This week, I attended a City Council meeting that was both a post agenda meeting and a public hearing. The meeting was run by Councilperson Burgess, and the purpose was supposedly to hear from the community about what the community wants in the next Police Chief. I probably shouldn’t say, “supposedly.” That was their intention, I am sure of it, but let’s be real. Sometimes Council can’t listen.

Let’s put all of this into a context too. The Mayor selects the Police Chief and the Council merely approves the selection. Never before has the Council not approved the Mayor’s choice. While the current Mayor may make a selection, the common wisdom is that he will not, and the task will fall to the next Mayor elected in the Fall. There is a lot of time between now and then, and one use of that time, is lots of dialogue which could empower the residents of Pittsburgh to have a say in the decision making process. The goal of this meeting, and any meetings that happen are not to actually select the next Police Chief, but good public hearings and meetings could go far at decreasing the tensions between the residents and the Police Department.

But there is an enormous amount of mistrust between the community/residents and the police. Some of it is due to the allegations and fiscal controversies that have recently come to light. Some grows from an ongoing frustration that perhaps the police do not operate with the City’s best interest at stake. And some even express a lack of trust by the Police Department for the residents. Compounding the issue is that as a City, we have many many fine police officers who work extremely hard, doing a dangerous job, and are responsible for making Pittsburgh a great place to live and work. It’s complicated, and it is easy to overlook the good and fine professionalism that exists in the Police Department when focusing on the issue that need to be improved.

The format of the meeting was fairly smile. In the post agenda meeting, Councilman Burgess had invited a number of individuals to provide Council with information, and a time for Council to direct questions to this panel of experts. This was to be followed by a public hearing where member o the community could speak. If you signed up, you had three minutes to speak, or you could be added to a list and have one minute to speak. I took two hours from my day for this. The first hour was the be the post agenda meeting, and the second hour was to be the public hearing. The experts kept their remarks short, and on topic. They referred to each other and didn’t repeat points that had already been expressed. After that is when the meeting began to break down. Councilperson Burgess walked through a slide show of his ideas about the next Mayor, and then each council member had an opportunity to give their remarks and ask questions. At the end of the first hour, there were still about half the council who hadn’t spoken yet. Burgess turned control of the meeting over to Harris with the plan that they would quickly move through the last council persons and on to the public hearing. At the end of the next hour, we still had not begun the comments by the public who were there to speak.

Let me be clear, I am not finding fault with what any specific councilperson had to say. A number of members expressed differing opinions and those opinions could merit review. But I’m one who appreciates a group of strong people who all have differing ideas. I’m just not sure why this meeting was the place to express those divergent ideas. This was supposed to be a meeting about giving the public a voice. Kudos to Bill Peduto however.  He was the only person who said “I’m hear to listen to the public,” and then actually be quiet. That’s actually what I would have expected from all of the Council members, but he was the only one who took that approach. Perhaps Bill really had to.  He has no room for empty rhetoric. As a candidate for Mayor, he may be selecting the next Police Chief, and  while he wasn’t the only candidate in the room, I’m sure all of them wanted to hear from the public.

Each Councilperson really cares about the City and the issue of the next Police Chief. That was obvious. But do they really care about what the public has to say? Most infuriating for me were those Councilmembers who would say, “I really want to hear from the public.” and then talk on and on. At least one did this over and over, and each time, all I could think was that either this person hasn’t a clue what they are doing, or that their intent was to lie through their teeth. I don’t think they mean to lie. I just think they need someone to call them on their BS. If you really want to hear from the public, then shut up and listen to the public. If you are going to talk on for 15 minutes, admit that you think what you have to say is more important to you than what the public has to say.

Let me be clear again. I can even live with a long winded Councilperson. (Though I’d encourage even them to learn to be more succinct) What gets me outraged, are those who say they want to listen and then kept yammering on. That is disrespectful.

I may feel differently if I had been able to stay to the end, but the reality is I’m left wondering, if the meeting did as much harm as good. Council understands its role in the selection of the next Police Chief, but does it understand the role it can play in improving the relationship with the residents of Pittsburgh. Truly listening to the public could go a long way. Something to consider.