There's a truly remarkable story unfolding in Pittsburgh right now. About a year ago the city council passed a bill instructing police to stop pulling over drivers for eight specific minor offenses:
- Expired tags within 60 days
- Technical violation of temporary permit display
- Loose license plate
- Single broken light
- Stickers on windshield or hanging from mirror
- Lack of proper bumpers
- Expired inspection certificate within 60 days
- Expired emission inspection within 60 days
But sometime during the first week of 2023 the acting police chief, Thomas Stangrecki, wrote a memo telling traffic officers to ignore the law and return to pulling over people for any violation, no matter how minor. There was no reason given.
Well, almost no reason. Stangrecki cited a new state law that pretty obviously has no relevance, and then this:
Stangrecki told WESA another reason for the reversal was to boost morale among the city’s police ranks. He said he’s received steady feedback that the ordinance is “preventing them from doing their jobs.”
Police morale depends on being able to pull over motorists who have recently expired tags? Or a single broken tail light?
We've unfortunately gotten accustomed to police departments essentially extorting city councils into not crossing them. That's bad enough. But in Pittsburgh they're not bothering with stuff like a blue flu or a million dollar campaign to toss out unfriendly council members. Too much work, I guess. Instead they're just flatly telling the council to fuck off and leave them alone.
It doesn't matter whether you agree with Pittsburgh's law. It's still the law, and police aren't allowed to flout it just because they don't like it. But they are.
So, what's your opinion on the whole "Constitutional Sheriff" movement?
That the police are the nation's first and fundamental "sovereign citizens"?
The constitution doesn’t mention sheriffs. Not once. You can invent a constitutional justification for sheriffs, but it remains just that, an invention.
To these folks "Constitutional" is a word that means the ultimate source of authority. Like the word "Patriot", it seems to have a special meaning to authoritarians.
I've read a very strained explanation that tries to link US sheriffs back to the Shire Reeves of old England. Problem is that the reeve system pretty much lost all formal power with the decline of the feudal system and the establishment of Justices/Commissioners of the Peace in an act passed in 1361. So WAY before the US was even dreamed of...
Right. That they don't enforce the law, they ARE the law, and the Sheriff is their unquestionable leader.
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"It doesn't matter whether you agree with Pittsburgh's law. It's still the law, and police aren't allowed to flout it just because they don't like it. But they are."
Is this actually the case? Does the city council have the power to order certain laws not be enforced?
Yes. They passed a new section to the municipal code directing a handful of parts to be enforced in a different manner.
Makes it really easy to later remove that single portion of the code at a later date, rather than revise those handful of sections of the code.
Were/are all those things based on the municipal code? They all sound like things covered by state-level code. So it sounds like the city council passing a municipal code to tell city police to not enforce a state law.
Which begs the question about the usual relationship between city police and state law.
+10
Here in NC the "code" for all safety related items for motor vehicles stems from NC DMV and enforced by local authorities
Now where do the fines for these types of things go to?
Here in NC all civil fines and those issued by state agencies (NC OSHA, NC DMV etc to to the county schools in which the violation occurred
I wonder if city violations issued by police officers STAY in the city coffers. Follow the monies and we might find the answer
the pgh police are employees of the city, which is governed by the council. i don't claim to a legal expert, but why wouldn't the council have the authority, within certain bounds, to manage its employees in any way it pleases?
Those bounds are the question. Does the city have authority to say to ignore state laws/regulations it does not like?
Click on his link.
Yes the city has the authority to pass laws under Pennsylvania law allowing for municipal home rule and the cops are supposedly under the direction of the city council that issues their paychecks.
Passing laws that say to ignore other laws is odd. Maybe the police chief's thinking is to just throw this to the courts and have them sort it out.
Can not the Chief's bosses tell him what crimes to prioritizes?
And he would lose. The intent is clear. The municipal code is not read selectively; it is read in its entirety.
But the next step isn't to take it to court; it's to fire the chief.
Unless the chief is a lawyer, it’s not his job to interpret law. It’s his job to enforce it per his bosses’ instructions. And the chief is clearly an employee of the city. Fire his ass.
"... It’s his job to enforce it per his bosses’ instructions. .."
Lawful instructions. If as suggested above these are state laws I doubt the city has the authority to override them. I doubt you would be as sympathetic if the city tried to order the cops not to enforce state domestic violence laws.
there is always a certain amount of discretion in enforcing the law for a variety of reasons. if you're going 61 mph in a 60 mph zone, odds are pretty good that the police are going to ignore you. do 70 and you might be in trouble. what the council has done to an extent is codify/standardize discretion on minor violations.
Back when I was in college in MA I was a member of a group that started meetings with a reading of old MA laws that had been superseded but never taken off the books. I remember a particularly hilarious reading of the early traffic laws passed just after the first motor vehicles started to come out.
Getting through an intersection required an elaborate process involving stopping well short of the intersection, walking to it, blowing a horn, and firing a gun. There were a number of other examples, but that has stuck with me for 50+ years.
Something similar happened after the Revolutionary War. We weren't going to rewrite a whole new body of laws and regulations, so we simply dusted off the old laws, removed references to the Crown as needed, and maintained all the precedents from prior court cases - it's called English Common law, and my college classes on business law cited English case precedents going back to before the Norman invasion as examples of how far back precedents went and how they still influenced current laws and court decisions. (Note - Louisiana follows the Napoleonic Code in a lot of matters.)
If there was a ballot issue, Prop Whatever, that would make it part of Pittsburgh's constitution that police officers can ignore the city council and the law, the issue would pass with over 60% of the vote.
Americans, mostly but not just the white ones, strongly support a policy of armed police officers with unlimited power to commit violence.
Pennsylvania doesn’t have propositions like they do in western states, and the city of Pittsburgh doesn’t have a constitution either. So your point is doubly moot.
They said the quiet part out loud: He said he’s received steady feedback that the ordinance [that says to ignore super minor violations] is “preventing them from doing their jobs [of enforcing every tiny thing just because they can].”
It's almost like being an asshole is why they decided to be a cop.
That is what I came here to say:
"But being a bully was the entire reason I signed up."
(Obvioiusly not all cops, clearly.)
How else are they going to keep the "riff raff" out of the fancy neighborhoods unless they can pull them over for ticky tack violations? I lived in an upper middle class town in Mass. that bordered a predominantly Hispanic community. Every week in the local paper's Crime Beat section there would be reports of people being sited for having an expired driver's license. I always wondered how the cop could tell their license was expired?
“ Police morale depends on being able to pull over motorists who have recently expired tags? Or a single broken tail light?”
Wellll, yeah. Cops, not all cops but a large number, join the force so they can play demigod, stopping whoever they want for whatever reason and choosing which violators won’t be stopped. I could be wrong, but I bet I can guess the financial and racial makeup of those stopped.
Nope, not all cops. It's just that the 99% of bad apples make the others look bad.
I signed in to say just that. The psychological wages of police work are covered by nitpicks bullying opportunities.
Most of those seem like varying degrees of ticky-tack, but lack of proper bumpers seems like a bonafide safety issue. One non-functional light is basically one light short of no working lights, certainly with regards to headlights, and given the number of non-functioning cyclops lights I see, for brake lights not much further.
Most states do not require bumpers. Bumpers are there to reduce damage to your car, not prevent injury to you or damage to the other guy.
That got me curious so I went searching. It appears PA does require them: https://codes.findlaw.com/pa/title-75-pacsa-vehicles/pa-csa-sect-75-4536/
Not that I want to be hit by a car, but I suspect I’d be less injured if the car had a bumper that if not. Not so much because the bumper would cushion the impact but because it would be covering bits more likely to puncture.
This has to be one of the worst takes I've ever read.
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That’s hilarious. The so called rule of law is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules.
It’s too bad city council can’t just cut their pay by whatever the fine is for each instance of not following their directives.
Sounds like the city needs to coordinate with Allegheny County and simply get every single charge under all 8 “crimes” dismissed. Maybe once the asshole cops see that their tickets are going nowhere, they’ll decide to be assholes in a different, less confrontational manner, until City Council can figure out a way to financially screw them over. (I’d vote for dumping their pensions. “Oh so sorry, we just can’t afford it.”)
I doubt they care, unless their performance appraisals depend on successful enforcement. The point is using minor infractions as excuses to harass people, and that’s an immediate reward that doesn’t hinge on the citation.
Fire the officers, put the chief in prison.
Cops are scum.
Here in LA we have kind of the opposite problem. In the pandemic especially, it became fashionable to tint car windows so dark that the driver cannot be seen at all in the daytime (much less nighttime), making it very difficult to see if a driver at an intersection is paying attention to the road, or to instagram live. It's a big problem, in my opinion, for pedestrians and cyclists -- basically for the whole idea of any kind of transportation other than cars.
I suspect the heart of the problem is that the cops are very Trumpy, very much fans of the "Fast and Furious" movies, and they are choosing not to enforce the window tint law just as they don't enforce the stop sign laws at all.
It will take a bunch of city councillors willing to bet their careers on making the atmosphere better for pedestrians to change things. Since fighting car drivers is surely the kiss of death for your political career at the moment, I imagine it will be years before this can be changed. Sigh.
Broken window syndrome?
IF the police have been completely sucked into "broken window policing", then they'll have trouble policing.
Does the same apply to Andrew Warren down here in Tampa?
[volume up on Vangelis] Stop right there buddy boy - you know the score! If you're not cop, you're little people.
No choice?
No choice.
Ban all public service unions from affecting hiring and firing decisions. There, problem solved.
Exactly who is in charge here? Definitely not the police and they need to be told so. Time to throw out the chief and maybe most of the force and get new ones who will take orders and not flaunt the law for their own moral. Jeez...
I can't believe I am saying this but I get where the cops are coming from. Virginia temporarily did away with a lot of these sorts of minor enforcements a few years ago. I thought it was great. I did not expect the downstream effects. While the non-enforcement policy was in effect the number of people drag racing on the back roads (one of which I live on so I saw it up close) was completely out of control. Apparently the cops were using the minor observable offenses to get the guys because catching them in the act of racing on a winding road with no shoulders was nearly impossible. One of the laws that was defanged was having a muffler that "prevent[s] excessive or unusual noise", I could hear them on a road a couple of miles away sometimes. I was happy when the next governor reverted things back to the way things were. That being said the law is the law and the Pittsburgh police have to follow it even if they disagree with it.
Bizzare set of new laws, why? Don’t care for the police take, unless ls it would be here in NY, it’s a State law. Why the extra time for scofflaws? Ridiculous
* it is as it would be…
I work in Pittsburgh when I'm not at home, and live in a suburb near southern city limits. Moved here 18 years ago from LA, and the patent absurdity of PA/Pgh laws and related behaviors never cease to amaze.
I don't support what the police did, but they may have a valid reason. Minor stops like this often uncover much bigger issues.
Our affluent neighborhood recently got a temporary beef up of speeding enforcement due to our complaints. It turns out that many of the speeders had outstanding warrants on serious charges. After a week of this the burglary rate plummeted.
Of course, the process can be abused and needs to be watched carefully. Nonetheless it can be a useful tool if done within reason. I can see why many police officers see it as an important part of their productivity.
I'm sure all the Black and Hispanic folks that were pulled over for minor issues driving into your affluent neighborhood really appreciate the fines they have to pay so that you can imagine they were all burglars.
"After a week of this the burglary rate plummeted."
Really? The police managed to catch the vast majority of burglars due to speeding violations? Those folks came flying into town just looking for a house to rob? Correlation is not causation
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