Proposed ban on tear gas, rubber bullets sent to committee by Allegheny County Council

A proposal by Allegheny County Council to limit the use of tear gas, rubber bullets and other things used by police to disperse crowds generated plenty of interest Tuesday.

Council ultimately sent the bill to committee instead of voting on it, against the wishes of its sponsors, Councilwomen Bethany Hallam and Olivia Bennet.

The proposed ordinance would ban the use of so-called less-lethal force — including tear gas and rubber bullets — to disperse a crowd. Police who violate the new ordinance would be subject to a maximum $300 fine and 30-day jail sentence for each violation.

Through an online form put in place because of the covid-19 pandemic, 288 comments from Allegheny County residents were submitted by the council’s deadline, and 65 more were submitted after the deadline had passed.

To save time and avoid reading all of the comments during the virtual council meeting, council President Pat Catena said he would list the names of all commenters in favor of the legislation and all those opposed. The full comments would then be printed in the meeting’s official minutes, which would be voted in and made public in two weeks.

While the county solicitor said this is all in accordance with Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Law, some council members immediately raised concern over the process.

“We’re supposed to take those comments into consideration before we vote,” Councilman Samuel DeMarco said. “How do they know that we’re taking into consideration the concerns or the things that they would like to convey to council?”

Hallam agreed.

She said council members had only received about 50 comments in their emails before the meeting and not allowing proper review of the comments before a potential vote would violate the “intention” of the Sunshine Law. Meanwhile, the solicitor and some members of council argued the point was moot, since the legislation in question was not scheduled for a vote on Tuesday either way.

“In the interest of good government, we need transparency and accountability, and so regardless of anything else, regardless of if this legislation comes up for a vote tonight or not, it is very important that the public perception of County Council is that we are accessible to them,” Hallam said. “We need to make sure those public comments are actually made public, are sent to all elected members of this body and at the very least are read into the public record.”

Hallam told council she had planned to ask the governing body to waive the bill’s second reading, essentially bypassing the regular procedure of sending it to committee for review. Shewanted the council to vote on the legislation immediately, Hallam said.

“This is something that’s very timely and very crucial,” she said. “The members of our community truly cannot wait another moment longer for this code of legislation to be passed out of the protection of their health and well being.”

But once it became clear that council members had not seen the majority of comments submitted by the public, Hallam said she could not, “in good faith,” bring the bill to a vote.

Catena moved the bill into the health and human services committee — a move that also spurred confusion.

Hallam said the bill should be taken to the public safety or the government reform committees, but Catena insisted that the bill falls under the health and sanitation division of county code.

The proposed ordinance comes after violence in crowds protesting against the death of George Floyd.

Police in Pittsburgh and across the country have used the less-lethal weapons to break up crowds, but the tools nonetheless have been known to injure nonviolent demonstrators.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto recently called for an investigation into the use of police force at a protest that took place last week in East Liberty.

But Bob Swartzwelder, president of Fraternal Order of Police Fort Pitt Lodge 1, said the ordinance would be impractical and would violate regulations set forth by the 21st Century Policing initiative, a blueprint for policing developed under the Obama administration.

Swartzwelder said the use of kinetic rounds — not rubber bullets, but low-velocity bullets filled with sand — and OC vapors, a form of tear gas, are essential tools in riot situations.

Without the use of “intermediate” weapons, police called to break up riots will be forced to use either deadly force or hand-to-hand combat, he said.

“You’re going to look like the riots of 1968, where these devices were not available,” he said. “What it leads to is close-quarters, essentially all-out fighting. Police officers are swinging batons, K-9s are biting individuals, and it just looks brutal.”

He added that none of the weapons are “discretion-less.”

Police departments have specific guidelines on when they are appropriate to use, he said.

Also on the subject of police reform, Councilman DeWitt Walton asked that a formerly tabled bill for a civilian police review board be brought back to the council for discussion. The review board was proposed in 2018, voted down in August 2019 and reintroduced in January.

A majority of council members voted to keep the police review board bill in committee for the time being, saying nothing about the legislation has been changed since it was voted down last year. Still, the issue was brought up again throughout the night.

Council members also discussed how counties across the state are being encouraged to move on law enforcement legislation that has been sitting in committee for long periods of time.

Several Pittsburgh residents also advocated for action toward a police review bill, citing incidents that occurred during protests in the last several days.

“This legislative action has been bottled up for over a year,” Walton said. “The time is well past for us to pass this legislation.”