Too late for the primary but far ahead of the general election, presumptive Republican nominee Jim Carmine has had a change of heart about the Citzens Police Review Board and the federal consent decree under which Pittsburgh police operate. He's now in favor of them. And it's all thanks to that bastion of leberalism, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which has not covered Carmine the way ti pushed James Roddey for county executive over Cyril Wecht. A Trib reporter (whom Carmine wishes to keep anonymous, lest the poor man lose his job) asked Carmine some challenging questions that proved a conversion experience shortly before the primary. "yes, indeed, we deserve the consent decree," Carmine now says. "we did some awful stuff in Pittsburgh. We did it, we got it, we earned it." The CPRB is a much more complicated animal -- limping and toothless actually -- but Carmine believes it could work with the right support from the mayor's office. He cites the Garrity warning, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which lets police testify without being prosecuted by such review bodies as the CPRB. "I would indeed be willing to coerce police testimony" using Garrity, Carmine says. "What is happening now is despicable. The police sit there with their hands folded" before the CPRB while the board hands out sentences unenforceable by Chief Robert McNeilly, Jr. under current police contracts. "Which means the mayor's office will be sued." Carmine concludes. "But it makes it very, very clear that the mayor is behind the CPRB." Imagine that.
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
InPgh: Tribune-Review Causes Republican To Convert to Liberal Views: Antichrist consults publicist about future
This article ran in the InPgh, an alternative newsweekly, on 5-16-01. It was by Marty Levine
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The CPRB fired the only person that insisted they actually do something other than to award large contracts to law firms that are doing business with one of the then board members. In fact, the only person who told the truth and insisted the only way to get around the mayor and Jackie Morrow's mandate that it be a toothless tiger and go to court as well as utilize the subpoena powersd it had been given was asked to leave right when the police decided it should give the CPRD to reports it needed in defiance of the mayor but in complinace with the law. Millions of dollars and years weere wasted in oprder to get back to the place where they started when she was there. Except that hundreds and hundreds of complaints were dismissed under the excuse that they were not sworn to..even though the rules said only that a conviction cannot take place based SOLEY on an unsworn complain. Since the accused cops got the complaints, the ones that contained the names and addresses of the complainants included, people did not want to let the cops they complained of have that date until the complaint was at least accepted. In order to get rid of the workload, the CPRB just threw all of these out. The former director was told that she was moving too fast...guess the current CPRB director decided not to, and keep her job. incidentally, the current director claims to be some kind of sonultant on police use of force when her only real training is attending the citizen police academy. She is not a lawyer, not an expert in police misconduct, she is a guardian to retarded people and has never dealt with police issues nor is she a lawyer other than through this job.
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