Daylon A. Davis, president of the NAACP Pittsburgh Branch, had been looking forward to the community meetings that he hoped would take place this week with Christopher Ragland, Mayor Ed Gainey’s choice to serve as the city’s permanent police chief.
“This was the opportunity for the community to engage and have a meaningful discussion,” Davis said.
But that was before what Davis calls “the bombshell” dropped: Ragland announced his retirement last Wednesday, not only withdrawing his name from consideration for chief but leaving the force entirely.
Ragland argued the confirmation process for the seat had been turned into a “political football.” He said he felt the process was being drawn out, to allow for “endless delays and pressures for dealmaking.” He declined to say how he’d been pressured or by whom: While he said it was neither Gainey nor anyone in his administration, he didn’t deny that the pressure came from council. Some City Council members, in response, have slammed Ragland as unfit to be chief and accused him of being unwilling to face community scrutiny.
Davis, who found out Ragland was leaving from news reports, says he can’t speak to that dispute — other than to say he was “disheartened that [Ragland] did not have the opportunity to express his vision for the future of the department.”
But with Ragland out of the running, and community discussions on hold, that future is uncertain. And the meetings themselves have become part of the dispute.
Davis himself asked for a public forum in a February 8 email to City Council and Gainey.
“The appointment of a new Chief of Police is a significant decision that directly impacts the safety, trust, and well-being of Pittsburgh residents,” Davis wrote. And a community process “will strengthen his relationship with the community he will serve.”
Davis said he heard back from councilors Theresa Kail-Smith and Anthony Coghill, who chairs the council committee with jurisdiction over public safety. He and a number of other community advocates said they met with three city council members — Coghill, Kail-Smith and Bob Charland — to coordinate how the public engagement would happen. During that discussion, Davis said, the community groups decided on six meetings, one for each of the police zones, and in concert with neighborhood zone councils.
According to Davis, the schedule was set to be announced last week.
“Community members felt the six would warrant enough community time and input, which led to the discussion to be led by the zone councils, for the upcoming March meetings. That’s what we left out of that room with,” Davis said.
But Ragland was not alone in suspecting the meetings could serve as a delaying tactic. Coghill in particular has openly said the city’s next police chief should not be chosen until after the winner of the Democratic primary this May. Brandi Fisher with the Alliance for Police Accountability concludes that the community input process — and a subsequent council hearing — could be used to delay the outcome.
Fisher said the NAACP was right to call for meetings so that the “community voice” could be heard: “People who are directly impacted should have a say-so about people who are going to have some type of oversight over them.” But she was wary of the fact that the council members involved were all Gainey critics who support his rival, Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor, in this year’s mayoral race.
“People who did not want the mayor in office took this as an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, let's make this a political moment, to make Ed Gainey look like he's not keeping Pittsburgh safe,’” she said.
Councilor Barb Warwick voiced similar concerns about delays in council last week, prompting Kail-Smith to assert that Coghill had wanted to hold just three community meetings rather than six. The meetings would be held more than a month before the spring primary, she said.
Community activists say that accords with their sense of things.
“All we were saying was to use the public safety councils, because if you go back and look at the mission and the goals, [it] was to unify the community and build a bridge with our public safety council,” said Yvonne Rainey, president of Zone 1’s public safety council.
Rainey said Ragland had agreed to the forums. She emphasized that the meetings weren’t intended as a “witch hunt,” but “a roundtable of people looking at it from the community standpoint of engaging the mayor and Chief Ragland.” She added that she was “appalled” to hear of the allegations that Ragland was being pressured.
Zinna Scott, president of Zone 5’s public safety council, wasn’t involved in planning the community forums, and said no one approached her directly about them. However, Ragland had a standing invitation to her council’s monthly meetings.
“Whoever is the chief of police and whoever is the commander at Zone 5 is automatically invited,” she said.
She said Ragland had attended in January and November, before his nomination as permanent chief. He’d missed the February meeting because of bad weather, she said.
Rainey said she hopes to have the discussions, even if Ragland will not be chief. She and Davis noted that Acting Chief Devine said to them he’d be glad to attend the public safety council meetings moving forward. And Kail-Smith said last week that she’d propose a community-process similar to the one council had in mind for Ragland.
“Even though Chief Ragland has retired, it's pertinent that we continue to have these forums for the community,” Rainey said.
