't feel like I didn't want to take away from the commander and the sergeant and the lieutenant that were in the room, because they're the ones that are actually handling those issues every day.

So for me to say, yes, this is what I will do.

Well, the people that are in the room doing the work are the ones there, and that is why I referred to them because I felt it would be almost disrespectful for me to say, well, this is my plan on how we would address that, when in fact, you know, you your commander who I know is is outstanding and a hard worker is actually doing that work, and I wanted the community to say that's that's your resource right there, not not me.

I don't set the policy in the zones about you know how we're gonna do speed enforcement at 7 a.m.

on this particular street.

That would be up to the zone commander.

Um so that's exact exactly why I made those comments.

Um and then the other thing, just to your comment about giving people a voice, that's the whole reason why I'm creating the employee advisory committee, because I want select, and when I say select, it's gonna be we're probably gonna have about 30 people from across the entire city.

Um, but but officers and staff that are out on the street every day, not people sitting in headquarters.

And they're gonna be the ones that meet on a monthly basis with the chiefs, so we can hear directly from them.

So when we say, hey, this issue came up, um, we can hear their ideas on how to address it.

And uh for me, and I think most officers that you would talk to would probably tell you that um I care very much about how how they operate and their wellness out in the street uh and how they handle business.

And so this is a chance for me to give them that voice so I can when we make those policy decisions, we're making it um their informed, informed decisions.

Uh well, now I've got a couple just actually just two questions for both of you.

Um I want to talk about your um your experience, your views, and what your kind of what your plans are with the shot spotter system.

You want me to start?

Yeah.

So I was in zone five when they rolled out Shot Spotter.

I was the commander there, so I had the ability to be one of the first ones to um you know have exposure to the system.

Um I know that there has been discussion about some controversy over ShotSpotter and whether it causes over policing in an area.

Um I'll be honest, I I don't see it that way.

Um for me, my experience with ShotSpotter over the years has been that we are getting to emergency situations quicker, and we are finding people that are potentially critically injured and getting them help much quicker.

And just I'll give you one example anecdotally.

We were dispatched to an address uh in Homewood a couple years ago for um shots fired.

The officers got there, they did not see anything, they looked all around, they said I we don't we we're not finding anything, you can clear us.

Well, ShotSpotter with the uh dispatch came over and said, Hey, we we have a shot spotter notification.

You're in the wrong area.

The red dot, because you know on the map on ShotSpotter, it's extremely precise.

The red dot is showing in the backyard of this house at this location.

The officers went around the block to the backyard and they found someone critically injured who was bleeding.

I think about that all the time because those officers and through no fault of their own, they did a diligent search, but all they had was a call for shots fired.

Um they would have got back in their cars, called back in service while someone bled to death.

And so for me, Shotspotter, I think is uh is an important tool to get help to people quicker.

I haven't seen statistics that show that it causes any more citations or arrests or over policing.

It is a it is a very technology tech technological tech technology driven tool that says to someone like the the gun a gun was fired right here.

You need to go there.

And so I guess I'm certainly open to the conversation if there are if there is controversy, but it in my experience with it, I've seen us getting to victims faster and getting people help or finding people that are shooting those guns and getting them in custody before they can hurt someone else.

I was simply going to say when I was going to lead out.

I have limited amount of experience with Shaw Squad.

It wasn't used when I was working.

I do know stepping into this, this this is some of the um conversations that were I started having some with um my staff just so I would get familiar with that, because I know that we may need to come and to analyze its use and to see its efficacy and stuff like that.

So I just want to um assure you just by mentioning that that is something that we have already discussed when with my direct teams because I knew it was on the forefront.

I need to get more familiar with it.

Thank you.

And the last question I have, and I thank my colleagues for allowing me uh a good bit of time here.

But uh I just want to ask what your intentions are, how you plan to uh communicate and work with us as council members.

Um I've shared I think with many of you all um that there's five I've view my role with five different levels of responsibility, and I'll just share them publicly.

I lump my family and to myself in one.

That's one of my responsibilities on how I do my job and what I do with my job, personal responsibility to my family, a responsibility to this administration.

Um I'm extremely honored that uh Mayor O'Connor selected me, could have selected anyone.

Um and and he selected me.

So this administration I have a responsibility that I carried away to this responsibility and its duties and I and I work effectively.

To the community, I have a responsibility too to citizenry.

Um I think you hear that common theme.

To my public safety servants, I have responsibility to them.

And I didn't leave it lastly, but it is important to my elected officials, to those of uh the govern us.

I have a commitment and a responsibility to you all.

So those are my five levels of responsibility.

I I just as I said before, I'm a big believer in open and and honest communication.

I think for me, I I guess it would be helpful for me to learn, and this happened, you know, in Frederick, to learn how each of the council members would like to be interacted, you know, with for instance notifications on major, you know, certain events, major events um in your areas.

Um I know kind of everyone operates a little bit differently, so there's a bit of a learning curve.

And um I'll just yeah, be honest, you know, uh Councilwoman Gross texted me last week and said, Hey, were you gonna notify me on this incident that happened?

And in my mind, I I was thinking, oh well, I if I was the zone commander, I would, but I I guess as I don't know, if is as the chief, if I would be making that notification.

So there's a little bit of a learning curve.

Um but for me it just being open, honest, and available, I think is really important.

And I would hope, as I've gotten all of your calls and text messages over the past few weeks that you have found that I have been very uh very responsive.

Um and then the last last thing is when we create the Chief's Community Advisory Board, which is something we hope to have up and running by about March or April, we want to be very thoughtful and intentional about the residents from around the city that we select to sit on the board.

But when we did this in Frederick, um council members were always invited to those sessions so they could be a part of that um experience and that they could weigh in with with their thoughts and they could see what we were doing to work with the community as well.

So those are all things that I would carry on here as well.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, and thank you, Council President.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilwoman Selenetro.

Thank you both for coming today and it's a good day for you.

Um most of my questions center around youth crime and youth engagement.

Um for example, uh the quality of life, you call quality of life issues when we have when I have residents in my neighborhood that are more afraid of the children than they are anybody else.

That's an issue for me.

And I don't see where we engage enough with our children and let them know that being a paramedic, being a police officer, being a fireman, is is a viable option for them.

And that it's a career that you can build a life on and raise a family on.

Um I'd like to see you know what you feel you could do to really like middle school and up, you know, not just high school.

Um but that's I kind of wanted you to expand on what you thought you could do for them uh to get them involved career-wise for what what we offer here in the city and you know, what can we do to to bring down the tension.

Um I think you know, I I touched on earlier the progress we saw just in the program we implemented out in zone five.

Um so I would love to see us be able to build uh a robust program that we could roll out citywide to to engage with youth.

I think one of the the drawbacks um to not uh to being separate from the school police is that we miss out, I think, on that opportunity to build relationships with the kids in the school.

Um I compare that, you know, again to my last five years in Frederick where we had officers in our schools that were Frederick police officers, and they were working on programs to build relationships, engage the kids in a positive way.

During the pandemic, these officers knew who the kids were that were at risk for whether there were domestic issues at home, mental health issues, and these officers during the pandemic were going to their houses to check on the kids and make sure that they had the resources they need.

Um we so there's a gap there.

Um we don't have that because we're not in the schools on a on a daily basis.

Um and again, it goes back to the staffing issue.

You know, when once we're able to get back to a place where we can do those things, I would love to work on a program where we're where and I know there's other things in the work that I'm sure the director can touch on, but I would love to work on building a pipeline to becoming a police officer.

But even if someone has no interest in becoming a police officer, the relationships are still important because there's still going to be residents of the city and engaging with the police.

Um so youth outreach and I mean I'm I'm still a big brother with big brother, with uh, you know, big brothers, big sisters, so youth outreach is is something that's particularly important to me.

I've been trying to get the kid to join the police department.

He does not want to do that.

Um but uh but again, I I don't want to make promises that I can't um live up to because it does come down to staffing, and I, as the chief, have to say, okay, we have with the staffing we have the we do have the ability or we don't have the ability to do these new things, these new programs, and I don't want to overburden the officers or overburden the department until we get to a place where we are able to implement new programs.

But for me, the youth outreach is is a huge priority.

Definitely Councilmember Solomon, I I am actively engaged.

I think you heard me say that um was one of my priorities.

If I seem like I was saying all these products, they're not that many, but this is one of, you know, that that I mentioned a youth surge, but in a healthy way.

I left a meeting coming here starting some of those conversations from people who were um in and involved with you know the downtown partnership about youth and stuff like that.

I've told tasked my team to start thinking forward.

I gave some some objectives that I'm I would like to accomplish by bringing interested parties together to help me think through what this whole youth approach is going to be and the dovetail off of that, what are opportunities for youth engagement.

I I do not want to I don't want to to imply that I want to have this very um firm like approach to our youth.

I want to have an engagement that that embraces our youth.

They're part of our communities, but also have accountability of our youth that participate in in ways.

So I think that's gonna come with, you know, um, you know, being creative.

I want to tap our I think there's an unrealized potential in our communities.

And um I'm envisioning networking in the way that is not always with an organization looking for open purse strings, like they currently do stuff, and how can we network them in such a way that gets them to be interconnected that we can figure out on a broader scale, like what are you doing to engage with our youth?

How can we participate with you and join hands with you and we be able to go on a journey as they're doing certain things.

So I want to figure that out in all of our communities.

You may know of some.

And I want to be able to attach some of these components with our public safety sector so that we have these opportunities.

I think that'll that'll grow some opportunities to be in engagement, um, but also that they get to see and and you know, real-time field be able to have tangible opportunities to meet with some of our public safety servants.

Secondarily, um, Pittsburgh Public Schools has a a career tract.

I think it's at Westing Islands High School with uh public safety.

I had conversations with them before me taking this post about how University of Pittsburgh could have done some things, but I'm saying I'm carrying forward.

Like if they have uh you know a public safety um uh program, what are we doing to help to to come alongside that so we can grow that interest and where are there other opportunities that we can grow that as well?

So that's what I want to do.

I do think that that we have to have an approach that that that embraces you know how we're gonna have a response to some of the things that we and the challenges we have with some of our youth, but I think our youth want a place to go is one of the things that Mayor Connor has said of talking about how we're going to engage our youth in very healthy ways, and I want to come right alongside that to help think creatively how we're going to do that um across the city.

So I'll look to you all too to give some encouragement on how we can do this.

Let me let me let me be a participant in your own districts to say with your own creative ideas and where we can come alongside in public safety to join you.

I think most of the questions that I had were down everybody asked already.

So I thank you both for coming today, and I thank you both for for wanting to serve here in the city of Pittsburgh.

And you know, and I know how much you love our West End, so yeah.

So thank you both.

Thank you, Councilman Warwick.

Thank you.

How are you doing?

Good.

You ready?

Um Yeah.

So anyway, yes, thank you for being here.

And um, you know, and I appreciate all the meetings that we've had so far.

So, you know, I have quite a few questions, so I'm just gonna go through them, you know.

Um the first two questions, you know, are around um guns and cars, right?

I feel like there are the biggest threat to our youth here in Pittsburgh are guns and cars, right?

That is what every you know, if if if parents are worried about their kids going outside, um, you know, that is what they're worried about, right?

Either that their kids might get shot or their kids might get hit by a car.

Um so for me that is like the top public safety issue across the board um as a parent and you know, as just hearing from my constituents.

So um so just to talk initially just about um and by the way, uh Chief Lando, I have I have right here the packet that you gave me of you know, with all the work that you've been so so I'm very encouraged, right, by the work that you've done in the past and and and your interest in continuing um that kind of community engagement.

Um, you know, we have seen a remarkable drop in gun violence, right?

And we there's been a lot of talk about it in the media.

Yes, it has been nationwide, but it has also been particularly um uh steep here in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.

Um I think one thing that is left out of a lot of the media coverage around this drop in gun violence, is that these violence prevention, violence interruption, community engagement programs aren't just happening in Pittsburgh, right?

This isn't something that we're doing, it's it's happening around the country.

And that is why we are seeing, right, like after the spy the post-pandemic, like the pandemic spike, lots of cities around the country have put these programs in place, including Pittsburgh, and they've been successful.

Um so um I guess I I'm I'm curious to hear how you know have have you had conversations, you know, with our safe passages team, with our reach team.

Um what are the conversations you've had so far?

Um perfect timing and all of our you know, community groups that are working with stop the violence funding, et cetera, et cetera.

Sorry, I perfect timing as Reverend Grayson walked in right behind you with his reach jacket on as you were.

Um you say reach and the door opened, and Reverend Grayson walked in, so excellent timing.

Um, I mean I listen, I I when I I think the common theme for me today has been partnerships uh with the police department.

Um we can't do it all by ourselves.

And I was so happy to see and impressed to see groups like AIM and Reach and Safe Passages and all these groups that are out there and they want to help and they do work that we just can't do as a police department.

Um that's nothing against our officers, but these ladies and gentlemen have already established relationships in the community.

So if we're trying to reach out to someone that we think is is at risk um and they're like, I don't want to talk to you, and then Reverend Grayson shows up on scene and they're like, I'll talk to him.

Um that's a huge, we call it a you know a force multiplier.

It helps us uh hugely.

So and you're right, we're seeing these in cities all over the country, and I think that that's why we're seeing that national national decrease.

Um that's something that I am heartened to see and very committed to supporting, um, making sure that I would say the only thing where I've heard, and this is nothing at all against any of the providers, but if anything I see there's an opportunity to improve, it's some of the more um coordination during certain times in certain areas where uh you know it was conveyed to me at a downtown meeting that um, hey, sometimes like all of our resources are out at at a certain time, and at other times um we're we're not seeing anyone out, so if we could maybe all just get more on the same page so there's no gaps in coverage.

So I say that because I see my role as supporting that and figuring out just how to how to make us all work together cohesively.

But I truly believe that um the these groups working collaboratively with the police are the reason why we're seeing these drops and we cannot take our foot off the gas now.

Um my statement is very simple.

Like I've said throughout this whole day and time we've been being interviewed, but I said in our meetings, like my desire is to preserve what works well.

And I understand that, and this is part of what's working well.

I've had some opportunities to to meet some of these groups.

I'm they you know they fall under some of these fall under my responsibility.

I do want to know like, you know, are all groups accountable.

There are some groups that I know that I know of that are doing great work.

I want to make sure everybody's doing the work we're expecting.

I think that's what you would hold me responsible for.

But um, I don't see any need to come in and and and make drastic changes to the things that are working well.

These contribute to the health and vitality of our communities, and I don't seek to preserve them.

Um yeah, and so and and just to sort of continue on on this topic, so um one area that is of concern for me is that um you know, we talk a lot about youth and educating the youth and getting the youth to come and you know understand who we are better, right?

Um I do think it's important to be clear that when we are having these conversations about youth, we're talking about black youth in Pittsburgh for the most part.

Um, of course, you know, the the vast majority of young people in the former Schumann now high highland or something, I can't remember the new name.

Um I think like some 86 percent are black youth.

And um, and there's actually a good article in the Atlantic recently.

We uh of there is this culture of pushing young people, teens, out of our public spaces, right?

Like our efforts are geared towards getting our kids out, getting them elsewhere.

And I hear this in the conversations, right?

Whether it be around downtown or whether it be around South Side or around Squirrel Hill or whatever, is that the kids are in our areas, right?

Whether it's our business districts or our neighborhoods, and uh they're causing problems that we got to get them out of there.

We gotta get them into programs, or we gotta get them right.

So what I would like to see more of, and and by the way, uh well, I'll go so what I would like to see more of, in addition to this kind of push to educate them and to, you know what I mean, like change their behavior or or whatnot, is to also educate the you know, the rest of our community, whether that be our business owners, whether that be folks in our communities, right, to say, look, you know, yeah, our young people get to be here too, right?

Our young people get to live here too.

They are Pittsburghers too.

And um maybe that means making a j and I I I get right, teens are tough, right?

Like I I've got I've got, you know, two 13-year-olds at home, right?

Like kids can be annoying and they can be loud and they can be all these things, right?

But um, but this sort of demonization of our young people here in the city concerns me.

And um I think that we can do more to, in addition to bridge, just sort of getting them to come over the bridge this way to us is to is to also get you know, business owners, whoever it may be, community folks, to cross the bridge over to them and make those connections, right?

So if it's not just getting and I mean, one thing that kind of struck me, and this is no, but but how you said before when you were a patrol officer, and then you became a commander, and as the commander, you went into the community and were like, wow, like you did you hadn't realized before the fear of police officers in the community in zone five.

And to me, that feels like um like an education and training issue, right?

Because violence against the black community by police is a core part of our history, right?

And that's something that every officer should understand and be aware of, right?

And and will help in in the engagement with community members, right?

Um I don't know if you have and and another thing too on this, and I I wanna because I'm a transit person, right?

And when we're talking about these issues with especially with our safe passages program, we really need um and I, you know, and this is obviously a county issue and a PRT issue, but we need better collaboration with PRT because the reality is our kids have to get to and from school, right?

They have to get to and from work.

And we do not have transportation, uh adequate transportation for them, right?

And that is not their fault.

So when you have, for example, in my district, right in School Hill, you have 200 kids come out of Alderdice and they've got this tiny little bus stop right by you know what I mean, right next to a Starbucks, and like and and somehow like it's the kid, you know, and and Starbucks is m trying to manage all these kids and the kid, you know we need help navigating that, but it is also the the the infrastructure that we've created is just not adequate to get our kids around town, you know.

Um anyway, I'll I'll let you comment before No, I well I mean on the the as far as PRT goes, I I definitely agree we have to have conversations uh surrounding that because in a number of things that have come up recently, my response has been, well, have we have we been able to just maybe like look at moving the bus stop?

Uh that could potentially address some of the issues.

So I I agree that whether it's whether we come up with some sort of a working group or some some committee and we we loop all of our partners in to include transit, I I think is is important.

Um and also I don't uh you know I I agree with what you said and and I think about you know the officers that are out there every day getting called to things that um sometimes just aren't police matters and it it uh it puts everyone in a tense spot, right?

Because if if these are situations where kids aren't breaking the law, where they're just being kids, then that puts them on the defensive, and it also puts our officers in it in a pla uh in a difficult spot because someone's picking up the phone and calling 911 and saying, I need the police here.

We're obligated to go, and then we get there and we're like, well, in this case, these are kids being kids, and there's not much we can do.

And so I think that that education piece is very important because it I think it helps everyone.

It helps the kids not have to be viewed a certain way, and it also helps us from being called to situations unnecessarily where there's not a lot we can do.

Um so I don't I don't have the answer here today, but I can tell you that I I appreciate the comments and I agree with you because I can tell you that if you ask any police officer like what's the thing that you enjoy dealing with the lease, they say getting called to large groups of kids because they know a lot of times someone is um someone you know feels uh unsafe, picks up the phone and expects the police to solve the problem, and oftentimes there's just not a lot we can do.

So I think it is something we need to work on.

I'll just simply add um council member Warwick, I i I think you hear me throughout answer somebody's questions the importance of it and um but also that I was very heartened when I went to the meeting right before here because I heard the voices that were at that table, downtown partnership and some of the other organizations that were there that they want participation of the youth, but how do we do that in a very healthy way?

And that's where I want to join those voices to say I told them my experience, like you know, we used to have back in the day those that that would be familiar, they had that weekend bus pass that four people can get on one bus pass, and we used to hop on the PRT, one called that then, port authority, and we would fly down town, right?

We did that.

And that was our activity when I was youth.

And so what happens now though, that I mean, I do need the uh I want to be um uh kind of specific that I want to uh what what are the true problems and not the made up ones?

You know, just the presence of youth does not present the problem, but when certain behavior hits to a certain thing, what is our response?

So I want them to participate and how do we set up an atmosphere that allows them to participate in the activities or or or what's happening in a realm?

That's a yes.

And so when I bring to that conversation when if that's how we're all charting together, like not removing them, you're talking about the educational piece, but how can they be responsible and and participating and kids are gonna be kids?

I'm uh I don't I think a loud child is not raising for alarm, but we also need to be able to define what certain activity hits a certain point.

But we also need to be able to define when certain activity hits a certain point.

I don't think our youth need to be running around Southside at certain hours of the day.

Well, are there youth in the Southside?

So I would never engage or embrace well, they need to be here.

No, they they shouldn't be in those spaces.

And how do we make sure that at certain times that those youth aren't being in it?

It's not a place for them.

So I think there's balance.

Where's the spaces that they can participate?

How we expect them to participate, but not always like I don't like to see our first responders running after scores of kids, but I don't want to sentiment that says they're not allowed or not part, they are part of our community.

So yeah, and you know, just this idea of folk because it does take a certain amount of you, I mean you need a certain know-how in dealing with kids, right?

You know, whether you're a teacher or whatever, folks who don't engage with kids often, don't know how to do you know, whether it's a a toddler or a right, like whatever age group or middle schooler or or a high schooler, right?

Like you you learn how to engage with kids.

Um one uh I always find the gold standard uh here in Pittsburgh anyway, is uh in our libraries, right?

Like our libraries are a place where anyone can go.

And I I I really have libraries across my district in all types of neighborhoods, and I never get complaints about the youth from the libraries.

I really never do.

And it's a place where people can go, anyone can go, right?

Where they are welcome, they you know, uh, you know, there's space for them, and where the staff um, you know, know how to deal with the youth, right?

They they they like kids and they engage with kids.

And so I don't know what the libraries are doing, uh, but you know, whether, you know, uh our community engagements, whether it's through OCHS or or or whatnot, if we could get some kind of the the same way that we do um uh the same way that we offer trainings for like um uh you know, dealing with our unhoused or dealing with folks who are experiencing uh uh um an overdose crisis or something like that, if we could get a training that we can offer to business owners about, hey, how to engage, you know, how better to engage with youth so that you have a better relationship going in for so that we're not starting right foot in the door with this like antagonistic feeling between our business owners.

I think that that might be something to try, and I don't think something that we've done to date.

Yeah.

So um okay, so moving on to my next question.

Uh vision zero, right?

Councilman Strasberger touched on it a bit.

Um, you know, we have this vision zero task force, it has been very effective.

Um, you know, vision zero, you know, is is the goal of of zero traffic deaths on our street.

Um, and it is infrastructure, enforcement, and education, right?

And um, so obviously infrastructure, that's DOME, that's our traffic calming, enforcement, that's the Bureau.

Uh Commander Ripple has been great with I know he's got limited um cycles, but you know, been very helpful in doing that kind of spot enforcement.

We have some issues with our state partners of not being able to use some of the tools, like you know, automated tools that exist.

Umfortunately, I know that that's work that we we can do as council members.

Um, but uh it is it is a wildly popular program.

First of all, if you look, well, I would say 311.

So it's probably snow is on the top of the 311 list at the moment, but you know, generally it is speed, right?

It's traffic calming, people you know, um wanting cars to drive safer in their communities.

Um it's also a key to our growth.

You know, like 20 percent of Pittsburghers roughly don't own a car.

And when we have folks who come here from places like the Bay Area, the Tri-State area, Chicago, they do not want to have to get in their car to go a mile and a half to get to work.

They want to be able to walk, they want to be able to bike, they want to be able to do all these things safely, right?

And so that's that's where um you know vision zero plays a big part in that.

Um I'm glad to hear that you're both engaged on Vision Zero.

But what I do want to ask is um because I do have some concerns, and this isn't just with police officers.

I know we had uh uh, you know, is is it's across the public safety bureau.

There is um there seems to be some resistance among sort of the rank and file to this initiative, right?

That the that you know, council passed that the city is engaged on that is a major policy um initiative for our city.

So I was I was hoping if you could speak to that, how we can kind of bring the you know win the hearts and minds of our of our boots on the ground across public safety.

I think um one of the things uh and I'm trying to look at this from the officers' perspective and from officers that I've talked to.

Um and please I'm not making excuses, and and as leadership, we have it's our job to, you know, fix this if we need to fix it.

Um but just from their perspective, I think officers have seen over the past several years a huge push for police to get out of the business of traffic enforcement because of some of the things that have been have happened in these cities.

And so where certain elected officials have, I mean, in certain cities, they've basically did away with you know uh traffic stops in one city they're trying to make tra traffic enforcement the job of uh just of civilians.

Um and uh and so I think there's some level of confusion, I think, among the officers where they say, hey, three, four or five years ago, it's we're looking at all these things that we shouldn't be stopping people for anymore.

Um our elected leaders don't want us to do traffic enforcement, and now it's like the reverse.

And I think that there is some apprehension on the part of the officers.

They're like, do we do traffic enforcement?

Don't we do it?

Is is the is something if something really bad happens, are we gonna is the finger gonna be pointing at us?

You shouldn't have stopped that car for that reason.

So I think that we owe it to the officers to um I guess educate them on what this is, what the expectations are, and to also reinforce that they will be supported.

And uh and so that's I'm just and again, that's from everything I've heard from talking to officers about traffic enforcement is you see nationally um officers have uh across the country have pulled back significantly from some of the proactive work because they don't want to be the next national news story.

Um and again, my job as the chief is to work with you and educate the officers on this is what vision zero is and this is what the expectations are.

So I'm not saying that that's that mindset is okay or acceptable or we should you know just carry on with it, but I just wanted you to hear from their perspective some of the hesitation to be really proactive about being out out there doing traffic enforcement.

Now the motorcycles, that is their whole job.

Um so that's that is why you see them out there uh so much.

The motorcycles aren't out uh typically answering uh 9-1-1 calls, they're out to do traffic enforcement.

Um but we do need to work to educate the officers and get them to a place where they're comfortable going out there and handling those vision zero type complaints.

So so again, it's funny because this kind of comes back to the same thing, right?

So um, and I I think probably what I think I saw Reverend Burgess here earlier, but um is you know when council passed a resolution saying that we're not gonna pull people over for broken tail lights and things like that, right?

Like that is about harassment by officers in black communities, right?

And um there is or there's a difference, right, between doing traffic stops for people who are running red lights or going around buses or whatever in the middle of the day at rush hour in in school zones and all of this kind of thing, and pulling people over for a broken tail light at two o'clock on the morning in the morning on Frankstown Avenue, and then you know, potentially having some kind of altercation, right, between the officers.

So again, like this is what I mean when it comes back to like you know, and I don't blame officers uh boots on the ground for not making the because I I I I see, but it's but it's our job, right?

It's leadership's job to get that education and understanding out there, right?

Absolutely to understand the context, right?

So it so that they can see that it's not, you know that it's two different things that we're trying to do.

And then also with the with the vision zero, well, I'll I'll let you respond to that.

No, no, I was just I was kind of agreeing.

Yeah.

That it's our job.

You know, it's our job to say this is you know, this is what the this is what the vision is and this is the mission, and this is how we're gonna carry it out.

So I was just acknowledging that.

And and um, you know, and I've had this conversation with Commander Ripple, right?

And where um so for example, an officer will, you know, someone will run a stop sign or whatever, and then um the person will go and they'll contest it, and maybe the judge lets it go.

But it it really isn't about the the punitive side, it's about changing the behavior, right?

So even if you pull if you're pulling someone over and saying, hey, you ran that stop sign and you don't even have to give the right of you know a warning or whatever, that's fine.

That's that that feels like enough, right?

At least at a first go, right?

We're we're not trying to scare people, we're not trying, we're trying to change behavior.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

So uh I guess um Director Williams, if you so the the other side of it, and I and this is also police, but I think overall with the Bureau is sort of um kind of an antagonism toward the traffic, toward the infrastructure, right, among among the Bureau and and how can we, again, what win the hearts and minds.

How can we because we are working like the Vision Zero team and the Domey team does work with with leadership, you know, uh around traffic calming measures to make sure that our public safety crews and vehicles can do their job, but there is nonetheless this sort of lore that you know it's it's hampering their ability to to sort of get to calls on time and whatnot.

So it has to be factual.

You can't just suggest these things.

I just an assurances like if it's the will of the administration, and it's the will of counsel through legislation, I champion those messages and we'll ensure that like you're not going to get a different communication out of me different from this is the will of counsel and the will of the administration.

That's the message I champion and hold those direct reports to me to ensure the same thing, which are my chiefs, um, and then hope that they would be distributing that down to the other leadership as well.

So the one thing that I wouldn't want to offer, and I don't think this would be the case.

I have good work in relationship with the chiefs as it stands.

That when these things are expressed, that they'll champion those messages as well.

And I think that's how we create the culture.

But I think too, on the front end, if we're also bringing those concerns up that if they're raising them, and I say if they're factual and they're discussed, and whether or not they hold water or not, but at least I bring these things from the different bureaus to say, well, this is a challenge if you do those traffic comments.

This is a challenge.

Well, if they're heard and we work those out and we find out they're not really factual, but at least we can communicate those things.

They were raised.

There's no basis for that, you know, and this is why we're proceeding, but you're just not going to get a different message out of the way.

You're not going to get it from me and to those that that I'm responsible for.

And I'm sure that they I'm confident they'll champion the same messages.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Um, so yeah, so moving on to um to the uh concern about um ICE and any other you know, federal, you know, potential law enforcement group coming into the city.

Um I and I appreciate Councilwoman Strasberger uh raising the issue.

So uh so you know, we we've heard and we understand that that um Mayor O'Connor has committed to not cooperating with ICE.

And I do, and you know, and I heard what you said about about ICE operat, right?

Like our, you know, we're not able to intervene if ICE is, you know, whatever, doing some type of immigration enforcement.

Um I understand, but that we're not going to assist, right?

Like we're not going to give data, we're not gonna um uh I would like to see even that, I would like to see that clear and in writing, right, as a policy, both for our immigrant communities, right, so that they can know and be heartened that the city is, you know, this is what we um but but I do want to press a little further with that because of what we are seeing in Minneapolis and we've seen in Chicago and we've seen in in other cities around the country.

Uh so I I do want to stress here in Pittsburgh, in Pittsburgh, we have families that are afraid to leave their houses, right, that are having groceries and such delivered to them by neighbors.

Um we have community groups that have canceled cultural events, like parades because they're happening because those would happen outside and they're afraid that if folks participated in those events that they would be targeted by ICE.

So that this is now, today in Pittsburgh.

Um and we have seen extreme force being used by ICE agents in these immigration um uh you know, with I mean, and I I've seen videos, I mean, and when I say extreme force, extreme, right?

Um very disturbing videos, and this is here in Pittsburgh already.

Um and then of course in Minneapolis, right, we have seen um pepper spray and tear gas used on nonviolent protesters, used on people exercising their right to record in a public space, right?

Like record law enforcement.

We have seen ICE entering private homes and businesses without a judicial warrant.

And then of course we have seen now two I will call them executions, right?

On camera of ICE agents of people, you know.

Just working to protect their neighbors, right?

Just out there trying to record, trying to trying to protect their communities.

So I think I'm going to ask you if if, and I get that we don't have this now, but in the same way, we know this is happening in Minneapolis.

We are watching it happen.

And we know that it could happen in and we know that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have these astronomical budgets, right?

They've got more money to do to continue to expand this than, you know, I think than any other law enforcement agency in the country, to be honest.

And uh just like we have a plan for the NFL draft, and just like we have, you know, we you know have plan make plans for weather events and snow events.

I think we need a plan for this.

Uh residents are scared.

I think we need a plan that involves the folks who are working with our immigrant communities, the folks who are um organizing, you know, protests, First Amendment, you know, First Amendment activities, folks who are doing who are conducting um trainings for neighbors on how to protect your neighbors and how to how to manage right.

We we have community members who are organizing and coming up and teaching people how to, you know, do all these things, like like document what ICE is doing just in case it comes here.

And I think that we as the city desperately need a plan.

Our public safety department, both on how we're gonna deal with it with our own public safety and specifically our police officers, right?

Like how are they going to deal with these situations?

And then that also that needs to be, and it needs needs to be communicated to the public with guidance so that we can ensure, because for me, the most important thing is no matter what happens, we want to keep people safe.

We don't want to see what's happening in Minneapolis happen here in Pittsburgh.

So we want to make sure that our law enforcement teams are equipped and trained and understand how we plan to respond as a city.

So I'll let you both well first I'll say, you know, we have the fair and unbiased policing policy here.

So one of the things that I would commit to doing is to uh sitting down with our leadership team and the city attorney um and having a discussion on just really reviewing the policy.

I don't know that it's been updated in a while, just reviewing the policy and make sure that it still reflects um all of the things that I told you here today that are common practice currently.

Uh so policy-wise, I think that that it it may it definitely merits a review of the policy and revisions if appropriate.

Um I also have no issue with uh coming up with a plan.

Um I think that that would be a larger conversation with city leadership and some of our um community members that are affected by this.

And so um again, I I've I've I've always been one to take a collaborative approach and I want to hear uh everyone's voices.

Um so I have no issue with that.

I just think that that's um the police department's just like one spoken that wheel.

And I think that we need to get everyone on the on the pay on the same page as far as that goes.

Um I guess one other thing that I just um always have in the back of my mind, and just since we're talking about it is I what part of my concern about what we're seeing in Minneapolis now is that they've they've called uh they've been so outspoken about it, and I think that now we're you're just seeing this massive influx of of agents there.

And so I just I I'm trying to uh we're trying to handle things internally in the department, reviewing policies, making sure we're doing all the right things.

I'm just hesitant to I I I'm afraid that the the more outspoken we are about this, the more uh attention we will potentially attract because right now we are seeing those one-off issues with ICE agents.

The last thing I want to see is a thousand ICE agents descend upon Pittsburgh.

And so I I just think we should all be thoughtful about like w how and where we're having those conversations, because I the last thing I want is for someone to be like, and Pittsburgh, you're gonna be our next Minneapolis.

And so I I just think that that's uh just because we're having that conversation now, that's always something that weighs on me is is how much we're calling attention to, you know, ourselves.

So I agree with you.

We need to look at the policy, we need to come up with a plan.

Um I I also struggle with some of the things I've seen on the news recently.

I'll simply add to it, I mean, in uh it's wise to to think about this ahead of time.

So I'm uh embracing that.

But I think part of that whole development of plan is also informing constituents what they should do as well and what's permissible and stuff like that, so we don't get to this escalating like in certain, you know, what is the expectation of those and what are they lawfully allowed to do and that doesn't cause an escalation or you know, inflaming this work.

So I think part of that is just we saw that in our communities um citizens police review board along with some of the community groups came up with the pamphlet to explain how that it would interact them with the police so that the people were informed.

And I think it was well received.

I think it was well received from law enforcement officials along with citizens, and so something similar, I would just add to that.

Um people are genuinely outraged based off of what they see and alarmed, and I get it.

Um they should, they have a constitutional right to be able to to verbalize or to to be able to capture that.

I just want them to do it in the right appropriate way so that they're not becoming part of the problem, which will complicate it and then forcing our law enforcement to have to do some things just because they're too close or interfering or the suggestion of.

And so if they understand that and explain that and give those parameters, I think in those scenarios, I mean, I even it would be welcomed with some of the stuff that we see that we have people who are willing.

I mean, absent having some of the footage we had of some of the incidents, like you heard the messaging that came out right after these incidents, but we actually have some evidence to kind of counter some of those narratives that were brought out initially, and that's because there were people who were the there and around there who were filming.

So I'm just suggesting giving people some healthy ways to be able to do that.

Yeah.

So and I think, yeah, so I I I appreciate uh that and um I I definitely think sooner rather than later is like having those engagements and putting that guidance out there.

The more communication and the clearer it is about what you know, what is safe, what isn't safe, what can you know, you know, how can our police force protect residents in in situations like that?

How can we best protect you?

Um I will underscore that our police are not here to protect ICE, they're here to protect the residents of Pittsburgh, right?

Um but uh, you know, so that we can keep the temperature down as much as possible while also understanding that you know, when we are seeing what we're seeing uh out in the streets that people are going to respond and that people are upset and that and that that is how historically in this country um, you know, peaceful protest and political action and First Amendment action is how we make change, right?

Um so that that those actions are gonna are gonna happen inevitable, right?

Um so with that I want to move on as sort of related.

Um I I um was in touch with um some of our partners at uh at our large universities.

And so I wanted to ask you, um, this is sort of like threefold um about relationships, again, between the Bureau, also public safety in general, but mostly the Bureau.

Um uh, you know outreach with our universities, whether that be around large campus events, um uh trainings around um emergency situations, sort of like active shooter situations, sexual assault situations, um, and then of course immigration.

We have a a huge number of international students here in Pittsburgh, right?

Um and then also um community policing strategies that are specifically geared toward our student populations, right?

Because when it comes to um organizing around social justice issues, around, you know, whether it be global, whether it be global issues or local issues, um students are often at the forefront.

Um I do, you know, I think that the Bureau has done a good job.

There were, of course, the um uh protests over the past couple years.

They got a little bit, you know, there was a little bit, but but by and large, certainly compared to to other uh other cities.

I think Pittsburgh did a very nice job.

The the Bureau did a good job of working with students and keeping everyone safe, right?

That keeping everyone safe and allowing people to to you know do exercise their First Amendment rights in a in an environment that is safe.

Um so I will I'll let you speak to that.

I don't know if you have spoken with our university partners, but any any thoughts on that?

I mean I'll just say so specifically law enforcement.

Um I know we have really good working relationships with our universities.

Uh I'm actually having event this evening with the chief of the uh the Duquesne University Police.

Um law enforcement specific, we have great working relationships.

Um as far as the the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police and the universities itself, I definitely see opportunities there both for training resources.

Um I just think about um different uh opportunities we have to collaborate with our universities.

I think they're an underutilized resource.

So I absolutely see um opportunities there with the police departments themselves, we we do have regular conversations and and have a really strong working relationship, but uh always opportunities to improve.

I'll just simply share my experience with being on the University of Pittsburgh with some of those things happening.

Like internally, um it was challenging for the university to navigate that too, to give the permissions for people to be able to raise the issues, but also balance and that against the you know public safety interests as well.

And I think that's constant conversations and I know of the city's involvement with the university to bring some of that to positive resolve.

And um, and I think that was a healthy way to approach that.

And so just kind of piggybacking off what the chief said, like if we have good established relationships, like like one of the things that I would invite is that we from the public safety sector get to those those university voices and those people in charge, like let's really collab to figure out what is their desires and some of the stuff happens on their campuses and stuff with better permissions.

I mean, and then if we come alongside that um and but not cause a conflict at all, but trying to move it to a place where it supports and and embraces the the opportunities, but again, um where we not start to get into thresholds where there might need to be some sort of um you know some some some countermeasures, meaning to the placement of people, stuff like that, what does that mean?

So I think that's working in collaboration with the universities when those things happen.

Sometimes they're they just they they they emerge and they they're responding to those in real time.

So we just got to be part of the early part of the conversation and see what the will is of the university so we can handle those well and not cause any conflict between them.

Yeah, great.

Well, I know that um our university partners will welcome that partnership and that collaboration.

You know, these are just I I think it goes without saying, right, these are very trying times.

There is just the temperature is very high on lots of levels and lots of issues, you know, and and um uh whether it's global issues, national issues, you know, uh all the way down to to local issues, um uh folks are divided, communities are divided, um, and uh everything that we can do to bridge those, you know, bridge those divides where we can and make sure that people are, you know, kept safe uh where where we can't.

Um so with that in mind, and uh I'm gonna move on.

I have it called uh I had this written here beyond the academy.

Um because I know you know obviously the academy is a great place, Commander Fleske does a great job, right?

The academy is great.

You've got you've got all your new recruits right there, you can teach them all the stuff that you need to teach them, and right, but once they're out of the academy and on, you know, in is is how you know is cascading, whether it's a new policy or a new, you know, whatever procedure or or changes in the law, um, you know, so you know, whether it's vision zero, I know we passed a um uh there's been a change to the way that we um uh you know from for sex workers from uh you know an arrest to now it's it's just a citation, right?

Similar to marijuana possession, um how we deal with our unhoused population, right?

Like how do you deal like once it's been posted that there's no camping here and a can and an attent comes up, how do we deal with that in a humane way?

Um again, the the with ICE, right?

If we if you know, if we come up with a plan and a policy and an FAQ, how do we make sure that the boots on that that is cascaded down to the you know, or or our various outreach groups, like how do we make sure that officers know about PAR and know about you know know about all the resources and such as they're out?

I know it's hard, right?

Because there's a lot out there.

So I'll I mean for me, it comes back to a point I touched on earlier, which is just having really strong leadership.

Uh and one of the things that uh that uh I can't remember if I touched on it earlier.

Um but one of the one of the goals of mine is to start a leadership academy here.

I was very happy to hear that when I arrived in town that that's that plan has already been uh in the works, and I believe it's next week or the week after that we are starting our first leadership academy.

It's a two-week session where we really drill down into some of the issues of um that the deal with the day-to-day leadership and make sure that you know whatever the the chief's vision is for the department is being accurately and adequately um sent down you know through the ranks and it's not um you know, we we all remember like as as rookie officers back in the day when the chief would put out an order, and if you if the sergeant or the lieutenant didn't understand it, it would be conveyed in a way where it was like, yeah, chief's order came out.

This I guess this is what we have to do now, you know, and uh and we all remember that.

And and like that's that's not leadership.

And so I think if we're talking about all these things that we want to, you know, push out to the department and educate people on that we have to rely on our sergeants and our lieutenants to make sure that they are taking ownership of those issues and it's not just passing along the chief's message.

So I'm very excited and happy to um to see what happens in our first leadership academy, and then the long-term goal um for that is to bring in-house our our own professional development coach that can um work on some of the issues that have to do with leadership, but not so much in a policing sense.

The class that I intend on bringing in is all about kind of like human behavior.

So it's like leadership, it could be policing, it could be anything, but it's really like how to lead people, not just police officers.

When we brought this program to Frederick, uh I you could see like in the room, like a lot a light bulb came on in a lot of people's heads, like, oh, I haven't I've been managing, I haven't really been leading.

And so I'm very excited to see what we're able to do in this next year.

But I think it goes directly to your point is there's a lot of stuff that we're implementing and a lot of stuff that we're doing, but we all have to be on the same page.

And and we do that through our sergeants and our lieutenants.

And so just know that there is a plan in the in the works to better develop those leaders.

Great.

That's great.

And then hopefully, too, as part of that is a mechanism for if if there are folks on the ground who don't understand, like I don't get it.

Like, what is up or what am I supposed to do here that they can also bring that back or you know, or where it's not working, like this just isn't, you know, whatever came down is like messing us up in a big way.

To that point.

So the feedback loop will definitely be the employee advisory committee.

So as we push stuff out, um I don't like to say down, but as we push stuff out, that employee advisory committee will be our feedback loop on hey, great idea, but this is how it's operationally affecting us out in the streets, so we will be able to close that loop.

Um then the other thing that I started doing um something that worked really well in Maryland, we just put out our first iteration of it is uh uh uh a chief's update to the department.

And the update includes um, hey, here are the things I'm hearing from you, here are the rumors going around, here is the an order that just came out last week, but here's the rationale behind the order.

Um so almost like a newsletter, but it comes directly from me.

So as we get the feedback and we know how it's affecting officers, we're we're then addressing that through that newsletter.

So I don't have any more of that.

Um and then that sort of brings to recruitment.

We've talked a lot about recruitment.

I do have one question just to add to that is um we've heard quite a bit about obviously difficulties recruiting.

Um what is the status or or perhaps the plan moving forward about um hiring up civilians to do those jobs that don't require you know a fully trained um armed officer, whatever the I don't know what all those roles are, but where you know, where we have an officer, you know, who's like fully trained to do all these things, but in fact they could be out doing police work versus whatever.

Yeah, so I just uh I I actually appreciate you bringing that up because I was um and again not not to I keep referencing Frederick because I just spent five years there.

So you know I realize two very different cities, but um, but we have we had 150 police officers in Frederick and 55 civilian members of the department.

We have 35 civilian members of the department in Pittsburgh with an authorized strength of 800.

So we are clearly like off balance.

Um what I what I would like to see, and I want to be very clear uh for any police officers that are listening.

The goal is not to eliminate police officer positions, it is to enable those officers uh to staff the department where we can with civilians that don't need to carry badges and guns so those officers can do police work.

Um so I stand by my assertion that I would love to see us get back up to 900, even if we get to 900, um things like um evidence processing, crime scene processing.

Now I will I will tell you that our crime scene detectives are phenomenal, and I would put them up against anyone.

And I'm not talking about replacing them.

I'm talking about as they retire, because a number of them are eligible to retire, as they retire, looking at backfilling the the new positions with crime scene technicians that are civilians that went to school for crime scene analysis, stuff like that.

Um I see a lot of uh opportunities around the department for people that and and again I I don't think I can say it enough.

I appreciate the work they're doing so much and they're very good at it.

Um but I I think that if we want to be responsible about where we're putting our dollars, how we're allocating resources, um we need to at least we need we need to start somewhere.

And we need to start looking at the positions where um like you said, if you don't have to carry a badge and a gun, could we put someone else in there that costs the city less?

And they're they're perhaps like that they went to college and got their degree for that.

Um we don't have to bring them up and then train them to be in those positions.

So a very valid conversation.

Um I know that this budget year is pretty much I think the windows kind of closed on that, but for for next year, that's definitely a conversation for next budget year, looking where we can civilianize.

Great.

Ronnie comment is that um I gotta have full faith and trust in my chiefs.

And so if they bring this stuff up, I mean I'm just gonna support them.

I'm there to help support their decisions when they're they're moving these forward.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Um sorry, can I just add one?

I just want other thing that jumped into my head.

You know, some of the stations right now, um when I look at like low-hanging fruit.

Some of the stations right now we know at night on certain hours overnight because of staffing, the stations are closed and we have those phones there.

I don't see why we can't look at bringing in civilian desk clerks to man the stations overnight.

We could keep the doors open, the lights on.

If someone's having an emergency, the station's staffed, and you know, that person might be able to take a police report, or if it's an actual emergency, they can call an officer in.

But that's just one example of like why why do we need some a police officer with a badge and gun to sit at that desk when we could have someone that that's you know, a civilian that's able to do that?

So just another example that popped into my mind.

Yeah, great.

Um I think that so you know, I I appreciate Councilman Charlotte bringing up all the other bureaus.

This has been very police heavy.

Uh so um, yeah, thank you for that.

Um very glad that the um EMS Academy is planning to continue strong.

I know that there was some conversation about expanding that into paramedic training.

I don't know if you want to speak to that at all or certainly.

Um that is one aspect I had some um initial conversations with uh Chief Gochris and Chief Trim, I think was there as well.

Um I don't know if I talk with the union, but also too like I want to look at opportunities.

Do we do we do it?

Um I love the idea of that, especially coming from our EMT ranks and those who want to go on to be medics, it's it's great experientially, relationally, they got a knowledge of the city, so let's grow our people if they want to move forward, because you know traditionally how people come to this, they get their training to come in.

So I think it's a great, you know, on-ramp to to advance careers.

But I want to also look at what are our training opportunities that with people who do it well, and so is the best opportunity for us to do our own academy, not removing EMT Academy.

But the paramedic movement is the best for us to have our own, or do we collaborate with entities that do that all the time?

And is there an opportunity for us to be good good collaborators with with the university?

So uh it's an exciting time to be navigating that, especially when there's interest uh from the department to do that.

So I'm encouraged that we'll move those forward.

Build our our our paramedics or paramedic program or paramedic opportunities also too as it came to mind.

Um we also are seeing some changes too, like uh nationally and and even our own department have paired up.

We got an EMT in the and a paramedic sometimes.

That's a useful way of sometimes um addressing some of our needs on the street.

So there may be other opportunities we're looking at staffing and response wise.

I think they're adaptable by our bureaus are adaptable by looking at what's best in serving our communities, and I just want to keep encouraging that.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I think that with the one of the key pieces of that is of course being able to get paid while you're doing, you know, while you're doing the training, right?

Is that it being um and that's also on a just also in general, and we're doing um community engagement and kind of identifying community partners who can help us.

I think uh stipends are something to consider, right?

Because then you get folks, you know, it it helps folks who might not otherwise have the have the time or resources to engage regularly on that type of thing to stay engaged.

I think one of the points you raise, Councilmember Warwick, is that I want to ensure too, like it's hard to go to school, especially going to paramedic school.

It's hard to learn that, and then you also have to work.

Like I would hope that we will provide an opportunity if we're gonna allow them to do that, that they concentrate on their studies so that they can be effective.

I've seen that personally where people who are trying to obtain that level of certification and have a responsibility back to their departments.

I'm not saying city specific, I've seen it broadly based off of my own academic experience.

So I'd be encouraged to try to create where we have the best opportunity.

This is an investment of time and resources.

We want to see them successful.

Great.

I don't, you know, and then of course the overarching for all of public safety fleet vehicles, vehicles, vehicles.

We need those vehicles.

So yeah, I I can promise you I will continue to advocate hard for that.

And uh, you know, um at any rate, I think that's it for me.

Thank you so much.

I know it's been long, and uh I I appreciate you both.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Bruce.

Thank you.

Um well, it's um it's been two and a half hours, almost three hours of questions and answers.

So I appreciate all the questions and answers from my policy from my colleagues.

I just want to give a shout out to my staff who um handed me 51 questions when I walked in the room.

And we've been working on this for two weeks.

Hopefully we got the cover all 51 questions because we have been um sitting here for three weeks or for uh three hours.

But um, so I also wanted to give them a shout out because in 2020, and and and I'm grateful for my colleagues who are asking the questions about civilianizing.

There's a tiny chart on my tiny phone.

Because this is the chart count.

Some colleagues will remember me um quoting that we put together of our benchmark cities, and I'll be sure to send this to both of you.

Um and so I we think we were still kind of like safely separating, and I was sitting on this side of the table because it was like December of 2020 when we were in budget season.

And so we were spreading trying.

This was our COVID response was sitting slightly more apart from each other, which is kind of sad.

But um it is uh we typically compare ourselves to about 14 cities or so, places like Detroit and Cleveland and even Seattle and uh Austin and uh some of those cities have gotten a lot bigger since we've been comparing ourselves to them for the last 20 years or so.

But um it was a chart from I think governing magazine and it was staffing levels based on 2015.

Um so some of our benchmark cities, for example, per 10,000 people, you know, it had something like 18.6 officers on their force um in Austin, but a total of 24.4 people in the police budget, right?

So, you know, there's a big difference in that ratio between how many officers are on the force versus total employment on the force.

So you can see that the remainder would be like, you know, six people um per 10,000 were civilians on the police force.

Um and at the time, this is 2015, you know, there was 30 total um police employees um per 10,000, also a much higher level total, um, and 28.4 officers per 10,000.

Um and 28.4 officers per 10,000.

So that's only two people, uh civilians per 10,000.

But also it really does reveal as well how there's a just a wide gamut of officer levels, right?

That I'm sure you could provide much better updated thing.

We pre we're preparing this in 2020 and we were preparing it based on 2015 data.

Yeah.

Um so and there were cities that were higher.

You know, um Philadelphia had 40 officers per 10,000 people.

And again, you know, Austin had 18 officers per 10,000 people.

Um at the time.

Um so there's a gamut, and we were kind of um not quite mid-range, we were on the slightly higher end for sure.

Um so some food for thought and we these were numbers again that we were using and distributing.

In order to talk about that conversation.

So it gives you the range of the size of departments, um really varies um cities, but also that ratio of civilians um to officers.

Uh very so I'll be sure to to send those along.

Um my questions were of course partially covered on my my colleagues' questions, but I do feel like um one of my big concerns and the concerns that I'm seeing from emails and from conversations with constituents uh are about our department's policies to protect people during protests.

Um so I think that was touched on a little bit, but I wanted to give you some time to elaborate.

We also talked about this just to acknowledge that we talked about this in my office.

Um because I had constituents who were hurt in 2020 attending protests.

Um and so I want to make sure, and there were lots of other people who were just very unhappy at how um our police department handled those protests.

Um whether um people who were there on the ground and people who uh were just uh were not on the ground.

So I wanted to give you a chance to kind of address that because I think there has been some learn learned lessons.

Um so I'll let you talk.

So well uh back in 2020, just you know, and then I again acknowledging that we've we have discussed this, you and I.

Um, but I was um not the incident commander.

I was present.

Um I was the commander of narcotics and vice at the time for the city of Pittsburgh, and on for that particular protest, I was leading a group of officers and our role was a covert or undercover role where we were um just conducting surveillance in the area to see if you know people broke away from the larger peaceful protest and committed acts of violence.

So um I can't speak to necessarily like the orders that were given or force that was used.

That just wasn't my that's okay.

You can talk about what we do now.

Absolutely, yeah.

Yep, absolutely.

Um again, acknowledging that we've been here for three hours.

Yeah.

So right now, uh I will tell you that I've shown up at several of the protests uh surrounding ICE and uh, you know, it was really just watching to see how the officers and the supervisors um handle themselves and how they kind of navigated that very uncomfortable uh, you know, when you first get on scene, I think a lot of people were like, uh-oh, why are the police here?

How are they going to engage?

Uh and and I was very happy to see that they went over, they introduced themselves, they explained very clearly.

Um we are not here to police you, we're here to protect you.

We're here to protect everybody.

Um, and then explained like we're gonna be floating around the area, just making sure that traffic is not becoming a hazard if you decide to march or you decide to block the streets.

Um here's my phone number.

If you could please let us know uh that you're gonna start marching, we'll have the motorcycles of the traffic officers um stop traffic and protect everyone.

So it was a much more collaborative um approach than we had previously.

So I did I made some phone calls afterwards and I said, Hey, is this the is this the way we're doing business now?

Because you ha you have seen a shift nationally in how we respond and uh same exact thing in Maryland.

Try to do a lot more outreach and uh transparent conversations on the front end even before an event to say we we want to support you when we show up, here's what we're gonna do, and just talk through through those things.

I received a number of text messages uh and emails from uh people attending or organizing protests both in Maryland and here since I've been back, um, just being appreciative of how law enforcement engaged with them.

So I think that we are definitely in a new era as far as that is concerned.

The other thing I will say is even for now, these have been very peaceful protests.

Even for the protests that have the propensity to get a little bit more uh amped up, whether we're expect property damage or whatnot, you're seeing a lot of those resources that were very front and center before, like guys with the batons and the shields and the masks.

Um those resources are being kept kind of out of sight, out of mind until they're until they're necessary.

So we are not the ones being viewed as um the the instigators.

And uh and so uh again, when I got got here early on, I said, hey guys, we're gonna see a lot of we're gonna I think we're gonna really start to see a lot of protests, talk me through what we're doing here in Pittsburgh now.

And it was the same thing as where I where I had just come from.

So I think you're starting to see that nationally, and I'm happy to s to see that that's happening here in Pittsburgh.

We want those resources to be available if they're needed in case of emergency.

Um, but we're not having them front and center where people view us as you know as the aggressors.

Director, I'll direct that question to you as well.

Is there a role for not just police but fire and EMS and you know, when we see people gathering um in large numbers, as is their constitutional right and the right of that our responsibility to protect their right to be in the right of way, for example.

Yeah, so the other assets um be their their responses as required.

And usually it's you know, more of a uh of of looking at uh how we're surrounded, it's more of a law enforcement function on the front end um until such time when there there might be some requirement for the other assets.

So amount immediately dispatching wouldn't seem appropriate for those.

But I do want to say that um and and just coming on telling what Chief Lando was saying, that I'm uh I'm appreciative of the analysis of what's happening in real time and getting people there to make the analysis to be able to get ahead of and say what's what's needed to support those functions.

Um and then giving permissions um where they don't rise to a level that you have to engage with um the rights of individuals to to verbalize um under the first amendment rights, um doesn't rise to that level.

And I and I'm just sharing an experience.

I was a police officer, it was a Mayday experience, mayday protest that started downtown, but we walked with these people down the south side, back across, up to the hill, back down, back downtown.

Like we were doing as to what Chief Lando was saying.

It was getting a little exhausting for me as a of as an officer, but what I would appreciate out of while I say that is I think the supervisors were making the analysis and saying where these individuals were permitted to exercise their rights and where they were weighing out against the interests of the public and how we can move that and it worked and coordinated.

I didn't have that understanding as a police officer.

I'm like, this is this is an unlawful assembly, like and I'm I'm I'm and I'm just suggesting that.

How is it unlawful?

Well, because they didn't have permits and the car lane or streets and yeah, for permits and stuff like that.

So blocking other people's rights to travel travel.

Travel.

And but even at that, it wasn't an aggressive law enforcement response.

It was a balanced response.

And I would say that for my for me on this position that um protecting the interests of of the citizens in the first amendment.

Against I would appreciate that um our supervisors or those who are there making the right analysis that all of that, all of that is taken into account.

The interests of those who are who are peacefully protesting or in assembling, but also too to what to degree of that.

Um it gets to a point where we can't have them block in the parkway or deciding do we have to make some measures and they would make that analysis.

But as long as those things arise those levels, not to excite this, not to elevate this, and some of the stuff that Chief Lando said is somewhat a different approach than what we were seeing in the past.

It would have been, you know, denial of space, you know, putting people in place, stuff like that.

I think a more measure response probably gets us to a better point of of permissions and allowing people to exercise that.

And Chief Lando has been great.

When these ones have come up, I get immediate notification and update and sip situation analysis.

He gives me a sip rep about what's happening and how we're moving forward and telling me in real time if it either conveyed to him and he's up channeling it, and I think that's the right approach for us.

Um given the size of some demonstrations, I do think there is probably a more preparedness that we could have um uh with both fire and EMS instead of just being kind of situationally reactive, right?

And this is one of them.

Well, I I will say that you can be upset and verbalize or how without I also don't want to, I don't want to elevate it to a point that could alarm.

Like and I think we need to.

No, I'm saying be prepared for large events.

And some of that like prepare for parades, do you not?

We do.

Great.

That's all I'm saying.

But on the what I'm saying is we have a responsibility to respond to the streets.

And if we're pre-positioning some assets, I would say that I would want to make sure that some of those things are done in a manner that doesn't leave us to be deficient in our response.

Just in I want to I want the analysis to be made on the scene, and then we send those resources.

Good.

We also talked um about another category of concern that I think has shifted a great deal.

So I want to make sure that you have the opportunity to share your experience or identify where you need more expertise, which is that people are rightfully concerned and expressing their concern about surveillance technologies.

And these technologies shift so quickly it's hard for us to keep up with them.

We're now hearing that I think Apple settled a lawsuit that they actually were listening to your conversations.

You know how we've all just been thinking we're hallucinating and our phones were actually listening to us.

And I'm talking private conversations, right?

The conversations between you and your doctor at any time.

So one of the places that council has expressed its desire is to, in an ordinance by a now mayor Corey O'Connor, when he was on council in also 2020, that we would not be using proactive uh facial recognition technology, et cetera.

It's nearly six years since then.

Um now some random exercise app on your phone may be tracking you and selling your information to law enforcement, right?

Maybe not to the Pittsburgh police, hopefully not, right?

So we'll need to make sure that we have closed those loopholes, figured out where these loopholes are, um, and um make sure that we close them if they're there.

Um so uh I hope you know more than I do about this.

Well, I'm I'm by no means a tech guru.

Um, but I do understand the concerns, and I think that that I think every city feels and views every city leadership feels and views those things, you know, differently.

I think that does merit like a larger conversation because um and and again I'm not pushing one way or another, but my only response would be um when we look at our ability to fight crime or prevent crime or catch individuals after a crime, um we need to understand like if we opt into or out of certain programs, uh technology you know, technology programs, that that will that does have the potential to impact on the other.

But you don't think you should be opting into any of them, especially unless the citizens know about them.

I agree that the citizens sh should always know about them.

That's why a lot of times you see like you, you know, in most cities.

I I had a lot of meetings in DC over the past five years, and every square inch of DC has cameras, um, but on every street sign it says, you know, smile, you're on camera.

So that the you know residents are aware.

Um I think we have to find that balance where it's uh how do we protect privacy rights while also uh not inhibit our ability to catch people after a crime is committed.

And so um again, like I don't I'm just one voice in that, and I think that that is another thing where we would have to come together and talk about what what are the programs and technologies that we would want to see here in Pittsburgh.

And I know there are some cities that have said we don't want it.

And then um, you know, you you a bank would get robbed downtown, and you'd say uh we just have no cameras downtown, versus Washington, D.C., a bank gets robbed and that person doesn't make it to the end of the block and they're picked up on 15 different cameras.

Uh and so it does go to our crime fighting efforts, but we also have to balance that with right to privacy.

I think one of the things that I have figured out in a very unexpert way is that the difference between the cameras that might have captured you, you know, fleeing on foot from a scene or trying to steal from that ATM back in 2014 or smashing that shop window or something.

I think one of the things that I have figured out in a very unexpert way is that the difference between the cameras that might have captured you, you know, fleeing on foot from a scene or trying to steal from that ATM back in 2014 or smashing that shop window or something is completely different than in 2026 knowing what Jason Lando just said to his doctor and that Jason Lendo is now traveling from this point to that point and then Jason Lando is just entering this business and leaving that business and Jason Lendo just bought these things at that store.

And that's actually the difference.

I mean that is actually what the technology does now.

And so and in live time and that's surveillance.

And that's a difference.

Uh-huh I mean and that I think that goes back to my statement that I think that merits a further conversation is as Jason just said on his Facebook page and what and so literally that and these things are aggregated by person and being tracked.

So yes let's keep learning and talking about this.

I think I said at the time when we voted on again Councilman O'Connor's um facial recognition ban is that this technology changes so quickly we need to keep updating it.

And so that brings me around to the kinds of agreements that other municipalities are doing anyway well let me first ask you do I have your commitment to keep updating those both of you that's the surveillance and technology agreements to working with council to being sure that whatever technologies you're using you're we're talking about them and to updating um our policies on them by what public feedback we're getting.

Absolutely Chief Director yes thank you.

And then that does bring me back around to again lots of conversation has covered lots of the questions that I have in front of me but to come back bring it back around to the current immigration and customs enforcement that we're seeing around the country we know that some cities and certainly some municipalities even in Allegheny County have actually signed the 287G agreements with the federal government meaning that their own employees are now designated officers deputized as immigration enforcement.

And so we are not going to do that.

Correct.

Correct right and so this is what we're saying we're not coordinating we're not going to sign a 287G.

Oh 100% correct and then also I'd like us to go further and we can't do it like right here as we sit but we for very good reasons and to for the common good for many years have coordination agreements and cooperation agreements with a lot of our neighbor municipalities.

And so are there backdoors or loopholes I don't want us to kind of get in a bad situation because we're somehow supporting someone in their federally deputized functions.

Are you following me?

Right?

And so I'm going to be following up with you all to to talk about that.

And I and I can tell you that I have had in my short time here I've already had uh direct communication with the entire department in the form of an email that reiterates what is acceptable and what is not acceptable so we don't have any of these and not saying that not saying that we would but so we don't have any of these one-off incidents where it's like oh I'm being predict what's going to happen right so every everyone understands from the chief of police what is expected and what is not allowed.

And so I can guarantee you that if there are individuals that decide they're going to take it upon themselves to not comply with those rules there will be accountability.

Thank you.

I think I'm going to follow up with some of these in writing after we kind of sort through them because some of them are um repetitive of each other or um or other questions that have already been asked today but I I want I hope that you have heard that we've had some of these questions come in public comment here in chambers where citizens themselves are asking you know are are the Pittsburgh police gonna protect me if I'm uh out on the sidewalk and in the wrong place at the wrong time regardless of right immigration status even someone who's not wouldn't even be in question and also affirming their rights to protests as I've summarized already in civil disobedience that are protected in protected ways.

them because some of them are um um repetitive of uh each other or um or other questions that have already been asked today but i I want I hope that you have heard that we've had some of these questions come in public comment here in chambers where citizens themselves are asking you know are are the Pittsburgh police gonna protect me um you know if I'm uh out on the sidewalk and in the wrong place at the wrong time regardless of right immigration status even someone who's not wouldn't even be in question um and also affirming their rights to protests as I've summarized already and civil disobedience that are protected in protected ways um but there's a real fear from people about the inability to be able to tell if someone's truly who they say they are it's crazy.

I agree.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I mean I I I say um just to just to drive home that point our officers the safety thing doesn't fly with me.

That that whole like well we cover our faces for safety.

I just don't get it.

Our officers are out there every day answering calls, apprehending individuals that commit violent crimes and we all live generally in the same area.

I don't understand the logic of of allowing someone to wear no identifying marks whatsoever completely cover their faces and and uh go out and apprehend people that they likely will never see again and aren't running into at their grocery store with their families um but we don't do that in the Pittsburgh police and I think that that absolutely adds to the fear that's out there.

And it makes our job more difficult because I can tell you that I've gotten at least a half a dozen phone calls or text messages in my short time back here where people have said um you know a community leader has called and said hey you know a van just pulled up on the corner at this intersection and and some people jumped out and and and put handcuffs on a guy and I said I I'm gonna I'm gonna assume that's ice it wasn't us.

I mean we would have badges out if we're in plain clothes and our faces wouldn't be covered um and in those situations we were able to f follow up and figure out that it was ice so thankfully it wasn't a kidnapping but that that makes it a lot more difficult for us too because we're the ones fielding these calls and having to parse these things out so you you get no argument from me on that.

That thank you for your response.

And it also kind of led me to a com a a separate other question which is that if someone does observe an unmarked van abducting someone they should call 911 and let us know.

100% and I will tell you that I did I was able to establish a point of contact with someone in a leadership role at Homeland Security and while we certainly won't collaborate with them and while they're not going to tell us anything ahead of time we at least got them to agree to notify us after an operation so if we are getting calls from the community saying hey a white van at this intersection just pulled up and these guys jumped out that I know that hopefully within an hour or so we'll get some communication from Homeland Security or ICE or whoever's doing the operation that says hey we were just at that intersection in a white van.

So we're able to squash those issues and we're not chasing down false leads.

So we were at least able to get that issue worked out recently.

But yes if someone sees something like that don't make assumptions call 911 and let us investigate.

Thank you.

Thank you I think it's important that we all do that.

And so that and then also just for the record Pittsburgh police except for our undercover units of which we don't have many relative to the total force right all of our vehicles are fairly consistently identified right there was some repainting of some and some others so whether were some that were still white and other I like what color are they and what do they look like?

Oh yeah that's confusing because like I think the last I think we should strive to not be confusing.

Well so I will tell you that that happened because over different administrations and I don't know whether it was chiefs, mayors, whatnot wanted a certain branding on the vehicles so we have I think like three Marty what do we have now like three or four different uh three different iterations of we got the the checkered checkerboard ones with the silver cars.

We we have now we are moving forward all vehicles that have been ordered I I know last year um we had a we had a one year backlog because vehicles um weren't available we just took delivery of 90 new police cars they will all be striped with the new pattern and moving forward everything will be that way.

I'm not sure which is the pattern that they'll be like in my own mind.

It's it's the the white white with like the the swoosh the black swoosh on the side but the city actually one I like better.

That's actually the one I like better.

Yes.

So they'll all be striped like that from now on.

My concern isn't even so much the marked vehicles, it's it's the unmarked ones.

Um we do have unmarked cars.

Our detectives and our command staff drive unmarked cars.

Um all of those cars have the abilities to have um, you know, if that we flick a button, all the lights will light up, even though you couldn't tell without that, maybe that it's a police car.

Um they can turn turn lights on.

But but regardless, if someone sees someone jumping out, like if our detectives are out on a scene um and they're doing something, they're gonna have their badges out and they're not gonna have their faces covered up.

And most of the time, they'll even have like what we call a raid vest or uh or external body armor on in addition to a badge.

So I can tell you that I will say 99% of the time, you will know that that's a Pittsburgh police officer.

I kind of do feel like we should maybe just put out a s uh like a helpful um, you know signify like a little cheat sheet of like these are Pittsburgh police uniforms.

Just as a reminder to people, honestly, like these are the kinds of things when you see this, this is actually Pittsburgh police.

We can certainly have our uh our our PIOs put together like a one-sheeter and put that out on social media.

Yeah.

Yeah, thank you.

Um we we do have a you know, a hundred and thirty different municipalities in Allegheny County, and God knows there's also uh even in the city, also like as you mentioned, school police, the hospitals have their own police, universities have their own police.

There really are multiple law enforcement agencies, so um it would be good for people to know.

Um especially in a confusing scene.

Um which ones are which.

Um and I think one of the things before I wrap up, because now we are we're approaching three and a half um hours, that one of the things I want to make sure to mention is how supportive people have been of the Office of Community Health and Safety.

We talked about this again in my office, but also um especially even when it wasn't a 911 call.

So a lot of times the public understands that you know there's response or there was co-response or isn't there, but that OCHS is also um working to keep people safe.

Um even if they're just in having a mental health crisis, or especially in my district, we've really seen people being I mean, lives saved.

Um, no exaggeration, who were just people in need of service is what it's I think the new acronym that we're using, pins, right?

And so we're talking like elderly um who were unable to care for themselves and really in uh life-threatening situations because they're like really to care for themselves.

Um and so would you want to touch a little bit about kind of where we are and staffing with OCHS and kind of what direction you all see it going?

Which is different again.

I I mentioned the kind of mental health and wellness support.

Um there's also reach, and we we all usually we often have entirely councilman Warwick's talk to a little bit, we have separate post agendas very often on the violence intervention work and all those kinds of things.

So I think there's opportunities to to grow um uh our reach with our our community health and safety, Office of Community Health and Safety.

And I say that um when I said earlier about dreaming out some of these opportunities working with Laura as we have some of our initial conversations.

Um I could just assure you that I don't really think of these in a very you know limited way.

Um I think some of the issues that we have in our in our communities require us to really have a very you know introspective and a very uh widening view of what may be happening, and these are some of the resources that gives us that opportunity.

And so I can only share with you that um that's the way I think just because of my background.

So I've been encouraged for them to let's look at some even the things that we do now, as you said in a very um specific way that we have with as it relates to to some of the ways they they are operating.

I want to expand on that and the opportunities for that.

There are there are uh layered things that impact people to put them in the scenarios and situations that they're in that result in some public safety response that if we can come in and think this through and get the help and get get people directed towards the help and cared for in ways that we also be able to stay above some of those other responses.

So that's just my assurance to this to this body here.

Like I want to be thinking in those ways.

Um and I got a team, you know, from the teams.

Um for public safety.

And then the one other thing about not allowing like some of the federal partners up to the communities, not having uh exactly co-training with ice, not having practical village.

There's there's reason there's both kind of asks and then also ask prohibitions that we're looking for.

Yeah, and I I mean I think that um all of that's you know, I think that's all that is open to a bigger conversation.

Um but as I walk through our current training facilities, and I'm sure the director, when he walks through the fire and EMS facilities, I think we can all agree that we are in desperate need of something to up our training game.

Um but all of those things are also considerations that we need to look into.

Right, and director, as well, we would what um we one of the asks was that make sure that it really is all branches of public safety.

So that you know, there will be space for fire, there will be space for EMS as part of it being, you know, a campus.

And it and and a reminder that the letter uh of agreement with the federal government is not only with the Department of Justice, it also is with FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Response.

And there is supposed to be emergency management response there as well.

Um Councilmember uh Gross.

I'm so excited we're getting a better training facility.

I don't know what to say.

I'm so happy like our training facilities have been deficient for, and it's not the type of training we are.

We've been we we've been you know restricted in our ability to really provide for all of our public safety, not just our police.

So I'm and I think we've had I've I've been a a recipient of great training across many different of those of those entities, and now we can expand on that.

This is a grand opportunity for the city of Pittsburgh.

And you will hear me you will hear me really really lead out and say that I emphasize training our personnel and equipping them the best way possible goes back to what council member Callkate was saying about our investment in our people.

Like this is one of that's the thing that I've probably done the majority of my career is in training.

And I just know the value we get and we get from that, some of the stuff that you raise in your questioning is ways that we can better equip our responders by doing adequate and appropriate training and having the facilities to be able to do that so that they can increase their decision making and not only just be dispatched in their duties, but they be able to do them in a more measured and appropriate way.

So it's gonna cross the board and no one's gonna have like prop property rights to part.

I'm hoping that we adequately equip in our facility that will give us our all of our bureaus are saying this is what we need to do that training, and we provide that for them.

So no one entity, one no one borough is gonna have the exclusive on our training facility.

Good.

That's glad to hear.

And I think I've kept us here long enough for that in my questions.

Uh, but not thank you to my staff, not all 51.

Um, so thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I'm gonna stop there.

Thank you.

Councilman Mosley.

Uh thank you, Mr.

President.

Well, I think the acting directors for being here as uh councilwoman growth stated, you know, we've been here for a while, so I'll try to you know run through these pretty quickly than follow up.

Uh where I need to, but I didn't want to um George, my first question to acting uh director Williams around emergency preparedness.

Uh and I'm gonna try not to like cover ground that's already uh been covered substantially.

But uh George Williams, if you can speak to your specific plans around ensuring the various public safety bureaus are prepared for large-scale emergencies such as natural disasters and civil unrest, which are two you know topics that I think are pretty uh germane and I proposed to a conversation, you know, we had a a huge storm um, you know, earlier in in 2025, which took power out for you know a large swath of the region for the better part of the week, and we're in a moment right now, a national moment where there is a lot of civil unrest and we're anticipating you know more civil unrest um, you know, as we you know, you know, move forward um, you know, in the in the days, weeks and months ahead.

So if we just kind of speak to specifically around your role and in large-scale emergencies.

Yeah.

Councilmember Mosley, thanks for the question.

Um, emergency preparedness, uh preparedness in general to natural and man-made disasters and it's an important piece for our public safety at large to be able to to understand their role and participation in that.

But also, as I said earlier, like there was a time where we used to train together, and I don't know what has been done since my since I left.

Um and I'm not disparaging what's done, I just don't know.

But what I'm what I'm encouraging is I've said to um the individuals that I've been meeting with, I want to return to that.

Um and I also believe that there are opportunities that we haven't um capitalized on that I want to make sure that we have provisions for.

Again, my experience going around the country and being able to do training, there are departments that are taking advantage of of training that's provided based on tax dollars that I don't think I've and I'll just say I've not seen on a level that I would think would be appropriate that our own first responders are participating.

This is training already paid for.

Um all we have to do is give them the time to go to the travel's paid for, the training's paid for, the per diemes paid for, their lodgings paid for.

So I want to work with our speak to you know, your strategy for you know, promoting you know what we see as modern police concepts, um, you know, some of the things that you did in Frederick, and then if you could just talk about, you know, how how are you going to you know work to get that buy-in uh you know, with members of the force that may not, you know, be as ecstatic about what we may consider you know modern policing, and then also you know, if you could be reflective for a bit, and how would you define you know success, you know, in your role, you know, in in 2026 and 2027 different from me uh of how you may have defined that role when you when you joined the the force a quarter century ago.

I think well, to your first point about success, you know, I think I don't know exactly I couldn't answer you exactly how I would define it now, but I I would say that um approaching it from a much more collaborative uh approach where we are listening to the voice of the community instead of just being very um historically in policing, we've been very siloed, like you know, we have our thing, we you know, we do our thing, we don't care what about you know other departments or uh we don't really collaborate with the community.

So I think looking back that's one thing that I uh value greatly now that I hadn't given a lot of thought to when I was a younger officer and a younger supervisor.

Again, I said we you know we were very internally focused and uh and I think now embracing uh and partnering with the community is uh is much more uh important, especially more important now than ever.

Um and then as far as would you mind just the the first part of the question?

I I think I started breaking it down and then I went right on to the second part of the question.

Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm just talking about like how you're gonna get buy in uh you know, with the force around, uh, you know, promoting those modern policing concepts like like you know, life therapy and like some of the other innovative things that you've done, like you know, what are some of the things that you did in Frederick to get by in that you want to replicate here to get by in from folks who may you know see that as you know not you know something typically you know part of their repertoire, you know, in law enforcement.

I mean one of the I I think for me it comes down to the one word, and that's transparency.

Uh and that could look different in different agencies and in different settings.

Um but I'm a really big believer in transparency.

So I I talked about the the Chiefs, uh I call it the Chiefs update that I send out twice per month, and that's really closing that that loop on hey, we put something out, now officers have a chance to offer feedback through the employee advisory committee, and now you're gonna hear from me on how things are going, changes we've made.

Um so I think being just very transparent is important.

And then another thing that um that started almost as a I don't say a joke, but almost started as a joke uh in Frederick was uh we started a program called Chief for a Day.

And I had heard from some officers, like, hey, what you know, we're putting officers on this crisis response car, like that's less officers we're gonna have out in the street, or we're doing this program or we're doing that program.

And there was just that communication gap.

And so I I said to my administrative assistant, I said, What do you what would you think if we started a program where any police officer in the department could sign up to spend an entire day with the chief?

You go to the meetings I go to, we you we go to the uh uh events together.

If we're gonna go have a a meeting with our mental health partners about the crisis program or what whatever, like they'd be with me all day.

And uh and she very lovingly said, Oh, I think it's a great idea, but no one's gonna sign up for it.

And I said, Why?

She goes, No one wants to spend a day with the chief.

And uh I said, I don't know how to take that.

But we we pushed forward and we implemented the program.

And we had over 25 officers uh during the course of the whole program.

Twenty-five officers sign up to spend the day with me.

And I can tell you that the mindset shift that I saw in those officers and the feedback that I got from the officers was unlike anything that I ever thought I would see.

And those officers, this is the best part.

Those officers went to their roll calls and went to their squad and unit meetings and and said, I get it.

You know, like I I the the email that the chief put out about this new program or that, like I had the chance to spend a day with him.

Like we talked through these things.

I went to meetings about those things.

Like this is what the community is talking about.

Some of these officers, I gave them a lot of respect for stepping up to do that.

But some of these officers were officers that had a very traditional mindset.

And just seeing how they changed their mindset after having the ability to spend an entire day with the head of the agency, and how they didn't hold back in telling others about it.

Um to me that that was probably my favorite thing of all the programs we implemented.

It gave me a chance to get to know officers on a personal level.

It gave them the chance to get to know me, and then they were and maybe this isn't the best term, but they were my best salespeople because they would go to their peers and say, Hey, give this time.

I think this is a good thing.

Um and so that's something I would love to implement here once I get settled a little bit more.

Um but again, it comes back to just being open and transparent and being willing to have those conversations when people do have questions or issues and not just the traditional it's the chief's order, so just follow it.

That's just not my style.

Thank you, Chief.

Um quick question um around uh vision zero.

Uh council woman war had mentioned vision zero, and this is a specific um you know, potential policy change uh um that would relate to you know uh you know uh you know, acts of violence.

I know that you know we'll send social workers um you know into those situations, and I did get a request from from a constituent that I thought was a really um good request based on um a fatal crash that happened on Beachwood Boulevard this summer, which got a lot of um coverage because it was a tragedy.

It was a high school student actually was a classmate of uh of my son at Alderdice.

Um my question is would you consider you know having um in in the instance of a fatal crashes similar to acts of violence um you know that are catastrophic to have social workers you know on the scene.

This was a scene on the beachwood boulevard with the parents came.

Obviously, there was one uh uh young man who who was deceased, you could imagine you know the emotion and the trauma.

Um just being that you know, given statistics that Councilman Strasberger mentioned, you know, earlier being that these these these violence incidents uh involving vehicles in particular are on the uptake, would would that be something that that you would consider as well is is having um you know, if if resources and manpower allows to, you know, in the incident of fatal crashes, which we know are in the increase to also have that kind of same kind of social worker um infrastructure to support uh you know families similar to uh you know acts of violent crime.

Umine.

Yes, for me, that um you know, these are traumatic experiences, like um, whether it is if somebody's responded to the scene and even in the in the in the investigatory stages of that, like sometimes there's a prolonged um you know positioning of that, or the bystanders or people witnessing and stuff like that, but it's traumatic.

And I think there are other opportunities you mean some fatal crashes, but I think there's other opportunities as well that um if it's in the scope and we can we can shape that and we have the resources, it to me I feel like it would be value added um to help navigate those.

Um my wife is um working out, she's a therapist, but she's you know, I had some contact with related to public safety with some of the foundational folks, and they brought up about trauma herses and traumatology, and just trying to make those connections too that I want to know what they developed that can wrap back around to public safety from some of our um uh some of those organizations.

So to my point is that's the forward thinking, and uh that I'm I hope that you hear, and I'm glad you offered that that um see that that this has impact to our communities, um, and being able to have a response that's adequate so we can manage that.

It's a yes from me.

In the interest of time, I'll say ditto.

I mean, I I I agree.

Crisis response doesn't need to be limited to someone who might be suicidal or having a mental health crisis if someone's witnessed or experienced something tragic and we can get them help.

I don't see why we wouldn't do that.

Thank you.

And just a couple more questions, like you said, and in the interest of time, I did just want to, you know, touch base um, you know, about ICE and thank you, you know, you know, for your responses, you know, thank you for your responses uh on the violence interruptions as well as the public safety center.

I have some questions in that arena.

I'm not gonna ask them out of uh the interest of time, but specifically uh around ICE.

I did have one burning question that I totally understand um about you know not intervening, you know, when there's uh you know federal law enforcement, you know, uh activities going on, but from a constitutional standpoint, um, is there any um arena given you know the fear that you know has been shared by by my colleagues that that the public has shared with us about the moment that we're in right now nationally?

Um is there um uh a potential situation at which the Pittsburgh police would intervene um in ICE operations, um, you know, under any circumstances, particularly around you know, potentially violating uh, you know, constitutional acts, or if if if if they appear to be breaking the wall, uh you know, is there a particular you know threshold um, you know, or is it kind of what you explained, you know, earlier you kind of stay back and then you know, you know, assess later.

But would there be in in in either uh of your estimates uh uh situation where they could cross a threshold that within demand uh Pittsburgh police intervention?

So thank you.

I appreciate the question.

That is probably uh uh it's probably one of the most complex questions because there's not a clear answer.

And I say that because nine point nine times out of ten, we wouldn't probably ten times out of ten, we're not gonna be there when the incident begins to unravel.

It's something that we would be called to because the situation has gotten out of control and someone's yelling for help, whether whether the call comes in from the the ICE side or the community side, and then our officers are going to be arriving and have to very quickly assess the situation and figure out what's going on.

Um the reason I say it's a you know case by case basis is if they arrive on scene and then uh an ICE agent is engaged in a use of force with someone and trying to apprehend them, those officers aren't going to have the benefit of knowing how that situation began and if that use of force was legitimate or not.

So for them to intervene at that point would not be appropriate.

Now I will say if anyone crosses the line and they are overtly violating someone's constitutional rights, I I think that any Pittsburgh police officer would say, I'm not gonna stand by and watch this.

Um but again, that's that's a very nuanced and um also these situations tend to unravel very quickly.

And so I I wouldn't want to it's not that I don't want to.

I just couldn't say definitively, yes, in this situation we would intervene.

The last thing I would want is for officers to arrive on scene while ICE officers are engaged in a lawful operation and they feel pressured to intervene, and then they become the target of a federal investigation, or they are arrested because they intervened in an operation.

So when I say, I mean, there's a lot of like uh layers to peel back on that, and I do think it merits further conversation and to touch on some of our comments earlier that we discussed uh really us to sit down with the city attorney and talk through these issues.

So if we are placed in the situation, there's kind of guardrails in place.

I hope I hope that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Uh uh Dr.

Williams, I don't know if you had uh anything you wanted to add to that before my final question.

No, sir.

I I would just be echoing the very same things he's he said and you know, rephrasing, but saying the same thing.

I don't have nothing to add.

Okay, thank you.

And um, and and and then my last uh you know question or comment, or it might be a combination of both is that you know, I really appreciate the comment about on ramps.

Um I appreciate you know, particularly, you know, my conversation this morning with Acting Director Williams around paramedicine and creating on ramps and into public safety as well as looking at Westinghouse, which obviously is is in my district.

I think it's a great opportunity um to you know create that as an on-wrap into public safety, you know, careers, um, you know, particularly not only having Westinghouse program, but having the University of Pittsburgh as well as community college, um, you know, right there, um in close vicinity.

Um just wanted you know to get your thoughts about you know potential you know partnerships, you know, with those two post-secondary educations, obviously the Department of Public Safety as well as Wesley House High School is a very um you know intentional and and deliberate, you know, on ramp and so bringing folks into public safety careers, being that you know we all share um you know, around this table, uh the need to want to, you know, bring uh you know more folks within the ranks uh uh of public safety, you know, and that's you know, across the board, you know, whether it's you know animal control, EMTs, fire, you know, as well as I know the the chief had mentioned, you know, getting the ranks uh of of uh of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police back up.

Um, your thoughts about you know if there's any uh best practices or monopolies you've seen, you know, uh around the country at creating you know on ramps of getting um folks uh you know from the communities, you know, from the city, you know, homegrown talent in getting those into uh the ranks of uh of public safety professionals.

I certainly have, sir.

Um, especially in regards to EMS and fire.

Um there are there are ways like individuals are junior EMS or junior firefighters in other cities and and and other areas where they get certain levels of of certification that allows them to ride along or participate at certain levels even while they're in high school, and then you can continue on the certification moving forward.

So I would look at uh are there opportunities, ours is a little different only because of how people enter into our workforce as EMTs or per um EMTs, paramedics or firefighters.

Um police officers are a little different, you know.

You have to have it it's a little different in that, but I think the exposure to at least build the interest is there from uh from a high school level.

I just don't know that there are the levels of certification we could provide for them.

So if we would work with the Pittsburgh Public Schools, I I like the fact um it's an opportunity at Westinghouse.

And I'm and I'm wanting I'm desiring to encourage our efforts to participate with that, like really collab with them to help them in that program.

It's already existing.

And so they have instructors like do we rotate some instructors to help to be tangible and and and provide some of the instruction like how they're setting it up.

But I would really like to see this in other parts of the city.

I don't think it should be exclusive in the East End.

I want to see it in the South Hills, you know, I want to see it on the north side.

Like, is there an opportunity that that now gives a potential um uh opportunity to our youth to go into these career fields and we can grow responders from within from our city schools if they decide to almost like and I'm calling it this even like trade programs that used to exist back in the day, like and then we can actually have a a pathway where we can onboard them into our workforce.

I think that would be uh uh a great opportunity, and if we can grow that out, I want to explore that.

So it'll just start with the existing program.

Where can we come alongside Westinghouse to help them with that program?

I've had some of those conversations previously.

Now I get to have them in my role or designate somebody.

But I want, I mean, this is Pittsburgh specific Pittsburgh Public Schools, can Pittsburgh Public Safety participate with that.

And once we have an established um um opportunity there, can we grow this in other and other high schools across the city?

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Exhaust uh my questions, if I have any follow-ups, I'll I'll email those out.

But I thank you for your willingness to serve.

Thank you for your patience.

I'm sitting through a long meeting, and apologies uh uh for for having to join uh you know virtually, but it it's been that kind of week as we all know.

But uh, I defer back to the chair.

Thank you.

Um I'm scrolling through my list.

I believe almost every question I said has now been checked off.

I will make I guess a comment, then maybe a question.

One of the themes I heard sort of being talked about was both over policing as well as sort of legislative bodies passing laws that then aren't necessarily always implemented.

So as an example, Councilwoman Warwick brought up the um traffic policy that we passed in 2021, which was to basically not pull over cars for minor offenses.

So you have a broken taillight, we simply mail you a ticket, right?

We don't need to engage you for something like that.

Excuse me.

My understanding, however, is that due to union pushback as well as potential um not arbitration, accreditation concerns at the state level, we're not really enforcing that.

So I'm just curious of your thoughts.

I that is something I would have to look into because I was not aware that that I was aware of the policy that was implemented.

I was not aware of it not being enforced.

So I would I will follow up with you on that.

Okay.

Um same same thought along the it was also brought up around marijuana.

I think you were here when we actually passed that bill.

Um we made it a civil citation as opposed to a state misdemeanor.

And after we passed it, we actually saw an uptick of state misdemeanors being handed out, especially in certain pockets of the city.

So I'm just curious of your thoughts around enforcing that and from your perspective, Chief, is there a clear directive to prioritize civil t civil citations over state misdemeanors for small amounts of marijuana?

I forget the exact amount at this point.

Yeah, again, I'm happy I I'll I will actually have our um crime analysis team pull those stats and look at where we are now.

Um I mean to me uh you know, there's so many cities and states now where marijuana's legal.

Um and so uh that's just not a priority.

It just can't be a priority.

You know, we have so many other things to worry about.

Um, but I don't have the stats right now as far as recent numbers, but I'm happy to look into that.

I'll have our crime analysis team pull those stats and put something together, like we can do a five year trend and show you where we are now as opposed to where we were back in 2021 with those citations.

But yeah, I I mean to me it's it's just not a priority.

Okay, yeah.

Thank you.

And then lastly, along those same things, there's sort of an older police tactic.

Um that especially I've seen used outside of well, particularly black bars in our city, where officers will say, Well, there's people outside smoking marijuana, and what they'll do is they'll go and use our flashlights and just start flashing lights into cars looking for something that could be wrong.

Is that sort of a tactic you would endorse, or do you say that's probably unnecessary?

So I will say it it to my knowledge, it doesn't really have anything to do with marijuana.

I know that if we get complaints about um firearms, I could tell you that uh, you know, if there's a complaint about firearms or we have shootings around a bar, then officers would g you know go and look in the parking lot.

Again, not opening the cars, but if they see something in plain view, like they see a firearm in plain view, that would be the basis for an investigatory stop to follow up further.

Um I mean that that is a way that we legally get guns off the street, but I have not seen that for marijuana.

I mean, not for many years.

That that was an old thing for marijuana.

Um but when we're talking about firearms now and shootings.

Okay.

Um thank you.

There was one other thing that was mentioned.

Oh, um, a number of members have mentioned it, Councilman Gross, I think was the last person to mention it.

But I do think it would be helpful if we had um back in the day, they used to have officer-friendly.

They used to come into the schools, and one of the things they left behind was a sort of bill of rights.

So we've children actually could actually learn just yesterday evening.

My daughter started asking me about that.

She had to show ID if ICE or someone stops her on the street, so we start having this conversation.

But I do think it would be helpful if we were able to make on the city's website somewhere a very basic know your rights.

Here's what they are, here's what they are not, here's why an officer will pull you over.

No, we're not in a I forget what it's called, but one of the states where they can just stop you and ask for your name.

Um, and then also at the same time, if ICE does A, here's B, right?

Like if this, then that.

Um, and even Councilman Gross was saying, and here's what our uniform looks like, just so you're aware of who we are and who we are not.

I do think it'd probably be helpful um if we just create a basic one pager of public safety bill of rights that we could then down either an individual could download a council person we could download and take it to community meetings, take it to public safety council meetings if we wanted to.

Um and we could probably even help you compile it.

I know BPP has put has put something like this together before.

I forget who you mentioned, someone else having put one together.

Oh, the citizen police review board.

With BPA.

With BPP.

Okay.

So we may even already have 90% of it.

But I do think it'd be helpful if we put it online.

That way when we get calls about it, we had a woman call in to our meeting this morning saying, how do we know how to go about this sort of stuff?

We could say here it is, share the most your peers, your citizens.

I think that'll I think that's a worthwhile endeavor for us to undertake.

And I don't think it would be that hard for us to help.

So endorsement on my part with that.

I think is wise and great to do.

That was all I actually had.

Um anything else for the good order?

Just a closing call.

Okay.

Just a closing comment and uh and and four questions for both of you.

No, I just want to say um through things all.

I just want to kind of put this on record.

I represent one of the largest immigrant communities from mostly Latin America, you know, in the way of Beachview and Carrick as well.

We would like to see a officer or an officer, and I work close with the you know representatives of the Latin American community there.

Spanish speaking police officer would be really great.

We actually had an incident at one point where somebody got uh you know um taken in, a young kid, and um there was no communication, they couldn't communicate, and you know, it was all solved and resolved.

But um, yeah, either that or you know, even Commander Ripple has suggested that he would require his police officers who he covers, you know, Beach View to learn Spanish, you know.

And I know the Spanish community have reached out to me and said they would love to, you know, offer those lessons.

So just you know, something moving forward.

Um shot squatter, I just wanted to also say I'm a big fan of it.

Um every police enforcement officer, every chief I talk to is a big fan of it.

Every lieutenant, um, you know, we had a shooting up in Brookline the other day, nobody could pinpoint where it's from.

I love the accuracy of that.

It's it's a really, really good thing.

Um I love what you're saying, Chief Lando, about getting in the schools.

That's fantastic.

Undetected, I mean, coming in as like, you know, not with your badges and your your uniforms.

I'd like to see that continue and to what you just said, Mr.

Williams.

Yeah, we need in the South Hills too.

We we need it all over the city.

But I would love to have that.

My former high school per share.

Um one final thing.

I agree with you 100%, and so do the leaders in the Latin American and the Latino community, is we do not want to put a bullseye on ourselves by waving flags and saying no ice, no ice, no ice, okay.

We don't want that.

Nobody wants that.

But um at the same time, I know from the leaders that I speak to, they frequently tell me just be quiet, you know.

We don't have those hardened criminals or you know, whoever they're supposed to be chasing around.

And we just don't want the attention.

And when you bring the attention to yourself, especially knowing the current atmosphere, you know, uh you you almost uh welcome it.

So one final thing, Mr.

Williams.

Uh we talked about this, and thank you for calling me.

Uh unfortunately with our first homicide the other day.

I'm not asking you to call me for every homicide.

Hopefully, you know, those are far and few between.

But I would like to know when whether it's an officer that's uh in an incident or there's a you know a shooting of one some sort that um not only myself and I could be the contact person, but the person whose district that takes place in because we get the calls, I get the calls, um, and you know, the representative of that district is gonna have to answer to the press.

And it's just good policy for us all to be on the same page.

Obviously, when you're in a scene, I don't expect you to pick up the phone and call me.

But if you have maybe Emily or or Karen, reach out just to kind of fill us in so we're not caught off guard with the press, and we could at least say something to the nature.

Um of course we don't want you to tell you anything you're not supposed to, but we could at least say we're in con we're in communication, there are people in the scene, so that's important.

So with that, I will say um, you know, I think Mayor O'Connor O'Connor has made a really good choice with both of you.

Uh you have my full confidence.

I think your nomination will sail through.

I'm not speaking for the others, but I have a pretty good inkling that uh we're gonna sail through.

And um welcome aboard, and you know, let's let's get to work.

Thanks.

Can I make one final uh thing that I forgot?

I I just want to do that.

Let me do this first because I I won't let you, but councilwoman Gross also had a quick question.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Apologies and not to keep us long, but I have two other items that I will um follow up with you on.

I don't want my my um constituents in Highland Parker Morning Side to think that I forgot to ask you about the firing range and sound mitigation because we have talked about it at length, and I will be following up.

Um so no need to to reiterate it here, but we have commitments to work on um on that.

And then secondly, um I will be following up on um some concerning um I think behaviors with our new Sin Spar task force and a raid that especially that was on P Town in the last year that didn't need to go the way it went and was really distressing to um the um very peaceful gathering at a very uh bar that is not a nuisance.

And so the the question that we will be talking about is why was the New Since Bar task force sent to a bar that is not a nuisance bar, does not meet any of the qualifications or thresholds of the nuisance bar that is in ordinance and um you know was sent with SWOT and you know it was evacuated and uh it was inordinate.

It was it was uh um um you know I've lost my words, it's late in the day, but um it's way uh out of um people's comfort levels and it was it was uncalled for.

So we'll be following up with that.

Thank you.

That's all Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

I do have one last question.

Um low-level offenses, be it a traffic stop, a consent search, anything of that nature.

Do officers have to document the reasons for those?

Absolutely.

We document everything and it's on body camera.

Okay.

And in addition to that, um that we have uh search and seizure uh forms that are filled out and that and it goes through a supervisory review process.

So if it was found to be an inappropriate search, that there's an accountability measure.

Okay.

Is there is there a metric to also review it for potential racial disparities?

I I I would just have to look into that.

I mean, uh we're looking for reasonable suspicion or probable cause.

Um the reasonable suspicion or probable cause cannot be race-based, obviously.

Um I think if I'm sorry.

Part of the reason why I'm asking is we now have a federal government who has made federal rulings saying you can now begin looking at someone's skin color and saying I need to stop you.

So I'm just worried about how that will affect us locally.

We will absolutely not be subscribing to that that uh law or whatever that is.

We just don't do that here.

I mean, and again, it goes back to wanting to maintain the community trust and wanting people to call us when they're having an emergency, and if they think that that's how we conduct ourselves, we're gonna be working against our goal and our mission.

Thank you.

What you wanted to share?

I I just I I I meant to say it while he was here and I forgot, and I just wanted to put on the record.

You know, I talked a lot about the things that we've done in the past month and the things that have been going on in the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, but um assistant chief Marty Devine Um was left in a very difficult spot uh after Chief Scorato left and uh he did I think a heck of a job leading the Bureau of Police and uh and I just wanted to make sure that we publicly acknowledge the work he did because um I don't necessarily know that was the task he wanted to take on, uh, but he did.

And uh and I think that we wouldn't be in the pretty good place that we are in today if it wasn't for his efforts um over the past year.

So I just wanted to acknowledge him.

And that is all.

Agreed, thank you.

Thank you for acknowledging that.

Uh Marty's a very dear personal friend of mine, lifelong friend of mine.

I couldn't agree with you more.

I wanted to say that while he was here, but um thank you for for acknowledging that.

I think he did a super job in a very difficult situation he walked into.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Seeing nothing else, then we've exhausted the bit the purpose and the business of this meeting.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

But he is our manager who works on uh the construction side for most of these federally funded projects.

Um we have James here from Council District 7.

Uh I didn't see anybody that I recognize from Council District 9, but they are also adjacent and have been involved with this project.

Um up front, uh there's Patrick.

Um up front, if you have not signed in, um you have Jacob Williams, he is one of our comms people at Domi uh new staff uh with us uh recently.

And then Jan, he's generally the face of uh of these projects in terms of the communication side of most, I'm sure most of you guys have met him in the past.

So that's all the city side.

We also have some representatives from our contractor, Ghoulasat Construction, that's Brandon right there, and Angelo.

And then we have uh Mike McCart with uh WRA.

He's our construction manager uh for during construction.

All right, meeting norms.

Uh we want to respect everyone's physical and psychological safety.

Uh we were here to listen and to learn.

Uh we want to assume everyone's best intentions uh throughout the meeting.

Uh we want to hopefully not disagree, but if so, do it respectfully.

Um appreciate everyone's differences, be open to new ideas, and to be present while we're here.

Uh then a quick safety review.

We've got two exits uh right here.

Uh I might look to the uh BGC people about if we have a AED in the facility.

Okay, we'll look to Alonso uh if if God forbid we need one.

Um and then for emergencies, if there's one, I'll call, I will call 911.

If I am the emergency uh Jacob, can you please save my life?

Thank you.

Um quick purpose of the meeting.

Um, and so you know, this project has been around for quite some time.

We've been meeting with you know many people over the years.

Um you know, we're getting to the point where we are about to begin construction.

Um we've worked with you know several neighbors and neighborhood groups.

Um we wanted to you know bring the project team to you guys to you know talk about what to expect during construction, you know, see the faces of the people who will be involved day to day.

Um so we want to introduce the project team.

Um we do want to just quickly go through what the scope of work will be, and we do have a printo over there uh of the entire work area uh and what we're doing.

Um we'll explain kind of like how we're gonna phase through the project and what the detour is going to look like.

Um we had some temporary traffic calming measures that were requested that we uh put in.

I'll quickly zip through those.

Uh we'll talk through the current timeline.

Um and then we have developed like a communications plan for putting out information kind of at a regular uh pace during construction.

Okay.

Um project scope of work is complete reconstruction of Penn Avenue within the project area.

We're doing street, sidewalk, curb, traffic signals.

Um we are including a raised pedestrian intersection at the Pacific intersection, uh new lighting, and there is uh public art art component to the project as well.

Uh it's kind of an old diagram, but it shows the project area.

So the part on the left, the yellow is phase one that was already done.

Um so starting at the end of where we dropped off.

We essentially have four blocks of complete reconstruction all the way to uh to Graham Street here at the end.

Uh okay, detour.

Um and I do have a diagram later to walk through it.

So I know there's a lot of words.

Um throughout construction, westbound traffic will remain on Penn Avenue.

So inbound traffic into the city uh will remain there.

It'll shift around as we do the construction, um, but we'll be maintaining uh that traffic.

Eastbound through traffic uh will be detoured.

Um within the construction area, you know, local traffic will be maintained uh aside from you know the active work zone.

Um let's see, yeah, the detour is intended for like through traffic.

And we have we requested uh we were asked to include some examples of like ways to navigate through the neighborhood, um, which we include in later slides.

Um we have some uh you know, I in phase one, we understand that there was some cut-through traffic on Friendship Av.

Um so in some of the neighborhood streets, friendship, linebiddle, gram, and roop, uh we are putting in temporary speed humps as part of the construct uh part of the construction.

Um and then access across Penn, so the cross streets will be maintained.

But you know, when we construct the intersections, there may be uh you know, short times where it's restricted or cut to like you know half of the street at a time as we're working on that.

Um buses, bikes, and pedestrians, uh the neighborway is going to be maintained.

Uh we worked with our traffic group, you know, out of worries of cut through traffic overwhelming the late neighborway.

We are making a small change to Coral, um, which I also have a diagram of later to uh try to prevent that cut through traffic as much as possible for eastbound uh people trying to cheat the detour.

Um later we'll show what the bus detour is, and we're working with Port Authority to uh to get that kind of finalized and make sure that they're all on board with what they need to do to get the detour on, but they are uh working with us on that.

Um pedestrian access will be maintained during construction when the sidewalks are being worked on, well, there will be a deep uh diverter, and um our team will work with the uh various property owners and businesses to maintain access to the buildings for pedestrians.

Um and then the pogo station will be temporarily removed during construction.

We've been working with Pogo uh to facilitate that.

All right, here is the detour.

So if you are heading westbound via car on Penn, you just take Penn.

That'll be maintained uh the whole time.

Um if you are heading kind of from downtown eastbound to go through the project area, you'll be detoured at Main Street, take liberty, liberty to bomb, bomb to Negley, and then you can continue on Penn.

Um our bus detour is to take Winebidd to Friendship, go these six blocks to roop, and then rejoin Penn at that point and then continue on.

Um for traffic coming from the north uh side of Penn, like the neighborhood area.

Um, for eastbound traffic, there'll be a detour that'll pick you up on broad and drop you off on Penn eastbound at Fairmount.

Uh I think that's all the aspects of it.

Um here is our uh adjustment for the Coral Street neighborway.

Um so between Aiken and Latham, we are switching it to be a one-way westbound for vehicular traffic and keeping the uh you know two-way traffic for bikes to prevent that cut-through movement for people trying to uh to cheat the detour.

Um we can see how it works and figure out how we want to do it.

I've talked through it with the traffic people and TBD.

Um yeah, so let's quick kind of run through like some examples of how you might navigate from like within the neighborhoods.

So if you are in the friend the middle of friendship and you want to go to work downtown, you would just kind of get to Penn and go westbound because that's still open.

Uh if you're kind of similar area and you're going east to get to the target in East Liberty, you would not take Penn, you would zip down to the detour and get there that way.

Um if you're coming from the west and you're dropping off at Montessori, you would, you know, because you're doing low, you're you have a local destination, you could hop on to Penn, you would divert out on wine between before the construction, get to your destination, um, and then you can use Penn Westbound to get back home or whatever you need to do.

Uh if you're coming, say, from the north, uh and you're going to Kidsville, you hop onto Aiken, go south, do the drop-off, and then just kind of go back the way you go.

Uh because the access across Penn will still be maintained.

Uh if you need to take the 88 to Bakery Square, for instance, uh you, and that would be an eastbound uh movement.

You would go you know a couple extra blocks over and pick it up where uh it um where the eastbound bus detour rejoins Penn.

Um I actually asked Port Authority today what their plan was for whether they would install new eastbound stops at the cross streets on Friendship on the detour, so that is still to be determined.

Um that'll come.

And that's it.

Um so quickly to go through the construction phasing.

Um we are going one block at a time, starting on the south side of Penn, and we'll do uh the roadway first.

Um so we will move the westbound traffic to kind of a wider uh lane with a bit of a buffer between the work zone.

Uh so this is inbound here.

We'll be working on the roadway.

Um, sidewalk will be maintained at that point.

There'll be a construction fence to uh you know to protect the pedestrians.

Um we'll do all the roadway work, and then for that same block, we will uh then move the uh through pedestrian traffic onto a walkway on the other side and then work on the the sidewalks, and we'll have access to the individual uh properties.

Um, but the kind of pedestrian through walkway will be where we just built the roadway.

Um so we'll do that one block at a time.

We'll go to the next block, still on the south side, go through our four-ish blocks of construction, and then go back to the beginning and do the same thing, you know, on the other side of the street, starting with the roadway, sidewalk, next block, roadway, sidewalk, and then march our way down.

How long take the entire sorry for you guys?

Uh sorry, we're recording this uh to put on.

But the question was how long will each lock take?

The overall project duration is about two years.

Two divided by eight-ish.

I I I don't have it at the top of my head, but I can we can look at the construction uh phasing and rough it out and send it around.

Um this is just kind of uh a walk through.

South side, we go one, two, and three, and four, then do the north side of the street, one, two, three, and four, and it will be road, sidewalk, road, sidewalk, road, sidewalk, road, sidewalk, and then the other side of the street.

Um just to talk through our construction details.

Uh the work hours are pretty standard, 7 a.m.

to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Um the uh Gulisec has uh worked with the children's home to use the empty lot where the church used to be for construction staging.

Um and then the businesses and the residential uh properties along the corridor, you know, access will be maintained, and you know, we will work with the property owners and the businesses, you know, with the team that we have here through construction to to make sure that access is maintained.

You know, if we need to do driveway widths half at a time or something like that to maintain things, this is all standard stuff that we do for construction projects.

Um just to kind of get some of the uh some of the um the team.

So we'll have a construction inspection construction inspector uh who is on site uh at all times when work is being done.

Um they keep their eyes uh yeah, they're the city's eyes on the project.

Um they uh you know they make sure everything is built to the cities and pennot standards, they keep track of quantities, um and they work you know with the with the contractor you know every single day whenever they're working.

Um the construction manager, that's Mike.

Um he's like the liaison between Pennot and the City and the contractor.

Uh he keeps us on schedule under budget.

Uh uh he pulls together the invoices to pay the contractor, um, and he will be you know between the office and the site as needed.

He'll help work out like day-to-day issues if they need to be elevated to the city, then we'll work those things out.

And um, and you know, he he makes some of the decisions, some of them come to me, uh it all comes to the team.

Um we are gonna share Mike's contact info with the leadership of Bloomfield, Garfield and Friendship uh neighborhood groups so that they can like have a relationship so that they can give them a ring.

We're not just we don't want everyone in the neighborhood to be to be calling in.

We kind of you know want to uh do it through uh the neighborhood uh neighborhood group uh channels, uh but we will share the context of those uh organizations with him and you know uh we have Jan's uh contact here, he's kind of like my liaison for all of my projects.

Um obviously if there's emergency, call 911, but non-emergency, feel free to contact Jan.

Uh his full information is also at the end of the presentation.

Um and also I don't think I said this, we'll put this presentation on the engage page.

Um City Channels here recording, we'll put the recording on engage page two.

Sadly, it will have my face on it.

Trying to make me look good.

Um the contractor has notice receipt issued, they have started to send us uh you know materials to approve, things to order.

Um they have mobilized uh on site, I think.

I assume the trailer is up at this point.

No?

Oh no, okay.

Okay.

Um can I ask a good question about this?

Because even though you did an ATP, I live on Friendship Avenue.

I have received no information about this detour except from the meeting from November 7 and then this meeting and all.

When will the city inform the people that live on Friendship Avenue about the detour and possible issues for happening?

The question was about kind of implementation of the MPT and the detours.

Um so I'll we do have a communications plan that I'll get to in a couple slides, um, and we'll zip through it at that point, uh, if that works.

Um but we are looking to install the um detour in March, uh coinciding with when work begins.

South half of the street, we're estimating about a year, north half of the street about a year, and then kind of in that spring uh little cleanup area or cleanup time where we uh plant the trees, we put in the tree grates and those kinds of things.

But the roadway work per schedule right now is uh anticipated to be done in March of 2028.

So do you plan on letting the people that live on Friendship Avenue know about the detour and the bus feed for the females in the end?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, can we yeah, can we have a micro the people online can't hear or whatever.

Um so for the project, we want to push information out on a regular basis uh to the public to kind of let everyone know where we're at with the project, what's coming in the in the you know the weeks ahead.

Um so we'll probably have either a monthly or a bi-weekly project team meeting uh to discuss the project, how it's going, invoicing, da-da-da-da-da.

We're gonna have Jan and Jacob on those calls.

Um Jan is gonna pull together like an email blast to send out to anyone who signs up for it.

Um and I think he wants to put it on the engage page as well.

Um we're planning on doing that on a similar phase, uh similar phasing every two weeks.

We'll be putting out information about where we're at and what to expect next.

Um so if you are interested in that, put your email address on the sign-in sheet uh at the front where Jacob's at.

Um we also have an engage page for the project where if you hit follow, um, you'll be alerted for these kind of information blasts that we'll be putting out.

Um so things like when the detours, you know, we plan to start them in February.

We'll be putting out information before the detail detour gets put in via these you know communications things.

You know, naturally we'll be talking with like commun uh yeah, Bloomfield, Garfield, and friendship.

Um to let them know.

But that is our plan to put out communications on like a regular uh cadence.

Okay, that's it.

Um so that's Jan's contact information.

Uh feel free to take that down.

Um wait, where's the microphone?

Yeah, we're gonna okay, you guys got it in the back.

So now we'll do questions, but make sure that when you ask a question, get the microphone so it'll be on the recording uh and the YouTube people can hear.

Um so Jacob's got it.

So if anyone has a question, feel free to raise your hand.

There you are.

Is there gonna be coordination with PWSA, for example?

We just got a notice that they're gonna replace lead lines to our buildings.

Um so is there gonna be coordination between what Domi is doing, what PWSA is doing, or what the gas company is doing?

Um we so PWSA and the utilities, sorry, I'm just writing this down.

Um they do work with our um permitting group, so they have to get permits for all their work.

They'll be aware of what we are doing and where we're at, and we'll coordinate it through the permitting process.

Um, but let me that'll I will check in with those guys and see like what the timeline is for PWSA with that they have.

Well, we got I mean we got a notice because they're coming.

Did it have a date?

No.

Okay.

And where ish where I'm like a time?

Yeah.

And we've been doing annual annual big and kind of quarterly small meetings with the utilities to coordinate overlapping projects.

We started doing it like in a formal way last year, and it's been really successful.

Um so we'll be getting started with that for the 2026 construction season pretty soon.

Um so I'll make sure that we include that in the coordination there.

Hi, Mike.

Um if we have a cement uh wheelchair ramp in front of our front door, will you be replacing that?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Saw your hand first.

Hi, um, I just want to know what kind of diverter you're gonna have for coral.

Is it gonna be paint?

Is it gonna be physical?

I couldn't see it on the picture I took.

I believe it's paint and flex posts, but let me double check.

Okay, we're at the back of all these that's not a good idea.

It might just it might just be paint, but I can talk to our traffic people and just have they can take a second look at it and see if or or you know, we can also assess it once it's in, and if there's non-compliance, we can we can work with like our um our sign shop or other people to to do additional work.

Okay, and my second question is um is that the reason why there's no you're not gonna put temporary speed humps on Coral 2?

Um I'm just curious because we um I'm part of French Local Streets and we did a speed study and we saw that 76% of drivers are speeding in the Montessori school zone.

Um, so obviously that's a concern.

I have a kid, so um, I'd love temporary speed bumps or something, especially with this, because there's gonna be a lot of cars flying through.

Um I can talk to our traffic calming people and see um have you put in a request for um traffic calming like formally through I know that they have a system to um I've been in contact with um Calsoy Mosley and Councilman Gross.

Okay.

Yeah, and they've seen the study too.

Okay.

Thank you.

See a hand over here.

I'm gonna come around the table.

Sorry.

So I have a couple of quick questions.

Um as mentioned, I live on friendship.

We've received no notice from any of the community organizations about the detour or the speed humps, except I got information last November, and there are people on the street that don't sign up for emails or look at the engaged PGH page.

So how do you I mean I would hope and encourage you to kind of look at ways in which you communicate with everybody, not just those of us who have access to that kind of information.

So that's one large concern of mine because it can be easily flyered.

It's not a long detour, it can be easily flyered.

Um I live through phase one, so I have a huge number of concerns.

Uh when you talk about cheating the detour, that's what's gonna happen on Friendship Avenue, even with the speed humps, is people will cheat the detour because Liberty Avenue's red lights, their lights will, unless they're coordinated in some way to move traffic a little bit more fluidly.

I think that what we'll see on Friendship Avenue is an increased number of people that are cheating the detour.

Coral's not gonna cheat the detour, it'll be friendship avenue for sure.

Because right now people cheat Liberty Avenue because they just cut up through the neighborhood to get to wherever they're going, which is completely fine, they're all public roads.

And then the final kind of question is um, so there's two issues going on the draft, which there'll be a lot of rental activities in these neighborhoods.

And then the other one is Pendot is closing the bridge for two months in the summer.

And one of the things that we know will happen is people will come through the neighborhoods to get to town.

So how will and can the city accommodate all of that, even though inbound's gonna be open on Penn, there's gonna be a lot of people from out of town for four or five days here, significant numbers of people out of town for four or five days.

And then also people that are driving into town um to try to get to town because of the you know, they'll come down Allegheny River Boulevard or they're figure out ways to get around.

We'll probably use either bomb boulevard and then bigelow or friendship.

So kind of thinking about the overall impact of a major, major, major city construction.

Yeah, I mean, I think for out-of-towners, I mean we would I would hope that they would be following the sign detour if they don't know where they're going.

I mean, we can talk to I know we have contacts with like the Google maps people.

So I can talk is Ernie Ernie does that.

Yeah, we can talk to our staff that reaches out to them to, you know, figure out a way to get the the closure on Google Maps so that it routes people like the correct way.

Is there is there a way that I mean in phase one they signed they signed friendship because people will cut off of Penn, they'll come from Penn.

Is there is there a way that I mean in phase one they signed they signed friendship because people will cut off of Penn, they'll come from Penn if they'll come down Friendship Avenue from children's hospital to avoid anything instead of going to Liberty.

Is there a way that it can be signed to say neighborhood or through traffic only or residential traffic?

What however it's legally phrased as a sign?

I mean the city makes its own sign, so why couldn't it happen?

Would be my question.

But signing it so then at least there are kind of a warning system in some ways.

I can ask, I can ask our traffic people.

I mean, my understanding is that typically like uninf we try not to put up unenforceable signs.

Um because it leads to like sign fatigue and and you know, you know, cluttering of the roadway, but I'll I'll I'll take a note and put it down.

So you know, and they and they come for deliveries at some point, but they also come to avoid the traffic on the bridge.

See your hand over here.

So I live near Maine like on 44th, and there's always traffic on Maine with the buses and the trucks, and so how are you gonna think about that when you're talking about that being part of the detour?

It's like it's already really hard for a bus and a car, because people apparently are afraid of the bus to go down there, like how are like it is very congested when they were doing construction on Penn Avenue and are still doing construction on Penn Avenue, and it takes me 15-20 minutes to get them on a sori.

And it's literally like not that far.

So how how is that gonna be prevented?

Because then I also go through friendship to cut through Liberty traffic to get to Montessori.

If your destination is in the neighborhood, though, like yeah, you would use the neighborhood.

And then my like those are like neighborhood kind of things, but my personal questions are I do a lot of shopping on Penn Avenue, I try to stay local.

The last time the pedestrian walkways were very dark.

And I'm concerned because I saw that the walkway was kind of in towards the street.

Are you planning on lighting those walkways and how would you be lighting those walkways for the pedestrians at night time?

At this point we don't have that in the thing, but I imagine that's something we can explore putting like a there's like a pretty standard like string light that we put on construction fencing and things like that, right?

Maybe we'll do something like that.

Okay.

Yeah, it just for safety and for you know, watching for the big dips in the road and those kinds of things would be great.

Um the also the last time around the private, I mean, the last time around, everybody parked in the streets, in the residential streets.

I know that you were saying that the uh the construction equipment and the construction vehicle, the the you know, the dump trucks and things will be parking up on the hillside, but what about the private contractor vehicles?

Where will they be parking?

Is there enough room and will they be told to park also in the um children's home parking lot on the hill, or will they be parking in the neighborhoods because we just don't have enough room for them?

What's your guys' point?

And we think we're seeing the picking terminal.

I can just I'll just repeat it.

Yeah, all kind of massive crews out there, so we're planning on moving keeping the guys off the up in the orange.

And just for the people online, yeah, they're planning on parking in the in this um staging yard.

Okay, because even if you add 20 cars, they're trucks, right?

So they're longer than normal, they're taller than normal, they're harder to get around the corners than normal.

And um if if that ends up being the case, what we had to do the last time around was lift residential parking permit restrictions because we had to allow for people on the north side of Penn Avenue where the trucks were were parking there to be able to park on the south side of Penn Avenue, but because they don't have permit parking there, they were getting tickets if they would park in the BB area.

Is that making sense to you?

You know, I I'm talking, we'll call it uh uh the trucks were parking in front of Garfield homes, and Garfield homes didn't have any place to park.

So of course they were parking on the friendship side, but those are BB areas and they were getting tickets, which is terrible.

And so I want to just really make sure we have a plan of attack.

Um because a 45 dollar ticket for somebody just really is pretty, it's not great.

Um then my final question is if there are emergency updates that um, oh, we knocked down the telephone pole or the traffic light, and uh this section of people are not going to have power when you get home from work today, or we're gonna have to be digging up the sewer or the water, so we have to do an emergency shut off.

How you know if you're doing the emails every two weeks, which I think is awesome, that's great.

Um, but Yan certainly can't call everybody in the neighborhood and say, hey, by the way, expect no water, we're hoping to have it on by 11.

How how will we get because those things happened the last time and I I expect them to happen because accidents happen or or you find weird things going on under the ground.

Right.

And I think we would I mean, Jacob, we'd probably put out like some level of a press release.

And then I think you know, for especially for water, um, I would assume we'd use like PWC's robocall.

They have an ability to do robocalls, I believe, and and kind of put things out to they do, they just didn't do it the last time because they were not the ones that were on site dealing with the problem.

Okay.

Well, well, maybe we could yell at them, I don't know.

Um, we will I'm sure there are different avenues that we'll probably work with the council district.

I mean, those kind of emergency things will be all hands on deck.

Okay, but there would not be a robocall for this project, is what you're saying.

Like, no, we wouldn't have a robocall system for the people that live in the world.

I need to.

We don't have one.

I have I know in the past I've used PWSAs for things, but I don't know if we still can do that.

I I don't know, I think that's strange.

But we'll work, yeah, with the council district, we'll work with the neighborhood groups, we'll get out here and yeah, we'll do all hands on deck.

Thank you.

I'm done.

Thank you so much.

So you hand back here, and then I'm gonna get to you.

Thank you.

I just had um a follow-up um about coordination with the other utilities.

Um I think you mentioned you guys do like a yearly meeting.

Uh no, it's more monthly or quarterly.

Monthly, okay.

Yeah.

So we do a big one each year to talk about like upcoming construction.

Um because the last phase, it just seemed like nobody, it was incredibly siloed, and it was just a very clear picture into how things kind of work and the siloing.

Um it was just incredibly difficult for homeowners, residents, business owners, um, when things got ripped up on one person's plan and then covered up on another person's plan and then ripped up again the next week, and then and I just as on behalf of the people who work and live in this area, um, urge you to please for the love of God coordinate, just pick one person in a spreadsheet to like kind of map it out.

I know you have a lot of moving parts, but thinking about it from your perspective, there's so much going on, but thinking about it from our perspective, it's like our lives and our livelihoods.

So really tr putting some thought and effort into regular communications for not just the things that you think are important, but the things that actually impact all of our lives and especially our livelihoods.

The last phase and the phase before that, put out businesses, like put them out of business.

So just really paying attention to how all of this really affects us on that ground level, not in the minutiae of what you're doing, but in the big picture of what it's like to live through it.

Yeah, totally and I think about that.

I this will be kind of the second year that we're doing like the real, like having everyone all the utilities get together to talk about overlapping projects and in terms of like breaking the silos, it has at least from my like anecdotal experience been really helpful.

And then also looping in Penn Dot.

Yep, they will be, yeah.

I was they they are project partners.

I um our Penn Dot uh rep wasn't able to be here.

Um, but they are integral to the project um and will be with us every step of the way.

Awesome.

Except meetings.

Pardon?

Except the meeting.

Oh, okay.

They'll come to the meeting.

Yes, and we have high hopes that it is significantly better than the last time.

I mean, we saw this summer, it was um a nightmare with the digging of uh digging up of Penn Avenue and at the intersection of Maine and Penn, um, it was just horrible.

Um it was just horrible.

Traffic was like completely backed up.

And during one of those weeks, that was when Duquesne Light decided to replace utility poles on Main Street.

And I mean it was it was like a joke.

I mean, it really was.

Why they chose that time whenever you've got a giant hole in the middle of Penn and Maine, um, it was really bad timing.

So I think they need to.

And I know um city councils talked about this for decades trying to get them to coordinate, so good luck.

Can I go?

Okay.

Hi, my name is Jen.

I am a uh proud parent of two lovely daughters who attend uh Pittsburgh Republic, Montessori.

Um I was just wondering what, if any, measures are you taking to ensure you know the safety of kids who are walking and biking to school, especially on the Coral Street neighborway, friendship avenue.

Uh even this like this red square here is oftentimes just normally kind of hot mess express um during school hours, and and there's a lot of danger with these crosswalks.

Um cars don't really uh slow down for for the zebra striped or anything like that.

Um, and I just anticipate that gets worse during this.

So, how can we protect our sweet young innocent children?

And Waldorf.

And Waldorf.

And yeah, just anyone.

Yes.

Yeah, no, I mean it's it's uh do it for the children.

Yeah, no, dangerous driving is is a major problem.

I yeah, I leave I I there's a lot that I would I we're doing, yeah, we're doing the best we can with the traffic calming throughout.

We're you know, we're trying to work on the neighborway here.

Um yeah, I I the issues are you're like you said, they're neighborhood wide, and the project scope is only on Penn Av, and you know, I don't know.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Hello.

Uh my wife just opened the store on Penn, so she's got a lot of questions.

Um just I used to work for the city, but I won't get on my soapbox, but all is there something in writing that this will be done at the set time because I come from New Jersey.

If they go over one day, they have to pay the uh you uh municipality back.

So is there something in writing that they will be done on this date?

I understand weather issues, but there should be a way to try to work around that because I'm assuming in the you know the first phase of this part is going to, you know, that side of the street will be March of 27.

So what's going to be happening between November of 26 and March of 27 if we get slammed with weather.

All this should have been talked through before someone even put a pen to paper because again, this is common sense and you know, this should be looked at because it happens every year, you know.

So I think it's something that really needs to be discussed between all parties involved.

That you know, if there's a weather issue and they're put back like a month and a half, the whole project gets pushed back a month and a half, so people are now in convenience for a lot longer, and again, this could be oh, you know, kind of rectified just so it to me it's common sense that every every little aspect of this project should be gone over with a fine-tooth comb.

The city isn't known for due diligence.

So especially a project like this, and how many people it's going to affect, due diligence must be done to cover every aspect, what might happen, what might not happen.

What might happen, what might not happen.

And you know, just you know, the work time is, you know, I'm just throwing a seven to three.

Is the crew's just gonna clean up everything, not leave it like someone just dropped the bomb on Penn Avenue or whatever streets being worked on?

Because again, people are still living in the neighborhood, so you know, cleanup to me is also high on the list.

And parking on Penn, is that going to be available for customers for the businesses on Penn, or you know, you know, I'm hoping that construction parking is again, I would put it outside of the construction area and just shuttle the people in.

To me, that's you know, common sense.

So, you know, is are the businesses and the families in the construction area going to be able to live their lives without a lot of disruption and inconvenience for you know till 2028?

I'd say part of that is why we phase it out one block at a time.

One of the things we heard from phase one was that they kind of tore up the entire street and then kind of left it, like you said, like a bomb went off.

Um so we're keeping it limited to manageable chunks at a time that will be done.

Then you go to the next part, do it and it's done, do it and it's done.

Um I think you asked about timelines.

So the contract, this is a pendul oversight project.

And Mike, if I say something wrong, you're an old pendulot guy, I know.

Um so there is a defined end date to that contract.

If it is to go over, the contractor has to supply an act, like a legitimate justification to extend that contract.

You know, I mean again, if we have a month and a half of bad weather, we want to be working six days away, it is um yeah, sorry.

Uh and just like for the first Fridays in Garfield, are they will you know how are they going to be handled with this uh project?

Pedestrian access will be maintained the whole time.

Yeah.

All right.

Okay, thank you.

So I had at the very front of the room, and then I'll get G mixed.

Can you go back to the um Montessori detour?

Sure.

I wouldn't call it a D that's like a uh a suggestion, we'll call that, but okay.

Um so is it only on the the project area that Penn Av is one way inbound?

It uh outside of the project area, yes, there'll be local traffic on Penn.

Okay.

Like you're saying, the through traffic is what we don't want to go because it will be eastbound will be closed under construction, yeah, you know, in the phase that's being worked on at that time.

But you can still get around within the you know, the envelope of the detour, if that makes sense.

So at Maine, when people are directed to go towards liberty, is that where there's gonna be a sign that says local traffic only?

It'll say you know, through uh I don't have the sign up in front of me, but it's like a standard detour thing.

It's like if you're going through, you go there.

But you can still get into that area.

It won't be like close.

So if I'm a driver who's not in the know and I'm coming up pen and I'm at that intersection, you would see like the detour ahead sign, you know, pen half detour ahead, pen out detour ahead, you know, back 500 feet, 250 feet, 100 feet, and then it would tell you to go into main.

Or you go back to it.

Online biddle.

You're gonna have to eventually get off of it, yeah.

And you're gonna go down line bill.

Yeah, or which is why we want the sign.

And we love monitoring and we love wall.

We love and watch the kids and their parents drive all the time.

And walk too.

One walker.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Um, and then for the speed humps that you've talked about, do you know like placement number?

Because I'm on that 200 block of wine biddle, and we already have people flying down the street.

So I'm excited for traffic calming.

It's on this one.

But it's hard to see.

We have like five.

Can we have five speed homes?

All the roads through the traffic coming is our number one most requested service in Domi, but I mean I think we have what two people that work on traffic armor projects, maybe three for the entire city.

So put in the requests though.

Right.

So on here, can you see at all where they would be?

We have several on friendship.

And then I believe we have an online biddle between Penn and Friendship.

I think we have them on, I think we have two on Roop.

Okay, so just we can move the middle and then you put it in the email box like where they're coming in.

Thank you.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

I have uh two quick questions.

First, in 2022, the announced budget was about 9 million dollars for this project, putting a project at a cost of about 29 million dollars per mile amortized out.

Is that project budget still at 9 million or has it gone up since 22?

Contract is 9.5, I think.

Right?

I think your contract, I believe, yeah, it's like 9.5 million for construction.

So over 29 million dollars per mile amortized hour.

I mean, yeah, I would say it's an urban street, there's a lot, a lot going on, yeah.

Well, yeah, I just you know there's similar projects.

There was just one that was completed in Jacksonville, that was the it ended up about uh 20 million per mile.

Recita Boulevard in Los Angeles was just done.

Very similar, but plus bike lane in bus island, that was at six million dollars per mile.

Taxpayers are now being asked to pay uh or property owners are asked pay to be paying a 20% increase starting next year.

Has anyone considered that the cost of this project is expensive?

Yeah.

Well, say 80% of the project is coming from federal funds.

Um yeah, so this is uh FHWA uh project.

That's why Pendot has oversight for it.

Um so the city's only paying 20% of the of the project costs.

Pardon?

Is that about two million?

Okay.

Um the second question would be has that the detour that was designed, has that been modeled?

Have you run this through any software?

Or is this just you looked at it and this is what you think will work?

I can double check with the design engineer.

This I I was not on this project from the beginning.

I started it in final design, and the detour was kind of set at that point.

Um I mean, because I don't know, right now, if you were to go down to Fairmont and try to make that left uh today without anything major just in regular traffic, that left is almost impossible to make.

That intersection is already very dangerous.

Now you're making it so everyone's gonna come out at roop and make a right turn going outbound.

You're gonna have traffic coming up pen.

And then you're gonna tell these people from Garfield your way out of this whole mess is to go down and try to make a left on a pen off of friendship.

It just feels like this was designed without any familiarity with the area.

I mean, I guess they can also go down broad to Negley and take that to get to the signalize intersection to get to them as well.

Is this mapped out?

So this detours as a strong, is this going to be what the signs say?

To make a right go down Fairmont and then try to make a left on the pen.

Yeah.

Can we get you to reconsider that?

And then take it all the way down to let me take I'll write it down.

Megley.

Especially because there are so few condensing rock blocks in that area as well.

I just even if at some point in the middle of the day, you get to go to that intersection and just look at it.

I think you'll see that detouring all the westbound traffic to try to make a left turn across traffic makes no sense.

But it's just a stop sign.

I mean, it's it's it's frankly embarrassing.

But like this little amount of planning has been put into this.

Given that last time you guys put people out of business.

You devalued homes.

And now we're just supposed to take your word for it that everyone's gonna work together, and these people don't even show up to the meeting.

It's embarrassing.

That's the other way.

I was gonna say we've been discussing.

Oh yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, this is your job.

I'd say just astounding how how poorly this whole thing is handled.

I probably have some simple questions.

First, I I think the last time you presented, I want to thank you for um I think I emailed you a couple times.

You're very responsive.

Oh you know, I just want to let folks know that I I had all my questions answered, so I do really appreciate that.

Um I live on the corner right over here on um Pacific and Penn, so this is gonna be exciting to say the least.

But I just had a couple quick questions.

So westbound, the buses, 88 will still go westbound.

Is that correct?

It's not being detoured.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then on the phase one, phase two.

When you get to phase two, because I'm on the north side.

Um, will you start at Eveline again and keep doing block by block, or will you start at the far ending?

No, we'll start back at the beginning is the plan.

Yeah.

Great.

All right.

That was for my questions.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Um so we just have basically two questions.

The first one is obviously there's already still construction in the neighborhood.

I think it was supposed to finish up last fall with the utility work and things like that.

You said that's going to be done.

But we'll see.

Uh 45th and Penn, the children's construction still has that close, which really bottlenecks the whole intersection.

We've been talking about 44th and Maine.

Uh, and as somebody who lives on Rosetta and Winebiddle, I have a one-way street, so I pretty much have to go through Matilda and Penn unless I go illegally the wrong way down Rosetta or whatever, and trying to get home, pretty much my road of access is going to be Broad Street and Negley to get up through that neighborhood just so I can avoid Penn.

Um two questions, I guess, is as somebody who sat in traffic on Penn Avenue going from Matilda without any way to turn off of Penn Avenue, heading towards children's, so westbound.

Um it's never been a volume issue.

Like we don't have that much traffic on Penn Avenue.

We don't have that much volume, it's just not time correctly.

The lights suck.

Um so I sat at a light for you know, whatever the cycle of, I'm not saying like you know, 30 seconds is gonna make or break me as the lights and the pedestrians and everything, but the lights aren't synced.

So you can sit on a corner and then the light cycles through and nobody creeps through because of a bus or because of a construction or because somebody's flagging.

Um, but just sinking the lights or turning the lights off and having a blinker for you know peak peak interests if we're closing an intersection or a disaster happens or something happens, put a person there and flag and you know business as usual.

Uh has any other kind of throttling or kind of coordination to sync the lights so that traffic can flow with these new traffic configurations?

Specifically, like coming down broad to Negley is like it's it's a residential to residential through way with Negley.

But turning left onto Negley is a blind corner because of the topography, and turning right.

Um, but just thinking of the extra traffic that's gonna be coming from the residents of Garfield on to Negley.

Has anything been done to I mean, I I don't think it makes sense to put a light there or anything else.

So I'm not saying like my world is the center of the universe, uh, but it seems like the Garfield residents will use that because that's the only street that flows that direction.

And then kind of thinking of wine better, winebiddle is also gonna be flowing that direction and it's gonna be handling a lot more volume.

Or sorry, the other direction is gonna be handling a lot more volume.

Has anything been done to kind of allow traffic to flow?

Because that seems like what the issue is.

It doesn't seem like there's a huge volume.

It seems like traffic just doesn't flow effectively.

And that's just baseline, like all the time.

Like I mean, right now, I mean, even if you turned off all the construction and everything, none of the lights are synced.

I used to live in Oakland.

Oakland has a beautiful system where the lights are synced.

The section of Penn Avenue that has been done, you can go from Pacific all the way to Matilda and never hit a red light.

And I'm not saying that's the best solution, but there's not stop go traffic.

Has any studies been done?

Like I can go from Pacific, hit the light on whatever gram, and then hit the light again at Penn and then hit the light again right by Whole Foods or whatever.

Like you continually just keep hitting red light after red light after red light, which isn't about me, it's about the flow of traffic, which just slows this whole mess down, which then pisses people off because then they'll want to shop on the business district, or somebody who runs a small business in the neighborhood, I have to run multiple trips back up to my house.

It's gonna add 20 minutes in each direction, which is really gonna ruin my day.

I can talk to our signals people and see if they've studied the corridor.

I'm yeah, I'm not sure.

Sounds like a project that spans beyond.

It sounds like a project that spans beyond this construction, like you were saying.

Sure.

I mean, this has been a nightmare for the can the current and past construction because like sitting in traffic for 20 minutes shouldn't shouldn't have been sitting in traffic for an extra 20 minutes just to go from Matilda to children's.

Like there was never like an alternative route to go, and now people are going to be creative and use these alternative routes.

But is are those alternative routes going to be able to handle the volume and are the lights going to be synced to handle those extra turns and detours?

Because that would seem to make sense, and nobody ever seems to handle that.

And this is a two-year process, isn't it like three months?

Right.

I'll talk to the signal people.

Okay.

Liberty.

Is there a hand?

No, you're good.

Uh hi, Armin.

Um I'm the chair of Better Streets Lawrenceville and a friendship resident.

Uh, and I live on the neighborway, and I know we've talked a lot, um, mostly to Councilman Scrooge's office about the neighborway and the detours in phase one.

So I really appreciate seeing something being done here because it sounds like uh at least our voices were listened to.

I am concerned that a hundred feet of one way isn't enough to stop people from using the neighborway, which is Coral Street as a detour.

Uh and I am not a traffic engineer.

You've got traffic engineers here.

If you're convinced, great.

Let's say three months into the project, there is a ton of fast moving traffic on the neighborway.

Uh I took the neighborhood here today.

I saw four kids, one of them was learning how to use a crosswalk.

It was the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Uh that's what the neighborway is about.

Is people going slowly, there's no sidewalks in the middle of the road.

If this 100 feet of one way doesn't fix the problem, is there recourse or is this fixed?

Because I I kind of expect that at this point that's fixed, but I would like to have something happen partway through the project, whether that's diverters or something else.

I would like to be able to say, hey, this isn't working well enough.

Here's some evidence, what can we do?

Is there a chance to have that conversation or to do more than we're doing up front?

I would say as part of the project, this is what we're gonna do.

If we see that there are still issues, we can work with our traffic group, but we would do it like via using city forces, if that makes sense.

Sure.

So that there is room for iteration if this 100 feet of one way isn't enough.

Yeah, yeah, I would say that we'll be able to work it through with our with our traffic calming group and figure that out.

Yeah, great.

Um I just want to highlight what somebody just said about the unsync lights on Liberty.

So just wanted to have you make a note about that.

If you're also gonna look at Penn, um, when you're on Liberty, it can take a really long time to go all the way through.

And since that's a highlighted detour, I think that's also very important to get those lights synced.

Thank you.

See a hand over there.

Um I am excited that you will be giving us routine updates, like the two every two weeks, and it'll be on the engage page emails and whatever.

But is there an opportunity to for us to give you feedback?

For you know, hey, the neighborway is still crazy, or hey they're parking like crazy in the streets, or we're getting parking tickets, or what whatever that it happens to be that you're pushing information to us, but will there be set times quarterly every six months that we're able to give you feedback on how we're viewing the project on the ground as residents and business owners.

I would reach out to Jan that he works with neighbors all day every day for similar things for projects that are under construction and for other issues.

So I don't think it needs to be like a big blast.

So I would say if you're seeing an issue, send something to him and we'll figure it out.

Okay, okay.

And then when you were doing the phase, phase, phase, phase, phase.

The eight, right?

The eight little segments.

After each segment, is that going to be a temporary asphalt or is the concrete gonna be going in then?

Done.

It's everything.

Concrete's going in.

Okay.

That seems strange.

But okay.

That's because then you're nearing the end, you know, you're keeping all of your materials and your things on the pavement space.

So then you're gonna be using the fresh new concrete, and you're gonna be dumping all of your stuff on it.

That's for the contract.

I was like, uh uh, yeah.

I mean, I mean that's what's happening, that's fine.

That's up to you guys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Just a quick follow-up about traffic modeling.

So again, I live on Friendship Avenue.

I've lived here for 30 years.

And there is no stop sign at Wineville.

But there's a stop sign at Eveline, and then there's a traffic light at South Pacific.

Or there's a stop sign at South Pacific, and then there's a traffic light at South Atlantic, and then there's some stop signs going down, right?

The amount of bus traffic that's going to be coming down here is completely understandable, and people using it as a detour.

Because we know that people will find their way to friendship, right?

Regardless, Google, whoever.

How can you help with that particular issue at the corner of wine biddle and friendship?

Because it's also a blind turn, right?

So to go from wine biddle down to Liberty Avenue, it you know, there's parking on parking on one side that so you can't really see.

So the kind of the the way you look at it, you're not gonna be able to see if there's cars coming down friendship, and people tend to, because there's no stop sign there, people tend to fly right there, right?

And then they get stopped at Eveline and then they speed up and get stopped at South Pacific.

I mean, I sit on my porch now that I'm retired.

So I've been watching this stuff, right?

And so I think that there is to your point, the idea of modeling the increased traffic becomes really, really important now.

Because it's gonna happen, and we know it.

And then I also just want to make sure that no parking will be impacted along Friendship Avenue because the section that you're looking at doesn't have alleys.

And so even with the temporary speed hops, which I'm grateful for, that nobody loses parking because there's no alleyway access, there's no driveways, there's no parking paths.

Yep, no.

Now we're just putting the speed up as a floor.

We're passing it around now ourselves.

Any more questions?

Who's the PM for I don't want to?

Who's the PM for um on this project?

Uh under construction, it's Amy Mitchell, but Laurie Miles is going to be our uh construction phase person.

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

Sorry.

Do you have uh further questions?

I can mic yourself.

Uh just for the question with the old project that you know the timeline on the top of your head for that one.

Not off the top of my head, but I judge it down.

Oh, that's probably a great six months.

Is the slide form like that way we find it?

Yes, yeah.

So if you go to engage, if you just Google Engage Pittsburgh uh Penn Avenue, you'll find it.

Accessibility for everybody is really important.

So not just like electronic ways of communicating, but there are a lot of people that don't communicate like this.

So kind of acknowledging that there are folks that don't use email, don't use websites.

I think that's really really important.

Um I've noticed it a lot in the neighborhood because there's a lot of older folks that are gonna be part of this that don't have this information.

And I was gonna say we'll be working, Jess.

We can work with the D9 office and yawn to set up a day where we'll come out and flyer the houses.

Yeah, there's no problem.

We've done it before for the Stanton Avenue project, and we can do that again.

Um we'll maybe sometime in February make sure they get out there.

I was gonna say we plan to work with the neighborhood groups and everything to get that information out too for kind of dissemination to the people.

Do you plan on coordinating with people's gas on the pipeline replacement project?

If this intersects or if like the so that's what we're working with with our permits group to get it cleared out before we start on this project, yeah.

Okay.

All right, so we will post the slides and the uh the recording of this onto the engage page.

Um yeah, if you have not signed up with the sign-in sheet, or you know, you can reach it out to Yan and go to the engage page for those future updates.

But thanks for coming, everybody.

Um I don't know if there's pizza left, grab some before it goes because I'm on my bike.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, thank you uh everybody for being here.

Uh I first want to thank our crews who have worked numerous hours, numerous shifts.

We have 50 trucks out in our 50 plus right now in our streets.

I'm gonna thank my staff who's been working around the clock.

Um, but I also want to thank the people of Pittsburgh who have been patient throughout this process as well as helping each other out, helping their neighbors.

We saw a lot of people shoveling and helping people get out of their houses and their driveways over the last couple days.

Um yesterday we saw almost an inch of snow per hour.

Um that would make it uh we we did some calculations.

That is the second most accumulation in the city of Pittsburgh in a 24 hour period in the last 30 years.

So I again want to thank our crews who overnight cleared a lot of our main drags.

Our main streets, um, they really put a big effort on our main thoroughfares.

Um the issue with that is the buildup on our side streets and blocking our secondary roads uh so that people can't have access.

We also had 37 trucks go down overnight.

Um we know that temperatures are going to be dropping, windshields could be up to negative 20 degrees.

Um, and with that, we are now declaring a state of emergency in the city of Pittsburgh, which gives us the power to bring in additional help and support, brings in contractors that are not only going to help remove snow, plow streets, but also help to haul out snow so we can get it out of our neighborhoods, off of our business districts, and allow people to get to work or school or wherever they need to be in the next couple of days.

Um we have already started that process, so you will be seeing private contractors out in your neighborhoods over the next couple of hours.

We do have another crew coming on today from 2 to 10.

Our warming centers will still remain open, and we are going to we've already posted what those hours are at our warming centers across the city of Pittsburgh.

Um and we also want to let everybody know that recycling and garbage pickup, which was delayed today, is also going to be delayed again tomorrow.

So I just wanted to inform the public as to our situation.

I want to thank everybody again.

Thank our workers.

They have been working tirelessly.

They have put in a tremendous effort here, and you know, we were doing a very, very good job until we lost a lot of our equipment.

The garage will still remain open 24-7 so we can get these these equipment back out onto the streets as quick as we can.

Um so it's it's now you know, time to answer some of your questions.

I know that you'll you'll have some.

So again, thank you to everybody, especially my staff.

We don't give them enough credit.

They've been working 24-7 at their homes, you know, uh from everybody from IMP to Forestry to Public Works, everybody's been doing a tremendous job.

And uh again, thank you to the residents of Pittsburgh for letting our letting us do that job.

We started with 90 trucks and 50 or out.

95.

Uh 37 are roughly down being worked on.

Um so we have 50 plus on the roads right now from the 6 a.m.

to 2 p.m.

shift.

We're monitoring those.

Um we've hit a number of streets.

And I think the hard part for our drivers where we would hit a street and go back on that route an hour later, it'd be covered in snow again.

So, you know, it it's taken a toll, and and I will say that you know, our public works divisions and those drivers that have been up overnight, some working double shifts have done a tremendous job.

Well, the garage can only turn around a fraction of those, is that correct?

Correct, which is why the over the first night we had four go down on the first go round, then we had another four go down, got a couple of them back out, but then last night into this morning when you lose 37, we don't have an option right now.

Um so it's nothing that the workers weren't doing.

They were doing their very best.

Uh, but with 37 trucks down, we have no choice but to to do this, and you know, we want to make this this is a safety is a priority.

That's the reason we're doing this.

This is about the safety of the residents of the city of Pittsburgh, and we're not taking any chances, which is why you know we're doing a state of emergency so that we can get the support that we need and that the residents need.

You get money from the state and the feds in the state of emergency?

No.

Where do you get the resources to hire contractors in the way?

Yeah, I mean, again, these this is why we have reserves in the city.

We we also know we have budget issues that we've walked into.

Um, but this is something that we're not taking any chances on.

So if we have to go into our reserves to save lives, we're doing it.

You want to say anything about this investment in the fleet that resulted in that?

Yeah, I mean, I don't I don't think we need to go into past history.

I mean, this is where we are today.

Um we we obviously know about our fleet, and it's not just our public works, we also know about ambulances, fire, and police that need investment.

But today that's that's not the priority, it's not the talking points.

Today is about how we get this city clean as fast as we can.

The performance is kind of in the eye of the beholder.

You believe that you know, even uh with the trucks going down that you've done a good job.

I I mean I would say it what what we were tasked with in the last 24 hours, as I said, this was a historic snow in the last 30 years.

You know, our crews, if you look at the main roads, you know, they they have gotten to them multiple times, and we can show you the data that supports that.

We understand, you know, streets haven't been touched, and we're getting to them.

Um, but we just ask everybody to be patient.

And when we had 95 trucks out, we were staying on top of it.

But when you lose 37, that that that creates a problem.

Well, the last snow again, you know, a lot of these roads stay covered until the weather broke.

You know, are we in the same situation?

Well, uh the other reason that we're we have to do things right now is the weather's not breaking.

It's not gonna be 65 degrees tomorrow.

We're looking at negative temperatures over the next three to four days.

So we aren't taking any chances.

Um we're calling in as many people to help as possible while our crews are continuing to work every day.

And and you know, the credit it it's hard.

It's hard on them.

Um and when the equipment goes down and you've been doing your best, they're also stuck.

Um, and I think that's a big problem.

And again, we don't want to just say that, but we want to continue to thank them for doing the work.

We're on the radio constantly, thanking every shift.

You know, in the middle of the night getting up, thanking the shift workers, especially our first responders, too, who are having to adjust to this and get into work so that they can be prepared to save lives.

Can you speak to how this is going to affect obviously salting now?

If you guys look to change over to salting, and we know that the temperatures are dropping extremely low.

You already down a third of the fleet.

Obviously, this is gonna take a big hit.

What's the key question?

I mean, again, just be patient.

Um, you know, I think bringing in additional crews are going to help.

Um, but we were always planning on what would be the worst case scenario, especially when snow is accumulating and sitting on streets.

We we had these discussions throughout the week leading into it is what will we do?

How are we going to get the snow removed if you know 12 plus inches were to hit?

And and that's our process that we're doing right now.

Uh speaking to the public safety perspective, I know there was a plan in place.

Kind of how did that plan kind of unfold, how did that play out?

Were there any major hiccups in that of that effort?

Yeah, I'll allow the director to speak on that, but but as you can see, we were in constant communication with everybody, and I want to say, you know, our director of operations, our chief of staff, you know, everybody did an amazing job of coordinating.

And I think without having our command center upstairs with all of us in a room, we would have struggled, and that wasn't here prior to the storm.

So, you know, we made an effort to get that ready so that we can have as much data possible and we can tell the people of Pittsburgh what's going on.

But public safety director uh Williams, I'll allow him to answer that specific question.

Yeah, thanks for the question.

Um, outside of what we would say routine, and I mean routine, when we have snowfalls that calm at a rapid pace.

Um, we've had experienced some sm small challenges, this meaning I have vehicles that might have some navig some navigation issues, stuff like that.

But nothing major to report.

Very pleased about our response from all of our public safety bureaus across the board.

I'm in constant communication with the chiefs who are in constant communication with their supervisors and up channeling all information that is appropriate so that we can make the decisions.

Additionally, we have had our operations and our emergency operations center up and running since the beginning of the storm, actually ahead of the storm in preparation.

So the cross coordination between all their efforts and the virtual EOC and constant communication back and forth with all of those collaborators that helped us as well as we're in a in the snow command to make some of our decisions.

It helped us as well as we're in a in the snow command to make some of our decisions.

So the movement here moving towards this emergency again is ahead of what we're expecting.

The extended period of time we're going to have these cold temperatures make it more difficult for navigating our roadways.

And additionally, we're going to see some tests of systems.

Meaning there are going to be citizens who are going to have plumbing issues, heating issues, and the like.

So we're trying to get ahead of it because the test of the system is coming.

And so by doing this, by doing the emergency, being able to get out ahead of it, we can continue to deconflict and handle some of these challenges that we're facing.

They've activated only one portion of it, and we are ready to do additional ramp up if we need to.

Yeah, I I mean again, it unless you have to be somewhere.

We know people have to get to work.

So, you know, if you have to drive somewhere, please use the main roads.

Um, but no time frame, and I think additional support will only help, you know, to to move that number along so that we get it done faster.

Is there any particular areas that definitely will probably take a little bit longer than I mean, of course, you mentioned the secondary and tertiary roads, but even some of those main arteries that the trucks haven't been able to get to because of the uh the drop in the numbers and is the issues handing there?