A critical vote on whether or not to spend $1.8 million on a contentious public safety training center master plan has already been postponed by Pittsburgh City Council in a city where passionate citizens are holding fiercely opposed views to what critics are calling the city version of Cop City, raising serious questions on how the city is prioritizing, budgeting and approaches to community safety even with federal deadlines ominously hovering overhead.
The vote is postponed in the council as opposition increases
According to WESA, on Wednesday, the Pittsburgh City Council postponed action on a contentious proposal to convert a Veterans Affairs hospital into a training facility operated by the public safety government. Council voted to defer by seven weeks the approval of a contract connected with the proposal, which was first proposed under the administration of former Mayor Bill Peduto.
To a great extent, we actually need to start over again, at the drawing board, and see what the possible alternatives are that we have with respect to using the same land, said Councilor Khari Mosley in the discussion, which lasted twenty minutes.ย When the hospital shut down, the Peduto government bought the land owned by the federal government and was planning to use it as a state-of-the-art training facility. That vision would contain a simulated city street called Hogan’s Alley, where the police could train, together with exercise machines, shooting fields, and other training elements.
People are extremely dissatisfied with the facility
According to the Post-Gazette, passionate Pittsburgh residents showed up Wednesday afternoon to express their dissatisfaction with a proposal that would turn the old Veterans Affairs hospital in Lincoln-Lemington into a training facility for public safety. Some residents dubbed it the Pittsburgh version of a so-called cop city, and used this as a reason why this kind of campus would enable militarization of police.
Public speaker at the meeting on Wednesday, Regina Hendley, described the plan as an affront to Pittsburghers everywhere and referred to what she described as deplorable conditions in some public housing in the city. Unless the project is expected to be about keeping Pittsburghers safe, it should proceed to the upkeep of our current housing and the construction of new ones, she thought.
There are budget pressures
The city is faced with serious financial limitations as revenues decline and costs of items like increased overtime to cover understaffed police and EMS departments also increase. The facility has a five-year financial plan that has budgeted a total of 86 million dollars in Pittsburgh, but the final price tag would not be determined until the master plan is completed. The city of Atlanta spent nearly $118 million to construct its controversial facility, which many have argued is being used to militarize police in the Georgia capital.
Community requires community input
The co-founder of Take Action Advocacy Group, an activist organization based in Western Pennsylvania, Fawn Walker-Montgomery, said that no vote should occur without a public forum. Nevertheless, people have not been given a chance to participate outside the council meetings. “No one is for this. All of them oppose this, Squirrel Hill resident Alexandra Weiner told the council in the public comment. It must be the easiest choice of your career.
The case of the public safety center in Pittsburgh is symptomatic of larger conflicts between the needs of the community and the priorities of law enforcement, in which its residents insist on transparency and substantial consultation before making final decisions. There is an increasing opposition to the controversial master plan of $1.8 million as council members struggle with budget limits, federal deadlines, and mounting community opposition to what critics describe as the militarization of local policing through costly training centers.