Computer System to Track Police Abuse

It’s Big Brother with a twist--technology to watch not the average Joe but city police officers, looking for patterns of misbehavior.

After years of allegations of beatings and false arrests, the Pittsburgh Police Department--under orders from the federal government--will begin tracking complaints against officers next month.

One complaint too many--running a siren unnecessarily, threatening someone at a traffic stop, manhandling a suspect--and the new computer system will notify police supervisors that they may have a problem.

Police union officials hate the idea, calling it “spying” on the people hired to protect the public.

But others say it is necessary to root out problem officers, whether that problem is violence, drinking or drugs. “You don’t want that person carrying a gun,” said Gerard Arenberg, a spokesman for the National Assn. of Chiefs of Police.

The nation’s police forces have struggled with sporadic problems for years, with headlines on such black-eye issues as the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles, four Indianapolis officers charged in a drunken brawl, and New York City officers accused of brutalizing a Haitian immigrant.

The complaints in Pittsburgh have been disquieting too.

Two women said police beat them when they stopped to watch officers beat a man. A disabled woman said police strip-searched her at a traffic stop while her children watched. A Baptist minister said he was wrongly beaten and arrested while listening to gospel music at home.

Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city, and then the Justice Department’s civil rights division got involved, concluding that the Police Department had condoned police brutality since the mid-1980s.

A federal consent decree accepted by the city called for computer monitoring of complaints against officers, reports from officers each time they use force or conduct a search and the hiring of an independent auditor to monitor police. The agreement resolved the ACLU action.

“If an officer can be held accountable for his actions, if he’s going to be reprimanded, then I think that will be acceptable,” Gerald Hess, whose run-in with police put him in the hospital for more than a week, said after the agreement. A kidney dialysis patient pulled over in a traffic stop in 1993, Hess was punched and yanked from his car after he told an officer: “See you in court.” He won $200,000 in a legal battle.

James Pasco, a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police’s national headquarters in Miami, denounced the monitoring program. He said fewer than 1% of police officers are fired for misconduct or criminal behavior.

“Rather than raise spying on the private lives of officers to an art form, maybe they ought to use some of their creativity to find ways to better recruit and train officers,” Pasco said.

Pittsburgh Police Chief Robert McNeilly said the information in question has always been gathered, just not easily accessed. “It’s a system that gives every supervisor the ability to look at everyone under their command and look into their history,” he said Tuesday. “It tells if they need some retraining.”

One of the new computer databases, the Early Warning System, will track valid complaints and notify supervisors when it detects a pattern of misbehavior. The supervisor might order counseling, retraining or suspension.

It goes online April 16.

The chief also wants to give every officer three days of training per year--one on ethics, one on cultural diversity and one on communication skills for use when somebody tries to bait an officer into fighting.

The Carnegie Group and Para Data software companies, both based in Pittsburgh, hope to market their designs in other cities.