Pitt Police Chief goes above and beyond

Pitt Police Chief Tim Delaney said Forbes Avenue wasn’t always a great place to be late at…Pitt Police Chief Tim Delaney said Forbes Avenue wasn’t always a great place to be late at night during the 1990s. During that time Delaney was a commander, and “gangbangers,” as he calls them, would regularly hang around, looking for trouble.

Delaney’s solution was to go buy some DJ equipment.

“I got permission from my chief to buy speakers,” Delaney said.

Delaney put the speakers on the corner of Forbes Avenue and South Bouquet Street.

He cranked the volume to the city limit and placed an officer there all night long, spinning tracks ranging from relaxation to classical music.

“Can you imagine?” Delaney asks between raucous bursts of laughter. “All these kids listening to Strauss! It was like a dog whistle to the gangbangers. They disappeared.”

Lt. Holly Lamb, one of Delaney’s co-workers, remembers that incident.

“At that time I was only a patrolman,” she said. “I assume everyone thought he was a little crazy.”

Delaney became chief of Pitt Police in 2001, and it became his responsibility to manage his staff of 77 officers, organize police efforts for big events and coordinate with other law enforcement agencies. .

Seven months into his first year as chief, two planes hit the World Trade Center in New York. In the ensuing confusion, Delaney told his staff to sit tight.

“I don’t think [the terrorists] plan of attack is World Trade, Pentagon, Cathedral,” he said to his staff in the ensuing confusion. “Then a plane landed in Shanksville [Pa.], and I thought, ‘Uh oh, they’re getting closer.’”

Delaney sent out his staff to make contact with nearby law enforcement. One Pitt officer reached the FBI and opened up a line of communication that has been active ever since.

Delaney, whose office is located in the Public Safety Building, said maintaining communication, both within his force and between his force and other law enforcement agencies — like the FBI or the Pittsburgh City Police — has helped make him an effective chief. All of this support has benefited Delaney because in the past decade he had to deal with numerous trying incidents.

In 2009, Delaney dealt with the G-20 summit, where widespread rioting caused significant damage to the campus. Last March, John F. Shick opened fire at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, killing one and injuring five others, before a Pitt police officer shot and killed him. Last spring, more than 140 bomb threats disrupted campus. Then there is his job of dealing with more drunken college students than he can count.

With 37 years on the force, Delaney is full of stories. Some stories are funny and some are tragic, and the chief can tell them all side by side with captivating ease.

“I got a call a few weeks ago of about a man running naked through Oakland,” he said, looking through his phone for a picture as he paused for the ensuing laughter to die down. “We found him, and he looked like this. That’s bone sticking out of his leg.”

He revealed the picture of an anonymous man’s leg with a large chunk of skin, running from his hip to the top of his knee, missing from the side. A small white circle, the exposed bone, sat in the middle of the gash.

“He was on some kind of drugs,” Delaney said with a grimace as he put away the phone.

Delaney’s ties to Pitt and Pittsburgh are strong. Delaney grew up in Lawrenceville, Pa., and his father was a Pitt police officer. After high school, he took classes at the Community College of Allegheny County before transferring to Pitt to work as a Pitt security guard.

“I was unfocused,” Delaney said of his younger years.

He took a break from school to marry his high school sweetheart and climbed the ranks of the Pitt police before going back to finish college with a degree in criminology.

Delaney himself is as much a part of Pitt history as the artifacts and pictures that dot his office. Delaney has lived in Pittsburgh throughout his entire life and he has witnessed, firsthand, a lot of its history.

Side by side in Delaney’s office are international decorations — the bust of a Pharaoh, a Cuban cigar roller and an African mask — and artifacts from Pittsburgh. Much of the city’s and the University’s history can be traced along Delaney’s walls.

Across from his desk are seats from Forbes Field. After the old field was demolished in 1971, the seats were moved to a warehouse, where Delaney found them.

“They’re not allowed to leave campus property though,” he said.

There is also a large picture of the Panther’s final football game at Pitt Stadium in 1999 hanging next to his bookshelf.

“If you get out a magnifying glass you can see me all the way up there,” Delaney said, pointing at the photograph.

Delaney knows his job can be funny, particularly at times when he has to chase down a naked man running through Oakland, but he doesn’t want there to be any confusion regarding the line between fun and safety. His story about the naked man in South Oakland is meant to surprise, but it’s also a warning.

“If going to the hospital on the weekend is your idea of a good time, you need help,” he said. “Because you may not survive. This guy could have died or lost his leg.”

Delaney said he understands why kids want to have fun — he watched two kids of his own go through the college experience — but he also recognizes that his job is to make sure the University is a safe place for students to have that fun.

Delaney said Oakland has come a long way since bars and fast food chains first started lining Forbes Avenue, and the school has provided a lot of help educating students and providing them with alternative forms of nightly entertainment.

“Just citing [kids] is not the answer,” he said. “When Oakland is fast food place, bar, fast food place, bar … I wonder what kids are going to do?”

Delaney likes to talk about the student body as his kids, and his secretary, Maureen Conrad, said that he means it to the point that he gets personally involved in issues that don’t necessarily need to involve him.

“I can personally tell you how many calls he takes from parents,” she said. “People stop him on the street.”

But Delaney likes to chat with students, and he said he considers it a perk of the job.

“You are all my kids,” he said. “I see the world through your eyes, and it keeps me young.”