Homewood residents and city officials say they have questions about a high-speed police chase on Tuesday that stretched from Monroeville and ended with a bus crash inside the city.
While being pursued by Monroeville police, the motorist involved crashed into a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus, which the agency said in a statement crashed into a home on Hamilton Avenue. PRT spokesperson Adam Brandolph said Thursday that the driver and a passenger both suffered non-serious injuries as a result, and are recovering at home.
Some in the community say it could have been much worse.
“It’s not a good look. It’s something that could be very dangerous, and we have children in our community,” said Zone 5 Public Safety Council President Zinna Scott, who has lived in Homewood for 47 years. “I think it’s unnecessary, I think that other things can be done—they can get in touch with the police department, they can look for the car. There's just other ways of doing this.”
City police themselves are generally “discouraged” from undertaking vehicle pursuits unless they involve violent crime, said Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey.
“Driving through neighborhoods, residential neighborhoods at that speed, could end up in situations that happened in Homewood. That is not the type of relationship that we want.”
Gainey, who said he was praying for the families of those who were injured, said he was interested in exploring strengthening relationships with other departments on such issues.
“The more we work together, the better we are, the safer we are,” he said.
According to Monroeville Police Chief Kenneth "Doug" Cole, Monroeville officers were chasing a suspect who led them into the city of Pittsburgh. After the crash, the suspect fled on foot. He has not been identified or apprehended.
Cole said an investigation into the incident was ongoing, and declined to describe the reason police initiated the chase.
Nor could he describe his department’s general policy on chases, due to a state law which requires those policies to be kept confidential.
State law requires that vehicle-chase policies include plans for addressing various factors, including the potential for danger to the community, the seriousness of the offense, and responsibilities of officers during the pursuit.
Pittsburgh Police spokesperson Emily Bourne said the city’s policy was updated in 2019, and while she couldn’t describe it either said it includes more stringent requirements than the state requires.
Cole said his department follows its own vehicle pursuit policy. And statistics suggest Monroeville police have been active this year.
Police departments must report pursuit statistics to a Pennsylvania State Police database. According to information on file there, Monroeville police have engaged in 18 pursuits so far this year, already tying the number of pursuits it carried out in all of 2023. The department had 17 pursuits the year before.
Cole said that the department’s pursuit numbers stay “pretty steady” annually.
“Everybody of course is watching (pursuits). The administrators and everybody are looking at them, how we should handle them, what’s the danger. It’s a balancing act,” he said.
“(Going into Pittsburgh), it’s not uncommon for us,” he said. “Most of our chases go towards Pittsburgh.”
By comparison, Pittsburgh Police report having been on 13 pursuits this year to date. The department carried out 26 pursuits throughout last year – down from 33 chases in 2022.
Countywide, the number of police pursuits has increased slightly in recent years, with 176 in 2023 and 157 in 2022. But those numbers are still well below the total posted in 2015, when police reported 282 chases. So far this year, police across the county have conducted 97 pursuits.
Police can and do continue chases that cross their home community’s borders, while notifying departments where the chase leads them. In the Homewood case, Bourne said Monroeville officers alerted city police by radio, but Pittsburgh supervisors chose not to engage. “Per our own vehicle pursuit policy, we did not engage in the pursuit whatsoever, based on our knowledge of the incident at the time,” she said.
Pittsburgh City Councilman Khari Mosley, who represents Homewood, said in a statement that his office plans to conduct an inquiry into the incident.
“I share the public’s concerns about the threat to public safety that high-speed police chases create, especially for the general public who are not involved in the situation,” he wrote. He emphasized that city police only pursue in situations involving violent crimes.
Citizen Police Review Board Executive Director Beth Pittinger says she is particularly interested in hearing why the Monroeville police decided to pursue the suspect. The crash, she said, demonstrates the potential risk of police pursuits.
“They were making a pursuit of someone into our city and put our residents in danger. The whole problem with police pursuits is the risk involved,” she said. “That’s why it’s important to know, what instigated this pursuit in the first place? What raised the level of threat to the public that justified those officers conducting a pursuit … once they left their jurisdiction?”
