The Associated Press
PITTSBURGH (AP) - Civil rights activists voiced opposition Tuesday to the release of Pittsburgh police from a federal consent decree, citing a conflict of interest in the city’s law department.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other groups said the city’s law department should not be overseeing the Office of Municipal Investigations, which is responsible for investigating civilian complaints of police misconduct.
“A diseased body is not viewed as well until the entire body is disease free,” said Tim Stevens, president of the NAACP’s Pittsburgh chapter. “The entire system is diseased and it must be cleansed.”
The groups called for an overseer assigned by a judge to run the OMI.
Last week, the city of Pittsburgh and the Justice Department filed a petition to release the police department from the decree because both sides agree the city has enacted reforms to curb excessive force and other abuses.
The decree was signed in April 1997 after the federal government alleged a “pattern and practice” of police misconduct, spurred by lawsuits in which residents, most of them black, complained they had been improperly arrested, intimidated and denied their civil rights by officers.
Pittsburgh settled the claims this summer, and U.S. District Judge Robert Cindrich, who is monitoring the decree, has ordered the city to pay $275,000 by Sept. 7.
Civil rights groups say they also oppose other changes proposed by the city and Justice Department, including one provision that could preclude an independent auditor from reporting on police officers’ use of excessive force, searches and seizures and traffic stops.
Under the petition, the city has to eliminate a backlog of cases at the OMI by the end of the year. The ACLU has said over 200 cases in the OMI are more than three years old.
Cindrich will hold a Sept. 13 hearing before he decides whether to lift the police department out of the consent decree.