Pittsburgh police bulked up foot patrols Saturday night in the city’s South Side as they braced for St. Patrick’s Day parade revelers to migrate from Downtown to pack the dozens of bars that line East Carson Street.
But the holiday-weekend chaos never arrived.
“You definitely got the sense that, when the parade was done, things started to get a lot busier,” Councilman Bob Charland told TribLive near midnight, while pacing among East Carson Street crowds adorned in emerald green. “Honestly, though, we haven’t had a whole lot of problems.”
Police officers and Charland said the police bureau’s entertainment patrol, which launched in South Side in July 2023, has helped them better respond to incidents — and prevent other ones from erupting — on busy weekends like this.
“That patrol has been a huge game-changer here,” Charland said. “If you watch these officers, they’re high-fiving people. They’re dapping people. They know everyone’s names …. that’s community policing.”
South Side has drawn headlines in the past for mayhem among the late-night partiers.
On multiple weekends in June and July, officers formed riot lines across East Carson Street to force out crowds after bars closed for the night. The rowdiness came to a head on Fourth of July weekend, when people tossed firecrackers, bottle rockets and M80s into crowds and at police, leaving three officers with minor injuries.
By year’s end, though, neighborhood crime had dropped below 2024 levels. Reported thefts, burglaries and arsons in South Side all were down last year, online crime data showed. Reports of aggravated assaults plummeted more than 30% from 2024 to 2025.
Statistics about St. Patrick’s Day Weekend crime were not available as of early Sunday.
South Side, though, was no ghost town Saturday night. Most bars and eateries were filled. Sidewalks were packed enough between 13th and 18th streets that people often stepped off curbs and into the street, where police had blocked parking with rows of white, wooden sawhorses.
Sidewalks were peppered with people sporting holiday gear: a glitter-covered green tie reading “Kiss me, I’m Irish;” shirts and hats referencing leprechauns or Lucky Charms cereal; a well-worn T-shirt labelled “O’Italian,” with Italy’s flag superimposed behind a shamrock.
Outside a Bank of America branch, a busker tapped into passersby’s cerebellums as he hammered out hip-shaking rhythms on a series of five white and blue buckets.
“We are just having an awesome time in the South Side,” musician O. Solomon Adebayo Oyekan, who goes by the stage name Amazen King Roe, said after letting out a joyous “Hey!” or “Yeah!” between beats. “It’s always an adventure!”
Around 11:45 p.m., a growing line of patrons snaked around the side of Pitch, a South Side bar, as two officers kept watch while seated atop a pair of Percheron horses on South 16th Street. At one point, people waiting to get past security at Capo’s, a bustling bar that pulsed for much of Saturday night with capacity crowds, stretched for more than a city block.
Tension occasionally boiled over.
At 1:24 a.m., a scuffle broke out near the intersection of East Carson and 14th streets, but the crowd that formed near two people who grappled in the street scattered as officers hustled over.
At 1:28 a.m., a marked police SUV zipped up East Carson Street, its emergency lights flashing, but whatever conflict drew them toward 14th Street subsided by the time officers arrived. A minute later, someone near Capo’s bar appeared to confront an officer, shouting. The situation was quickly defused.
The biggest sore spot of the evening, Charland said with a chuckle, might have been the droppings left by police horses on the streets and sidewalks.
The space in front of O’Leary’s South Side Cafe, a popular breakfast spot at 14th Street, was among the high-impact areas. “They open at 6:30,” Charland said. “So, we’ve got to make sure that’s cleaned up before breakfast.”
