Story by JUSTIN VELLUCCI
Photos by SHANE DUNLAP
June 30, 2024
While walking down East Carson Street at 12:52 a.m. June 8 in Pittsburgh’s South Side, city police Sgt. Andrew Robinson spotted a man standing outside a shuttered pizza shop, sifting marijuana into brown rolling papers.
As Robinson approached, the man quickly ditched the drugs on a window ledge. The two started talking casually, even laughing together. When the man said he wasn’t carrying ID, Robinson briefly handcuffed him, then started reciting from memory city ordinances about drug possession.
The man became a statistic — one of the 1,162 nontraffic citations Pittsburgh police have issued on East Carson Street since launching a special patrol there July 20, 2023, to tamp down crime and improve public perception in one of the city’s leading entertainment districts.
For a time, violence and quality-of-life crimes had tarnished the district’s reputation, causing revelers to rethink their plans and even driving some businesses away.
But as the patrol nears its first anniversary, a range of Pittsburghers — business owners, residents, bar patrons, law enforcement and elected leaders — praise what they see as a success story that is well known to those who live, work and play in the resurgent district.
South Side shootings are down this year in the entertainment district, which encompasses rows of businesses — most of them restaurants and bars — that stretch down East Carson Street from 12th to 18th streets.
Foot traffic and food sales appear to be up. Multiple business owners heaped praise on city efforts to clean up East Carson Street.
Earlier that evening, at 10:29 p.m., Robinson issued his first citation for an open container of alcohol — a young man with a 24-ounce can of Smirnoff Red, White and Berry vodka.
As late Friday morphed into early Saturday, Robinson caught three men urinating in an alley behind Carson City Saloon. A woman hurled insults at police as she filmed the encounter on a cellphone. An hour later, Robinson cited a different woman for rolling a joint on the sidewalk.
Police leadership believes the patrol’s efforts to stop those kinds of crimes add up.
“You know you’re going to send resources there, whether it’s proactively or reactively,” Pittsburgh police Chief Larry Scirotto told TribLive. “With the entertainment patrol, we’re being proactive.”
“South Side is a destination. How do we make that destination free of violence? That was our challenge. I think we’ve met our challenge. But we’re going to keep improving. We’re not taking our foot off the gas pedal.”
Some who frequent South Side bars say they feel a change on Carson.
Alerts from the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system have dropped more than 60% in the South Side since the entertainment patrol started — from 60 reports at this time in 2023 to 22 this year, police data showed.
So far this year, Pittsburgh police have posted only twice to their online blotter about a victim or an arrest in a South Side shooting. A convenience store employee was shot Feb. 3 while taking out the trash. And two people were arrested June 17 after a shot was fired during a fight on Wright’s Way.
Since the patrol started, bars and restaurants along the strip appear reassured and seem to be staying put.
Mayor Ed Gainey’s administration estimated that, in 2022, 26 bars and liquor establishments operated on East Carson Street between 12th and 18th streets.
As of Thursday, there were 23 active liquor licenses for restaurants and breweries in that stretch, according to state Liquor Control Board data. That’s roughly half of the 44 active licenses on the entire length of the road.
Officers from the city’s Zone 3 station, which covers the South Side, first launched a test run of the special patrol in 2013. The covid-19 pandemic thwarted a second effort, which started in 2019.
From July 2023 through Tuesday, the patrol’s 10 officers have made more than 180 arrests, initiated nearly 530 traffic stops and confiscated 50 guns in South Side, data shows. Over nearly a year, that comes out to a weekly average of about three arrests, 10 traffic stops and one gun seizure.
Patrol officers issued 1,874 parking and 637 traffic citations and called for 613 tows.
“Here it’s, ‘See the crime, stop the crime, no matter how minor it is,’” said Zone 3 Cmdr. Jeff Abraham, as he sat in the precinct headquarters on East Warrington Avenue in Allentown. “I think the word is getting out. And let’s be clear about it: If you come down to South Side and cause violence, you’re gonna hear from us.”
During the pandemic, some South Side visitors drank in parking lots and left related trash along neighborhood streets, according to Allison Harnden, the city’s nighttime economy manager. That trend increasingly is disappearing.
In August 2022, public works employees collected 340 pounds of trash solely related to alcohol — discarded beer cans, empty liquor bottles — in the entertainment district, Harnden said.
In April, the most recent data available, they collected 25 pounds.
“That (number) clearly is the police intervening with people drinking on the street,” said Harnden, who managed entertainment districts in San Diego before moving to Pittsburgh in 2015.
In April, community groups asked Pittsburgh police to boost the number of patrol officers before summer crowds arrived. Abraham responded by adding police cadets to the patrol’s ranks.
“As long as I’m commander of this zone, (the patrol) only will get enhanced,” Abraham said. “If we get new issues down there, we’ll pivot as well. But it’s too successful for us to leave.”
Robinson is the face of the entertainment patrol — more an East Carson Street mayor than a cop walking the beat.
The Central Catholic High School graduate and Point Park University alumnus joined the Pittsburgh force in 2011 and focuses on making connections with people.
Before his police service, Robinson worked as an Allegheny County Jail guard.
“When you’re the only guy in charge of 114 inmates, you quickly learn how to talk to people,” Robinson said.
On June 7 and 8, Robinson paced up and down East Carson Street for six hours. He shook hands with business owners and fist-bumped the bouncers and security guards manning bar entrances. He averages 17,000 to 18,000 steps each day he works.
“Isn’t it crazy I still like this (expletive)?” one man, who appeared intoxicated, told Robinson as the two joked outside a whiskey bar. “I still like this guy, and he tells me he’s gonna put me in jail for life!”
“Cop sexy! It’s cop sexy!” a young woman yelled toward Robinson from a passing car at 2:24 a.m.
After South Side bars closed at 2 a.m., the tone on the street occasionally got tense but never violent.
At 2:16 a.m., arguments broke out at 1327 East Carson St., which once housed Vault Taproom.
Eight minutes later, a crowd gathered near the intersection of 14th and East Carson streets. People on the street shouted. Some cursed. Several officers kept close, seeing if a fight would break out.
Then, nothing. The crowds dispersed.
By 2:30 a.m., many bar patrons opted to cram into takeout restaurants. Crowds spilled out the front door at La Bodega Taqueria, a taco shop at 1502 East Carson St.
Robinson’s work didn’t seem to end. Though crowds waned, some issues continued. Around 3 a.m., he called a colleague on his shoulder-mounted radio.
“If you’re out at 12th and Carson,” he said, “go down to the lot and get that drunk, half-naked girl out of there.”
Brandon Firman quickly got familiar with “controlled chaos.”
The North Hills businessman joined others to buy Rex Theatre in 2021. He renovated the music venue, an East Carson Street icon whose roots reach back to vaudeville theater, then reopened the club as Enclave on April 9, 2022.
“When we first got in, it was a little more of a controlled chaos, I’d say,” said Firman, 29. “It seemed like folks did what they wanted when they wanted to. People drank in the streets, people liked to smoke weed in the streets.”
“Now it’s night and day. The vibe is so much more — I don’t want to say happy — but people are having more fun again.”
Some business owners acted on their concerns about South Side crime before the patrol started last summer.
In June 2022, Fudge Farm closed its East Carson Street location because of violence in the neighborhood.
The closure came “due to the uncontrollable shootings and violence as well as other circumstances on E. Carson Street,” Fudge Farm wrote in a Facebook post. “We can no longer ask teenage children, or no one for that matter, to work for us in this environment.”
The company did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment.
A year later — in July 2023 — business owner Brian Vetere temporarily closed Carson City Saloon, which he co-owned, due to tensions on the block. He estimated he had met with city officials to address problems there at least 50 times from 2021 to 2023.
“My staff is scared to death every time they come to work,” he told TribLive last year. “So am I. My wife is terrified for me when I leave the house.”
On the June weekend of Robinson’s foot patrol, new owners had Carson City Saloon up and running.
Vetere said he sold the saloon operation but continues to own the East Carson Street building itself. He declined to comment this week on crime trends in South Side.
Christie Miller started bartending in the South Side around 2003, when many Pittsburghers trekked to the Strip District to party. At that time, shot-and-a-beer bars filled East Carson Street alongside newer haunts like Mario’s or Nick’s Fat City, which today is the dance club Avalon Social. Some offered live music.
In 2019, Miller was still working in South Side when she bought Twelve Whiskey Barbecue. She previously had bartended there. Miller bought Doce Taqueria, an East Carson Street taco shop, three years later.
The Baldwin Township businesswoman said she sees less crime — and more comfortable patrons — hitting the South Side today than a year ago. Debates about crime have moved to Downtown Pittsburgh.
“We’re not as much click-bait anymore,” said Miller, 41. “Crime is always going to be somewhere. It’s about how the neighborhood reacts to it. And we’re not going down without a fight, that’s for sure.”
“We’ve worked really hard on the police and with safety down here,” says Pittsburgh City councilman Bob Charland, D-South Side, watching a motorcyclist pop a wheelie on East Carson Street last month.
Pittsburgh Police Sgt. Andrew Robinson writes a citation for an open container in public during the late hours of June 7, 2024, along East Carson Street in South Side.
A man who lost his cellphone talks with a pair of Pittsburgh police officers on South Side’s East Carson Street on June 8,2024. By addressing quality-of-life issues and minor offenses, police leadership say the entertainment patrol also has helped lower the number of violent crimes and shootings there.
Pittsburgh Police Sgt. Andrew Robinson temporarily handcuffs a man who he saw, moments earlier, sifting marijuana into rolling papers on South Side’s East Carson Street on June 8,2024.
“Isn’t it crazy I still like this [expletive]?” one man, who appeared intoxicated, told Pittsburgh police Sgt. Andrew Robinson as the two joked outside a South Side whiskey bar on June 7, 2024. “I still like this guy and he tells me he’s gonna put me in jail for life!”
Some of the officers and leadership involved in the patrol boast South Side credentials.
As he walked down East Carson Street recently, Abraham, the zone commander, recalled grabbing a beer 16 years ago at a South Side bar dubbed 1311 with Officer Stephen Mayhle.
Mayhle was killed in the line of duty a year later in 2009. The two had trained together in the police academy.
While the bar holds a fond memory for Abraham because of that long-ago drink with Mayhle, it’s also special to him for another reason: It’s where he met his wife, who was a bartender there.
Pittsburgh’s police chief also served in the South Side, joining Zone 3 in 2012 as a lieutenant and leaving two years later as the zone commander. Scirotto worked there alongside Robinson, then a new addition to the force.
“Chief Scirotto knows the issues that are down there,” Robinson said. “He knows the problems that need to be addressed.”
Scirotto called first-year results from the entertainment patrol “fantastic.”
John DeMauro agrees. He opened Urban Tap in South Side in October 2013.
But the South Side resident really first cut his East Carson Street teeth working at his father’s bar — the Old Birmingham Inn, which sat near 17th and East Carson streets. Today, it’s Jimmy D’s.
At least one of DeMauro’s staffers raised concerns last year about South Side violence.
Brianna Cobb, who managed and bartended at Urban Tap last year, told TribLive that crime was part of the reason why Urban Tap wasn’t packed late on Friday and Saturday nights anymore.
“It’s a little frustrating, because I feel like we’re less busy,” Cobb said.
Last summer, an uptick in gun violence in the neighborhood left some visitors and business owners on edge. Local officials responded with additional policing, parking restrictions and promises to engage with the community to seek further solutions.
Last summer, Bruce Kraus, then the City Council member for the South Side, said a “false narrative” about violence in the entertainment district was hurting businesses.
DeMauro, Urban Tap’s owner, said the entertainment patrol has pushed back against that narrative.
“It feels a lot more comfortable down here now because it’s safer. These guys are setting the precedent,” said DeMauro, 41.
“It’s completely safe on the street now,” added Jimmy Hoffmann, a North Hills man who has co-owned Mario’s on East Carson Street since 2007. “You’re there to have a good time. And any sorts of problems — especially with things like open containers — won’t be tolerated.”
Justin Vellucci is a TribLive staff writer. Justin can be reached at jvellucci@triblive.com.
TribLive staff writers Julia Burdelski and Megan Trotter contributed to this story. Julia can be reached at jburdelski@triblive.com and Megan at mtrotter@triblive.com.