Need Police in Pittsburgh? Good Luck With That…

Pittsburgh has a brilliant way to reduce crime statistics: quit policing the city. 

The goal is to reduce the number of police responses by 75%, and the way they are going to achieve that goal is to quit responding to 75% of police callouts. 

They are also reducing the availability of police precincts, closing many down for many hours a day, replacing the officers with call boxes. 

BREAKING: Pittsburgh Police now say their doors could remain closed for even longer. One station was closed until 4:30pm after initially announcing they would only close from 3AM to 7AM.

Biden won this county by 20 points in 2020. Democrats embrace criminals and villainize the… https://t.co/ppBZibNrnq pic.twitter.com/e7zLn5ybje

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 18, 2024

It is a remarkable strategy and directly in line with the Left’s agenda of freeing criminals up to do whatever they want while ignoring the needs of law-abiding citizens, who really should know better than to live in a Blue city. 

PITTSBURGH —The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police has implemented a new response policy. Beginning March 11, officers will only respond to calls of in-progress emergencies, WPXI reported.

The policy is part of Chief Larry Scirotto’s efforts to reduce the bureau’s call volume from about 200,000 calls to about 50,000 calls this year, according to the report. Calls for criminal mischief, theft, harassment and many others will be handled by the telephone reporting unit or by online reporting.

“That allows our officers to be engaged in community in a way, now they’re at the YMCA instead of sitting on the 10th Street bypass with a bike complaint,” Scirotto stated.

The Pittsburgh police is grossly understaffed, and apparently too few people want to work in an environment where chances are good that some community activist could bully a prosecutor into throwing an officer doing his duty into jail. 

What’s not to love about a dangerous job in which the public and the politicians attack you for defending the rights of the law-abiding? 

Bob Swartzwelder, Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police union president, has been talking about police staffing shortages since 2021. He’s called it “an absolute crisis.”

In his estimation just three years ago, it wouldn’t be long before the city didn’t have enough police officers patrolling the streets to reassure the public about their safety. He wasn’t wrong. On the night of Feb. 26, only 14 officers patrolled a city of 300,000 people.

The problem is not just Pittsburgh’s. Officers are leaving the force nationally at unprecedented rates. As NBC reported, “Officer resignations were up 47% last year compared to 2019 — the year before the pandemic and Floyd’s killing — and retirements are up 19%.” The International Association of Chiefs of Police reported that 2/3rds of police departments were not getting enough applications.

Many have offered pay raises and lowered standards for recruitment. It hasn’t worked. Why?

Because as more and more established officers leave active duty, fewer and fewer young people in the United States want to grow up to be police officers.

Policing has always been a difficult job, and for obvious reasons: much of your time and effort is spent dealing with the wreckage caused by the dregs of society, with the added bonus of danger and the contempt of far too many in your community. 

But the George Floyd riots of 2020 and the pandemic-era policies in which police were forced to enforce unjust mandates and to endure mandates imposed on them broke policing in America. Police retention collapsed, and police recruitment plummeted. Politicians spent countless hours and enormous energy attacking police and cutting their budgets, and for some strange reason, the police officers decided that this wasn’t an environment they enjoyed. 

Shocking, I know. 

Add in the joyous fact that all this is endured simply for the joy of watching the evildoers you risked your life to catch to be let go by DAs and judges who embrace the lawbreakers as innocent freedom fighters or victims of a system that just doesn’t like the diversity that felons bring to society. 

In light of all this, the police are giving up. They are retiring, moving to greener pastures, or, in the case of Pittsburgh, simply not available to respond to calls. There are too few cops to do much, so why try?

Policing is in danger of entering a death spiral. As the current police force retires out of disgust many departments are dropping qualification requirements, ensuring more bad apples get through the process. As this happens, citizen distrust will rise, ensuring worse outcomes and more retirements. 

All of this was as predictable as a sunrise, and we predicted it and were attacked for doing so. 

So it goes in the socialist states of America.