Audit of the Pittsburg Police Department, Part 1

by Tom Flaherty

Editor's Note: The following audit of Pittsburgh's Police Department and the Office of Professional Standards (recently re- organized and renamed the Office of Municipal Investigations) was released to the public on Aug. 20, 1996. The audit, performed by City Controller Tom Flaherty's office, was first requested early in 1996 by the Pittsburgh City Council, specifically by Councilor Valerie McDonald. McDonald also is among the councilors (and citizens) calling for an independent civilian police review board to investigate citizens complaints of misconduct including physical and verbal abuse by Pittsburgh police.

Interestingly, even though the audit reveals that 59 cops have had five or more complaints launched against them by civilians or other cops, and even though 40 percent of cops on the force have had at least one complaint launched against them, Mayor Tom Murphy claims the audit confirms his contention that problems at the Pittsburgh Police Department amount to only "a few bad apples," an assertion repeated by the Pittsburgh media, most notably and emphatically by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (You'll note that the audit itself even prescribes at times the "few bad apples" conclusion, although the report makes much of and media accounts have underplayed the problems of how individual complaints were handled by police investigating themselves.)

We offer this report in an attempt to cut through media bias (including our own) and let readers draw their own conclusions. It is a report about something no less fundamental than justice and, sadly, politicians and news organizations haven't given it justice.

The report below is complete save for a few things including: a long appendix about "data verification" that explains statistical analysis and is fairly arcane; and several graphs about Pittsburgh crime statistics that proved prohibitively difficult to reproduce on our web site. (A hard copy of the full report is available by calling 412 255-2055)

Finally, a word about the context of this report. In October of 1995, police outside of Pittsburgh beat to death Jonny Gammage, a motorist stopped for no apparent reason other than being a black man driving an expensive car (a Jaguar) in a white neighborhood. Also, the City of Pittsburgh is the target of a class-action suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of 52 plaintiffs alleging excessive force and verbal abuse. At this writing (August, 1996), the officers in the Gammage incident are awaiting trial while Mayor Murphy, who first dismissed the ACLU suit out of hand, is discussing not only police "reform" but also coming to a settlement with the ACLU. Also, as mentioned above, the city council is considering adopting a civilian review board, the subject of several recent public hearings. Four council members favor a civilian review board, which the mayor opposes, favoring the present system of police investigating complaints internally.

Andy Newman

To read In Pittsburgh Newsweekly's ongoing coverage of police accountability, type "police" in our search feature.

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PERFORMANCE AUDIT
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY
OFFICE OF PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS

Report by the Office of the City Controller

TOM FLAHERTY
CITY CONTROLLER

Anthony Pokora, Deputy Controller

Kevin Forsythe, Esq., Management Auditor

Anabell Kinney, Esq., Assistant Management Auditor

Performance Auditors:
Gloria Novak
Joseph Chigier
Jeff Khadem
Woody Mudd

August, 1996

INTRODUCTION

From 1986 up through April 1996, the Office of Professional Standards (OPS), within the Department of Public Safety, received, investigated, monitored, compiled data, and rendered decisions with respect to citizens¡ complaints about employees of the Department of Public Safety: Police officers, fire fighters, paramedics, building inspectors, and other administrative staff. In addition, at the request of the City Solicitor, OPS has investigated employees in other City departments, such as Public Works and Parks and Recreation. Although OPS has handled complaints involving other employees besides police officers, this report, unless otherwise noted, deals exclusively with police officers.

This audit formally began with an entrance conference on March 6, 1996. Subsequently, in April of 1996, the Murphy Administration began a process designed to transfer the responsibilities of OPS out of the Public Safety Department into the Law Department, with the new rubric of Office of Municipal InvestigationsŒ (OMI). The Administration hired a former FBI agent to head the new OMI, replacing the departed Assistant Chief of OPS. Also during the course of field work on this audit, City Council began a series of neighborhood public hearings on the issue of creating a Civilian Police Review Board. So at the writing of this audit, it is unclear how the City will handle future citizen complaints against police officers. The Controller¡s Office hopes that the findings and recommendations of this report will assist the Mayor and Council to provide the citizens of Pittsburgh and Public Safety Management with the best possible system, regardless of its ultimate form. All recommendations should be read as addressed to the ultimate successor of OPS, whether that turns out to be the Law Department¡s Office of Municipal Investigations, some form of Civilian Review Board, or some other entity.

Originally named the Office of Professional Responsibility, OPS received its present title in April of 1989. Its offices were located on the seventh floor of the Public Safety Building adjacent to administrative offices of the Department of Public Safety. Earlier this year the Assistant Chief, who had been the head of OPS since 1989, left to pursue a career opportunity in the private sector. The remaining staff consisted of one Civilian Coordinator, two civilian investigators, two detectives, two police officers and one clerk- stenographer. Citizens filed complaints at this location where an intake clerk interviewed the citizen and filled in a complaint sheet like the one on the next page.

The complaint was then assigned to an investigator who would generally schedule another interview with the complainant, at which time he/she would attempt to identify witnesses and gather other pertinent information. Upon completion of the investigation OPS issued a final report with one of five dispositions: Sustained, not sustained, unfounded, closed, or exonerated.

When OPS made a final disposition of sustainedŒ, it meant that, based on its review of the evidence, OPS had concluded that the officer against whom the complaint was filed has acted improperly. Proscribed conduct could include the violation of police regulations such as excessive use of forceŒ, verbal abuseŒ, under the influence of alcohol while on dutyŒ, or the catch-all, conduct unbecoming an officer.Œ It could also involve violations of state or federal statutes and/or depriving a complainant of state or federal constitutional rights.

OPS then sent the sustained complaint up the chain of command, starting with the Commander of the police officer in question. From the Commander the complaint moved on to the Assistant Chief of Police, next it went to the Chief of Police, then to the Director of Public Safety. At each step in this chain, the reviewing supervisor could reject or accept the OPS finding. If the OPS finding of sustained was accepted, each representative of Public Safety Management could suggest or select an appropriate discipline including verbal reprimand, written reprimand, one-day suspension, three-day suspension, or five-day suspension pending dismissal. In some cases Public Safety Management would direct the officer to attend counseling or training sessions. Final responsibility on all discipline rests with the Director of Public Safety.

The police officer then had the option of accepting the disciplinary measure or challenging it in one of two ways: By filing a grievance through the police union, or by taking the disputed disciplinary action through statutoryŒ arbitration (in reality a hybrid of State law and an arbitration award handed down November 26, 1990). In its 10-year career, OPS witnessed the dismantling of the Police Trial Board system in 1990 and its replacement by this current statutoryŒ arbitration scheme under which the police union chooses one arbitrator, the City (Public Safety Management) chooses another and a third, neutral arbitrator is selected by the first two arbitrators from a panel provided by the American Arbitration Association. This is a change from the old Trial Board which was composed exclusively of police officers.

The police union grievance procedure can also end up eventually in arbitration, if the parties fail to reach an agreement after a series of meetings and procedures spelled out in the bargaining agreement. Unlike the statutoryŒ arbitration scheme outlined above, this proceeding will be held before a single American Arbitration Association arbitrator. It is unnecessary for purposes of this report to distinguish further between these two types of arbitration. The important point is that any discipline given to an officer as a result of Public Safety Management¡s agreement with an OPS finding of sustained, could be challenged and taken to arbitration. The decisions of these arbitrators could, under very limited circumstances, be appealed to the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court hears any appeals from Common Pleas Courts; and from there, appeal may be taken to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but, again, only under certain circumstances.

It is crucial to note with regard to OPS findings of sustained, that OPS did not have any power to discipline officers. It did not have any power to compel Public Safety Management to mete out a certain type of discipline. It did not have any recourse if Public Safety Management decided to ignore or overturn its findings. It did not even recommend types of discipline. It simply and exclusively was a fact finding agency within the Department of Public Safety. Its sole job was to make an initial determination as to whether a violation of applicable law and/or departmental regulations had occurred. OPS did, however, have the authority to initiate an investigation against an officer, without requiring a complaint to be filed by a citizen.

An OPS finding of not sustainedŒ meant that on the basis of its investigation OPS concluded that the complainant failed to establish the charges with the requisite degree of certainty. This is a concept similar to burden of proof.Œ In these instances OPS was not saying that the officer did nothing wrong. It was saying that it couldn¡t, on the basis of the evidence before it, make a determination of improper conduct. Findings of not sustainedŒ often emerge in cases where the complainant is the only witness to the alleged misconduct. In other words, there is no corroborating evidence, and in these situations OPS invariably opted to accept the officer¡s version of the incident (primarily because no one in Public Safety Management and no arbitrator would reprimand an officer solely on the basis of uncorroborated evidence). Or the complainant may have brought forward other witnesses, but in the opinion of the OPS investigator these witnesses were biased or unreliable for one reason or another (often because they are relatives or because they were arrested along with the complainant on similar charges).

A finding of unfoundedŒ meant that on the basis of its investigation OPS had determined that the story of the complainant had no merit. This is very different than cases deemed not sustainedŒ, in which the story of the complainant may have had a good deal of merit, but lacked a threshold level of competent evidence. UnfoundedŒ cases are much more like decisions in favor of the officer and against the complainant. Typical unfounded situations occur when the complainant offers no evidence in support of the charges, or when independent corroborating evidence (uninvolved bystanders, for example) clearly demonstrates the truth of the officer¡s version of the story. The police collective bargaining agreement dictates that anonymous complaints with no corroborative evidence must be classified as unfounded. It also mandates that complaints which, even if true, would not lead to criminal charges against the officer, must be classified as unfounded if they are made more than 90 days after the incident. Finally, the F.O.P. contract directs that all unfounded OPS complaints must be removed from OPS records and the police officer¡s personnel file after one year.

Sometimes a complainant would refuse to cooperate with OPS investigators after the initial intake interview. These instances were classified as closedŒ and no further action was taken by OPS or by Public Safety Management.

A finding of exoneratedŒ meant that on the basis of its investigation OPS had determined that, even if everything alleged in the complaint was true, the officer acted properly under the circumstances.

By Resolution No. 18 of 1996 (enacted January 23, 1996 and effective, February 2, 1996) Pittsburgh City Council directed the City Controller¡s Office to conduct a performance audit focusing on the number of disciplinary actions, types of discipline administered to police employees, and any disciplinary patterns originating from investigations of citizens¡ complaints filed with OPS (and also the Pittsburgh Human Relations Commission). A copy of the Resolution appears on the following page.

In preparing for this performance audit we reviewed the City Controller¡s 1994 Performance Audit on Police Officer Hiring; the current collective bargaining agreement between the City and the Fraternal Order of Police, Fort Pitt Lodge No.1 (Working AgreementŒ, expiration date, December 31, 1997); the Disciplinary Manual of the City of Pittsburgh; OPS quarterly and year-end reports 1993, 1994, and 1995; a Recent Chronology on Police Civilian Review BoardŒ prepared by the Community Relations Committee of the Pittsburgh Human Relations Commission, April 25, 1996; Year-end Reports on Intake Activity prepared by the Pittsburgh Human Relations Commission for the years 1994 and 1995; a Memorandum dated January 16, 1996 to Sal Sirabella, Deputy Mayor, from David Miller, Managing Director of the Pennsylvania Economy League, recommending that the City expand the mission of OPS to include investigating allegations of misconduct for all City employees; The Bureau of Police, 1994 and 1995 Statistical Reports; numerous journal and newspaper articles. We also attended four of City Council¡s neighborhood public hearings on the Citizen Police Review Board.

OBJECTIVES

1. To conduct random testing on a sample of the OPS database received from Public Safety Management in order to verify its accuracy.

2. To quantify the total number of citizen complaints filed against police officers with OPS and their disposition by OPS, from its inception in 1986 up through the first two months of first quarter, 1996; and to present this data by year and overall.

3. To generate a series of statistical reports using as variables race, gender, and age, of the complainant, and race, gender, and starting date of the officer, in order to identify possible patterns; presenting this data from 1986 up through the first two months of first quarter, 1996 by year and overall.

4. To organize data on the number of officers against whom multiple citizen complaints have been filed from 1986 up through the first two months of first quarter, 1996.

5. To evaluate the performance of Public Safety Management in administering discipline in response to OPS findings of sustainedŒ during the years 1991-1995.

6. To present the above data in the context of other relevant statistics on crime rates and police activity.

7. To make constructive recommendations for improvement.

SCOPE

The scope of this performance audit is the entire tenure of the Office of Professional Standards, from its inception in 1986 up through the first two months of first quarter, 1996. Resolution No. 18 of 1996 specified a scope of 1992-1995. In the course of discussions among representatives from the City Controller¡s Office, City Council, the Law Department and the Department of Public Safety, it was mutually agreed to expand the scope to the entire time period OPS had been in existence. Then, during the course of field work the scope of Objective No. 5 was subsequently limited to the years 1991-1995, for reasons explained below in the Methodology Section.

This scope is limited by the Objectives stated on the previous page and in several other important respects:

1. Unless otherwise noted, this audit deals only with complaints filed against police officers, and not against any other employees of the Public Safety Department.

2. This audit seeks to evaluate the response of Public Safety Management (during the specific time period of 1991-1995) to OPS findings of sustained. It does not attempt to second guess the work or conclusions of the OPS investigators.

3. This audit expresses no opinion upon, and should not be read as a comment on, the degree of police misconduct in the City of Pittsburgh. We took the level of citizen dissatisfaction as we found it, reflected, for purposes of this audit, in the records of OPS.

4. This audit expresses no opinion upon, and should not be read as a comment on, any past, present, or future lawsuits filed against the City of Pittsburgh and/or City police officers or other personnel.

5. This audit expresses no opinion upon the advisability of either the new Office of Municipal Investigations or a Citizen Police Review Board.

METHODOLOGY

I. Database Verification (Objective No. 1)

In the course of preliminary discussions among the auditors, Public Safety Management, and City Council Members, we learned of an OPS database. This computer aided record-keeping program had been used by OPS since its inception in 1986 to organize and store data on all its cases, involving all Public Safety employees; police as well as fire fighters, paramedics, building inspectors, etc. It existed on the hard drive of the City Information Services (CIS) D- Base Level 6Œ system. OPS investigators and data entry clerks accessed this database through terminals at their office. As cases progressed through their various stages, these OPS personnel made appropriate entries into one of over 40 different fields in the database program.

We first notified Public Safety Management in January of 1996 that we would be needing this database for purposes of our performance audit. A series of meetings and additional discussions (including the March 6, 1996 entrance conference) ensued in which we further defined the audit¡s scope and addressed concerns of Public Safety Management with regard to security and confidentiality of police personnel records under the terms of the current collective bargaining agreement. The Law Department also became a participant in this process at this point.

In the first week of April, 1996 we received the entire OPS database on 3 1/2 inch hard disc. We then used this database on Controller¡s Office computers, utilizing software programs in D- Base, Lotus, and SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) to generate the reports which form the heart of this audit. But before we could rely on the data we had received, we verified it by randomly generating a 2.6% sample (originally 3%, see Appendix, page i) and testing it for accuracy against the actual OPS case files (hard copy).

The database contains 46 different informational entries, or fields.Œ [Some of the fields for example, programŒ, statusŒ, DAR numberŒ, and trial boardŒ were no longer used by OPS and considered obsolete. We did not use these fields in our verification comparison]. The database consists primarily of information which was first recorded on an intake form by OPS personnel, then entered into their computer. When this intake form was available in the case file, we used it for direct comparison. When it was not available, database information was compared to whatever could be found in the case file (complaint form, police report, etc.) that might verify the entries.

The results of our verification testing appear in the Appendix to this audit. On the basis of those results we concluded that the OPS database we had received from Public Safety Management was sufficiently reliable to allow us to proceed with the remainder of the audit.

II. OPS Statistical Overview (Objective No. 2)

Having satisfied ourselves of a sufficient degree of accuracy in the OPS database, we proceeded to the audit¡s second Objective: To quantify the total number of citizen complaints filed against police officers with OPS and their disposition by OPS, from its inception in 1986 up through the first two months of first quarter, 1996; and to present this data by year and overall.Œ

At this point, in order to capture as many records as possible, we manually searched the database for incomplete entries in the fields of bureau code, officer I.D. number, officer race, and officer gender. We found 28 of these. If we had done nothing further to them, they would not have been picked up by the various sorts we intended to run. We were able to correct all 28 of these incomplete entries. This was usually possible through an alphabetical sort which listed all complaints against a particular officer in a row. If, for example, the officer appeared four times as a white male, and a fifth time as blank, and if all five entries had the same officer identification number, then we felt justified in completing the database at that point by adding WŒ and MŒ.

Although we had done the verification testing with the entire OPS database, from this point on we were concerned only with police officers. We accordingly sorted the data using the bureau letter code, PŒ, and obtained a listing of only those complaints filed with respect to Police Bureau personnel. We then cross checked this listing to identify all records for which the accused had no I.D. number. The lack of this badge numberŒ indicated it might not be a police officer. It might, for example, be a parking meter reader who, up until their transfer to the Public Parking Authority of Pittsburgh, were within the Police Bureau. Working record by record with the Coordinator of OPS, we identified 14 of these that did not involve a police officer and identified the rest as police officers. We eliminated the non-officers from the database. We now had an extremely close approximation to a database containing only complaints filed against police officers.

Next we separated out all complaints initiated by Public Safety Management. We did this by sorting out all complaints with the case-type letter codes of BI (Bureau Initiated) and SI (Special Investigations). Typical examples of these would have the complainant listed as Dir CannonŒ or Car Gedman.Œ This step was taken for two reasons: First, because it was our objective to find the total number of citizen complaints, and second, because these management-initiated complaints were irrelevant to the next Objective of the audit involving racial, gender, and age/experience patterns.

This is a crucial point to keep in mind when reading the pages that follow. Management-initiated complaints might deal with matters like a police officer with a DUI; alcohol on the breath at the station; dress code violations; tardiness; etc. These usually do not provide a helpful indicator of citizen dissatisfaction with the police. Citizens complain about excessive use of force, verbal abuse, refusal to fill out a police report, conduct unbecoming an officer, etc. This distinction will be maintained throughout this audit, and whenever relevant we will present the data both ways (i.e., looking only at citizen complaints against police, then doing the same analysis using total complaints against police).

We had now corrected the OPS database to an optimum level of accuracy and distinguished between citizen complaints and management-initiated complaints. From this we ran a report listing dispositions (sustained, not-sustained, closed, exonerated)

and compared disposition rates for management complaints to those for citizen complaints. Next, with citizen complaints only, we focused on the various types of police misconduct alleged, for example, verbal abuse, excessive force, etc. Sorting with the database field, offense codeŒ, we generated two reports: The first showing the percentage breakdowns for the most frequent offenses, and the second comparing disposition rates for these offenses.

Our findings with respect to Objective No. 2 appear at pages 15-22.

III. Race, Gender, Age/Experience Analysis (Objective No. 3)

Our next Objective was: To generate a series of statistical reports using as variables race, gender, and age, of the complainant, and race, gender, and starting date of the officer, in order to identify possible patterns; presenting this data from 1986 up through the first two months of first quarter, 1996 by year and overall.Œ

For this part of the audit we used our modified database containing only citizen complaints against the police. Using management- initiated complaints in this portion of the audit would only skew the results. The fact that a former Chief of Police was a black male, or that a former Director of OPS was a white female, is irrelevant to the type of patterns which this part of the audit was designed to identify; viz., patterns of possible racial or sexual discrimination/harassment in the relationships between the police and the citizenry. Using SPSS software on the citizen complaint database, we generated reports for the total audit period and for each year, showing first the race of complainant vs. the race of the officer, then gender of complainant vs. gender of officer.

Next, we sorted the citizen complaints by age of the complainant and, with SPSS software, calculated an average age for each of the years in the audit period.

The database had no field for age of the police officer, but it did have one for starting date. We decided to use this to calculate average experience level of the officers and to chart any significant change in this variable over time. We performed this operation by converting the citizen complaint database from D-Base to Lotus then subtracting date of complaint from starting date of the police officer. This gave us the number of days of experience of the officer at the time the complaint was filed; an extremely accurate measurement. We next divided this number by 365 to give years of experience, then finally ran an average for each year in the audit period. The main purpose for these calculations was to test the hypothesis that the upswing in citizen complaints beginning in 1994, could be attributed to the influx of less experienced, newly hired police officers.

Reports and findings with respect to Objective No. 3 appear at pages 23-30.

IV. Multiple Citizen Complaints Against an Officer (Objective No. 4)

We now used the same modified database of citizen complaints only, for the audit¡s fourth Objective: To organize data on the number of officers against whom multiple citizen complaints have been filed from 1986 up through the first two months of first quarter, 1996.Œ

We sorted this database by accused officer¡s name and by officer identification number. This identified those police officers against whom more than one citizen complaint had been filed for the audit period of just under 10 years. Through a conversational shorthand this portion of the audit came to be known as the bad appleŒ analysis. The purpose was to see whether or not our data lent support to the claim that a small number of rogue copsŒ were responsible for the perceived problems which led to the call for this audit.

We first generated a number of findings for the 10 year audit period as a whole. Next, we compiled year by year breakdowns for the years 1991-1995 sorting now by ID Nos. of officers with two or more complaints filed against them for each year, and by the starting date of each officer so identified. This allowed us to observe any trends in the multiple complaint problem over time.

Auditors manually sifted through various print-outs of the modified database described above to gather the findings which appear at pages 30-35.