City organizes assault on violence
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Behind a courtroom's doors this week, dozens of Pittsburgh's toughest troublemakers will face people they've hurt, people who could send them to prison, people who have been there before and people who can help.
Parents of slain children will speak of loss, ex-convicts will share regrets, police will pledge the steepest punishment for future gunfire and service providers will offer a way out.
It's up to them: Stop killing now, or expose everyone in their gangs to swift arrest the next time one of them pulls a trigger. They'll come under heightened scrutiny -- not just for the shooting, but for every illegal act in which they take part.
"We ask that they take the message back to the other members of the group," Deputy Police Chief Paul Donaldson said. "We will be telling them, we realize you may not have an education, you may not have a job, and you may be affiliated with a group of people who have a violent nature, but this does not give you a right to take another person's life.
"This isn't going to be tolerated."
They'll leave the courtroom about two hours later with a phone number and, officials hope, the willpower to stop shooting. The session -- one of several to which gang representatives will be "called in'' to attend in upcoming months -- marks the dramatic start of a sweeping antiviolence strategy that aims to reduce gang-related murders in the city.
After months of setbacks, the Pittsburgh Initiative to Reduce Crime begins Tuesday, nearly two years after officials pitched it and at a time when citywide violence is down. Homicides fell 45.8 percent -- from 72 in 2008 to 39 last year -- and the number continues to drop this year. As of Friday, there had been 25 killings in the city, down from 27 at the same point last year.
It's hard to quantify how many of those are gang- or "group-related," police said. Still, they insist a need remains for the ambitious plan.
"We can still do better," Chief Donaldson said. "It will go back up again unless you do something."
Modeled after programs in Boston, Cincinnati and other cities, the Pittsburgh initiative takes a "stick-and-carrot approach." The stick is the threat of punishment; the carrot is the chance for redemption through social services, job connections and educational opportunities.
First Published July 11, 2010 12:00 am
