Data prompts Pittsburgh police chief to empty stations of overnight desk officers

No one will be manning Pittsburgh’s police precincts overnight any longer under policy changes announced Friday by Chief Larry Scirotto for the 743-officer force.

The changes, which have already begun, affect all six zone stations across the city and the new Downtown substation from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., seven days a week.

“We are certain we have the personnel to keep the city safe,” Scirotto said. “It’s not an abdication of services.”

Anyone seeking help at a police station overnight will have to pick up a phone outside that will connect a caller to 911. Some officers might be in and out of the stations throughout the night as circumstances dictate.

The number of patrol officers and supervisors working the early-morning shift to cover the entire city will vary — from as low as 25 to as high as 63, police said.

Violence Prevention Unit officers, narcotics and vice detectives, and K-9 units will supplement the night shift and be deployed where needed.

Scirotto said data helped drive the move. The 911 calls between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. typically represented about 8% of each day’s call volume but were using up to 33% of the bureau’s personnel hours.

“It didn’t make sense … when our afternoon shift had 58% of the calls,” Scirotto said.

“We need to be a smart, nimble department,” Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt added.

Mayor Ed Gainey didn’t mince words Friday about the changes — which included officers transitioning their work weeks to four 10-hour shifts from five eight-hour shifts; the creation of a Violent Crime Division and enhanced Telephone Reporting Unit; and the assignment of a new watch commander to oversee all afternoon-into-evening shifts.

“These changes make a difference,” said Gainey, who connected the policy moves to the calls for police reform that helped bring him the mayor’s office. “Let me make it clear: I support this chief. Period.”

Scirotto said many of the changes will have a positive effect on officers’ health and wellness.

The police union, however, said something else was driving the decisions.

“One hundred percent, this is about staffing,” said Robert Swartzwelder, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 1. “You have a recruitment, retention and rhetoric problem.”

Swartzwelder said it was too early to tell if the new moves will help the dwindling force.

Under Bill Peduto, Gainey’s predecessor, the force exceeded 900. In the 1990s, the roll call was above 1,500.

When Swartzwelder started as an officer in Pittsburgh’s Zone 5 in the East End around 1993, afternoon roll calls would involve three dozen uniformed officers — cops standing, shoulder to shoulder, three or four lines deep.

“Now, you’re lucky if you have eight for the shift,” Swartzwelder said.

The bureau lost officers at a record-high rate in 2023.

More than 45 of them resigned last year — the largest single-year total since the union started tracking resignations in 2013, Swartzwelder said. More than 30 officers retired. One died of natural causes.

Five officers have resigned so far this year. By this summer, 196 officers will be eligible to retire.

“It’s alarming — all of this, any of it, goes to staffing levels,” City Councilman Anthony Coghill, D-Beechview, told TribLive. “If we get below 700, that’s catastrophic. And we’ll be below 700 at the end of this year.”

“Scirotto’s more optimistic,” added Coghill, council’s public safety representative. “I’m not.”

The 2024 city budget contains funding for 850 officers — down from 900 last year — and both Scirotto and Gainey have stressed that staffing will grow through hiring out of three new police academy classes.

Councilwoman Theresa Kail-Smith is worried about leaving only a “blue phone” — essentially a phone with a blue light that connects callers to 911 — at police stations throughout the city overnight.

“My concern is, if there’s one time, or person that needs something, that’s a problem,” said Kail-Smith, who represents Pittsburgh’s West End.

The blue phones already are operational, police spokeswoman Cara Cruz said. She did not know how much they cost to install or operate.

Kail-Smith said police staffing problems are affecting municipalities throughout the country.

The total number of sworn police officers in the U.S. dropped about 1% in 2023, to 79,464 individuals, according to an April 2023 survey from the Police Executive Research Forum. The 2023 number was about 5% lower than the total just three years ago.

Retirements grew more than 12% from 2019 to 2020 and more than 14% from 2020 to 2021, the survey said. There were 47% more resignations in 2022 than there were in 2019.

“I do understand the predicament (Scirotto) is in,” Kail-Smith said. “I wish we could get more police officers — that’s the bottom line.”

Not everyone is worried about staffing the stations early in the morning.

Randall Taylor of the Hill District Consensus Group said a move to eliminate desk-bound officers overnight “sounded quite reasonable.”

“We have 911 for emergencies,” Taylor said. “If you’re having any kind of emergency, I think you would do well to call 911.”

Taylor said he understood the police chief’s desire to move officers away from sitting in a station during times with slower call volumes — when they’re “probably doing next to nothing at all” — so the bureau can use its officers more efficiently.

“It sounds like the chief is trying to utilize resources in the best way possible,” Taylor said. “(Scirotto) thought that person could be better utilized somewhere else. I don’t think that for a moment compromises public safety.”

Elizabeth Pittinger, who heads Pittsburgh’s Citizen Police Review Board, said her thoughts fall somewhere in the middle.

“To be fair to the chief, he relies on data,” Pittinger told TribLive.

“I think we have to take a couple months and see what happens,” she said. “Hopefully, no one gets hurt.”

Staff writer Julia Felton contributed to this report.