Court rules police must give G-20 documents to review board

After months of delays and a court order, the city might open up about the G-20… After months of delays and a court order, the city might open up about the G-20 Summit.

Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr., of the Court of Common Pleas for Allegheny County, issued an order last Thursday saying the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police must give the Citizen Police Review Board the G-20-related documents it requested for its investigation.

The court order provided the city with 20 days — until April 6 — to comply by sending the Citizen Police Review Board the documents related to 29 incidents for which it requested documentation and to provide a log of documents that fell under the scope of national security. Wettick said in the opinion that the Citizens Police Review Board was within its authority to initiate its own investigation, and the city needed to comply with the subpoena.

Diane Richard, a spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, and Alan Johnson, an attorney representing the city, directed questions to John Doherty, an associate city solicitor. Doherty declined to comment further on the judge’s order, saying only that “the attorneys are reviewing the opinion and the court order and formulating an appropriate response.”

Since the end of September, city officials have declined to comment on the Summit multiple times or referred questions to the city solicitor’s office or outside counsel.

Elizabeth Pittinger, executive director of the Citizen Police Review Board, said the board needed the documents to move forward with its investigation. After several public hearings on the subject, they need more input on what happened from the law enforcement side of the story, Pittinger said.

“All we have is the public side of the story. We don’t have enough information of what law enforcement was about,” Pittinger said.

This was the first time in the 13 years since the board began that the city had attempted to block one of its investigations by claiming that the board had overstepped its bounds, Pittinger said.

The referendum that established the Citizen Police Review Board also gave it the power to make recommendations to the mayor and the police bureau regarding police training, hiring and disciplinary policies.

Wettick cited the home rule charter, which works as a sort of local constitution, in his opinion. A referendum in the charter established the board as an independent body of the city in 1997 and empowered it to investigate individual claims of police misconduct and provide recommendations on the police bureau’s policies.

The board decided to launch its own investigation after it received complaints about police practices during G-20. That, the city alleged, overstepped the board’s limited authority to investigate individual claims of misconduct, according to court documents.

The judge disagreed and said in his opinion that the board needed to be able to launch its own investigations to fulfill its capacity in advising the mayor and police bureau.

In early November, Pittinger said that the board’s investigation might be finished before the beginning of the summer. Pittinger said that the delays put the board several months behind in its investigation.

Pittinger said that she would need to see the police documents before guessing how long the investigation would take or what the board’s next course of action might be.

The board issued the subpoenas after it did not receive a response from document requests sent in the first week of November, Pittinger said. The city did not comply with the subpoenas, stating that the board overstepped its bounds by initiating its own investigation, according to Wettick’s opinion.

The court order from Wettick stated that all documents in the subpoena must be handed over to the board, unless the documents pertained to national security. The city would have to provide a citation under federal law in a privilege log for documents that fall under national security, Pittinger said.

Pittinger also said that they would be able to challenge any of the documents on the privilege log if the board felt that the documents did not fall under national security.

The board issued a subpoena for two categories of information relating to the G-20: arrest records and police documents regarding the make-up, conduct, equipment and command structure of the police in Pittsburgh during the G-20 Summit, according to court documents.

The subpoena includes the arrest records of 29 people arrested during a six-day period including the G-20. Five of the 29 cases involved people filed formal complaints with the review board, according to court documents.

The court summons and documents are available through online sources.

Arrest records “are public information in and of themselves,” Pittinger said.

Police officers working on the public payroll are typically not confidential information, Pittinger said.

“We’ll see how they handle it,” she said.