Pittsfield Expands Role of Police Advisory Commission
 The newly crafted Public Safety Advisory Commission held its first meeting on Monday. |
Mayor Daniel Bianchi revived the long-dormant committee in 2012 as a group of mayoral appointees to make recommendations on police matters to the mayor and City Council.
And in the last three years, the group weighed in on a number of issues including efforts to solve jaywalking at Pittsfield High School (which it is still working on), crafting new traffic fines, creating a downtown ambassador program, advocating for the hiring of a crime analyst, and helping to get a study completed for a new police station.
But then the topics began to run dry.
Bianchi recently crafted a new ordinance, which expands the committee to address public safety overall.
"Our role was pretty limited in terms of police advisory," said Chairman Alan Righi.
The committee wasn't able to weigh in on operational or personnel matters in the Police Department, so questions of where to patrol or how officers should handle investigations were off the table. And the group had completed its work on everything put before it.
"Public safety is a whole category of focus for a community. Police advisory makes it sound like the focus is narrowly on just police work," Mayor Daniel Bianchi said."Police advisory, I think, was just too narrow."
Now the committee can handle issues of public safety in all departments. The new concept not only expands the scope of work but also allows it to bring various groups together to solve an issue, which could touch on some operational changes such as areas of patrol. The committee is still advisory in nature but sends findings out to the mayor, City council, and appropriate department head.
"I think the scope is broader so that after an issue is identified, discussed, and studied, the committee can send out a report to the council," Righi said. "The critical thing is that they all get the information at the same time."
For example, if there is an issue for cars being broken into in a certain area, the committee can research the issues and report on the ways to solve it, which could range from asking property owners to install better security to asking the police to patrol the area more, to a mixture of both.
That example is one that member Cliff Harewood brought to the table. Harewood said there have been a number of car breaks in the parking lot of the Clocktower Building on South Church Street. A number of items were removed from a vehicle as recently has two weeks ago.
"It happens a few times every year. It is an ongoing thing because of the people who walk through the parking lot to get to the neighborhood behind it," he said.
Righi said in a case like that, the group can talk to the landlord, tenants, research the number of calls, talk to building inspectors about security, and come up with some ideas to solve the problem.
"I would love to be able to refer certain things for them to consider, maybe protocols a department might be able to handle, certain issues like the [PHS] fence, that is a public issue, equipment issues," Bianchi said.
Bianchi remembers when former Mayor Anne Wojtkowski was criticized for advocating for improved weaponry for officers. Should something like that come up again, this group would be able to do the research.
"She was very concerned about the safety of our police officers and I would like to use this group to — say we had another issue like that about the equipment — it would be great to have a group like this to work with the chiefs to study something like this," Bianchi said.
The committee also will be a place for residents to air their concerns and its research will determine if the complaint has merit enough to move forward. The City Council previously utilized the Police Advisory Commission that way when it sent a complaint from a resident over inventory procedures at the Police Department to the commission. The commission determined there wasn't any merit to moving forward with it at the city level.
The issues will be both proactive and reactive. The committee sees itself as a place for citizens to raise concerns about public safety and will also bring its own ideas to the table as to ways to make the city safer.
Member Charles Smith said ideas like a youth curfew could be kicked around, Righi thought the Health Department could be brought in to discuss the condition of restrooms in city bars.
"I think it has the potential to do some good and be far ranging," Righi said.
Patrick Muraca, the committee's newest member, suggested attendance at community meetings such as the Westside Initiative should be part of the group's work so that concerns brought up there can be brought back to the committee and forwarded to the appropriate branches of government.
The focus for the group now is to write new committee bylaws, let the public know that it has a new focus, and figure out how to take in concerns from the public or committee members.
The committee was somewhat split in a brief discussion on whether or not the police chief, who attended nearly every meeting of the group, should be a member moving forward. Harewood suggested the chief continues to stay involved because of his expertise and knowledge of issues. The chief provided guidance on nearly all of the issues the committee faced in the last three years.
But, with the new committee taking an active role in citizen complains, Phyllis Smith wondered if the chief being a member would lead to conflicts of issue.
Regarding conflicts of issues, it is also unclear how the group would handle complaints about public housing or the Berkshire County House of Corrections. Both Sheriff Thomas Bowler and Housing Authority Executive Director Charles Smith have been members for a number of years. Righi said if any member had a conflict of interest he would make that clear and act appropriately.
"Clearly whatever we do has to be unbiased and there can't be any appearance of prejudice," Righi said.
Ultimately, the balance of actions on individual complaints and utilizing the expertise of department heads for bigger, proactive issues will be one the group will feel its way through. Righi said the new committee is unlike any others in the state and through the crafting of bylaws, the committee will understand a little more on how it will tackle issues.
Tags: Pittsfield Police, police advisory, public safety,
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