Category: News and Updates

Court Watch volunteer Dheeksha Senthur shares her experiences observing court remotely during the winter of 2020 through the summer of 2021.

by Dheeksha Senthur

“Can you hear me?”

The screen flickered momentarily and a blurry image of a person dressed in an orange jumpsuit came into focus. The clang of the door shutting behind him, the orange jumpsuit against the sapphire-blue paper wall crystallized, the graininess emerging into the silhouette of a person. I watched as the man on the screen placed the headset over his ears, gazing at the monitor with widened eyes.

“Can you hear me?”

His voice echoed through the 14 devices of the 14 participants on the call before dissipating.

This was my first time attending court as a volunteer court watcher and I hadn’t quite known what to expect. I had envisioned a polished, wood-paneled courtroom presided over by a stern-faced judge; then the defense and prosecution would heatedly debate the case. I expected a game of legal jargon, one which I had to capture and transform into writing. The day before, I had prepared for this game of Motions Court, looking through the docket sheets for each one of my cases. It was in one of the docket sheets, next to his name, that I saw a date of birth in inked black letters: his year of birth was close to mine. A heavy charge was printed beneath his name.

At this moment, looking up from my desk, it was surreal to see the man from the docket sheet before me. The screen then flipped over to Judge Lazzara who appeared to be in her own home. She greeted everyone with a sunny “Good morning” and a gentle smile, apologizing for the delay caused by a prior status hearing. The screen flickered to the clerk in a mahogany courtroom with his right hand raised as the man in the motions court case was sworn in. The words rang out like the strike of a gavel as my laptop’s screen melted away into the courtroom proceedings.

Judge Lazzara began promptly with a series of questions: whether the individual consented to the lack of face-to-face interaction, to having his due process carried out remotely, etc. The man replied with “Yes ma’ams” during the questioning, but now, he asked a question himself. The screen lit up with a blue B icon as his video materialized; he asked whether future proceedings would take place over video call. Judge Lazzara smiled and said it was a good question and reassured him that continuing with the video call was “just for today.”

The defense attorney brought up the first of seven motions, a motion to sever, stating that the jury could be prejudiced during the two separate trials required by two different charges brought against the defendant. The attorneys went back and forth before Judge Lazzara denied the motion to sever but assured that there would be precautions in place and reminders to the jury so prejudice wouldn’t hold. As the proceedings continued, the room was filled only with the voices of the judge, defense, and commonwealth attorneys. The man in the orange jumpsuit seemed like a silent spectator.

Behind a light-blue surgical mask, he gazed at the screen; sometimes his eyes would wander off to the side and sometimes they would glaze over. The voices of the courtroom buzzed, but he never spoke. Loud beeping sounds from the jail began punctuating the din of legal arguments; eventually, the beeping became so disruptive that he had to be muted. That was the last time I saw him.

The hearing soon came to an end and the defense attorney brought up the question of a trial date. Judge Lazzara said she would look further into it but could not guarantee an exact one. The judge then said goodbye to everyone, including the muted defendant, whose headset, she jokingly noted, was already on the table.

I logged out of the call, examining all the nondescript terms in my notebook on the man I saw only in flashes, the “motions in limine” and “discovery motions.” I had witnessed my first ever hearing where a human being’s fate would be determined—and I would witness more.

The days passed by in a blur and I adjusted to the routines of remote court watching to the point where I could identify who was presiding simply by distinguishing the camera angle, the soft humming of background noise, and the mannerisms of the masked judge behind the sheets of plexiglass. I grew attuned to the ambiance of the courts as I sat at the desk beside my snow-banked window. The snow soon melted to a warm spring, and court officials became more adept at managing technical difficulties. As hearings passed by, I began pinpointing notable moments and conversations rather than focusing on keeping up with the formalities of the proceedings.

During a probation violation hearing, a defendant called into the meeting through his phone. His public defender described for the judge a number of unimaginably difficult circumstances the defendant was going through in his life. Despite these challenges, the defendant’s voice was bright with optimism and laughter as he spoke, never alluding to any of these struggles himself. He was determined, despite them, to try his best to pay his restitution.

Other cases were more obviously suffused with suffering and not just that of the people incarcerated at ACJ. Witnesses were brought forth, friends and family members, who would convey their pain to the judge. When I heard their voices crack as they appealed for justice within this system, I realized I was privy to a delicate, far-reaching vulnerability. They reminded me that what happened in these courtrooms, themselves an extension of the prisons where so many were held, had an impact beyond the person whose name was listed on the docket sheet. Hundreds of people away from my screen were experiencing the system’s influence on their lives, including the moments when I was absorbed in writing about just one.

Recently I noticed there was now a trial date set for the man whose hearing I observed during my very first court watching shift. Like all the hearings I observed, we’d only been connected once by the blue of our screens, but now he’d be alone in his orange-branded jumpsuit at the jail, awaiting a trial with countless others who had also sat in front of the blue wall of the jail, the thin table of the Pittsburgh Municipal Court, awaiting their fates. Now, there would only be waiting until his trial approached, waiting until this series of oblique connections through computer screens and courtrooms might begin to look like change.

by Jaclyn Kurin

On May 18, 2021, Allegheny County became the first county in this nation’s history to abolish solitary confinement by referendum. The ordinance bans Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) from using solitary confinement,¹ the restraint chair, chemical agents, and shackles at the jail.

However, as momentous a victory as this is, there are exceptions when solitary confinement can be used at ACJ. Individuals can be placed in emergency short-term solitary confinement when medical and mental health professionals find that temporary commitment is necessary for medical or safety reasons. Healthcare professionals also must state the specific conditions that must be provided to individuals prevent them from experiencing adverse physical or mental health problems while confined. Individuals in temporary confinement are to receive 4 hours of out of cell time daily.

Individuals might also be confined to their cells if the warden locks down the jail, which may occur only if the warden determines a facility-wide lockdown necessary to ensure the safety of persons held in the jail and that less restrictive interventions are insufficient to accomplish those safety goals. During a lockdown, ACJ must ensure individuals have a daily opportunity to leave their cell for hygiene and exercise. Even when one of these exceptions apply, ACJ is prohibited from denying individuals access to food, water, or any basic necessity, appropriate medical care, including emergency medical care.

The ordinance requires the warden to report on a monthly basis to the Jail Oversight Board and post on the jail’s website information concerning the use of temporary solitary confinement and jail lockdowns. The reporting requirements go into effect on July 7^th while the substantive provisions banning solitary confinement and the restraint chair begin on December 4^th. In order to ensure this ban on solitary confinement brings real and meaningful relief to those subjected to the torture of solitary confinement, we must continue to hold the ACJ accountable to the people’s will. Submit comments and virtually attend Jail Oversight Board hearings by following this link.

QUICK FACTS

What’s Banned at ACJ?

• Solitary confinement—i.e. holding a person in his cell for more than 20 hours a day.
• The restraint chair, chemical agents, and shackles.

When Can a Person Be Placed Solitary Confinement?

• Emergency Use of Short-term Solitary Confinement: An incarcerated person can be placed in temporary solitary confinement only if medical and mental health professionals find it to be necessary for the person’s safety or the security of others. Healthcare professionals also must state which specific conditions are to be provided to the individual to prevent him from experiencing adverse health consequences. Individuals in temporary confinement are to receive at least 4 hours of out of cell time a day.

• Jail Lockdowns: The warden may lock down the entire jail only if the warden determines it a necessary to ensure the safety of persons held in the jail and that less restrictive interventions are insufficient to accomplish those safety goals.

• Protective Custody: An individual requesting protective custody may be placed in short-term solitary confinement but for not more than 72 hours, which is sufficient time for ACJ to ensure less restrictive arrangements to keep the person safe.

What Conditions Must ACJ Provide to People in Solitary Confinement?

• ACJ must provide individuals access to food, water, or any basic necessity, appropriate medical care, including emergency medical care.
• Temporary Solitary Confinement: ACJ is to allow 4 hours of out of cell time.
• Facility-wide Lockdown: ACJ is to make every effort to ensure out of cell time for hygiene and exercise.
• Any conditions that the state or federal constitutions or laws require jails to provide.

How Does a Person Get Out of Solitary Confinement?

• A person being held in isolation—e.g. temporary solitary confinement or jail lockdown—can file an habeas petition for his release in any court of competent jurisdiction.

What Are ACJ’s Monthly Reporting Requirements?

• The warden must report to the Jail Oversight Board and post on the ACJ website the dates and reasons for any lockdown of the jail or section of it; the number of times any person has been subjected to temporary solitary confinement, with the duration and reason for each; the number of times the same person has been held in solitary confinement more than once a in month; the age, sex, gender identity, race and ethnicity of each person held in solitary confinement.

Ordinance Effective Dates:

• The reporting requirement: July 7, 2021
• The ban on the use of solitary confinement, the restraint chair, chemical agents, and shackles: December 4, 2021

1 “Solitary confinement, meaning the confinement of a detainee or inmate in a cell or other living space for more than 20 hours a day, has devastating and lasting psychological consequences on all persons, but especially for vulnerable populations, including youth and persons with diagnosed or undiagnosed cognitive or emotional disabilities.” Ordinance amending Ch. 205 Allegheny County Jail.

Violence work, occupation, and apartheid in Allegheny County

by Suhail Gharaibeh

Content warning: anti-Black hate speech; gun violence

It’s all on video. Just after 4:15 on the afternoon of Sunday, December 20th, 2020, closed-circuit television captures a white police SUV pulling into the rear entrance of the McKeesport Police station between Blackberry and Market Streets. On the right of the frame we can see snow on the ground, and snow on the train tracks that separate the police station and McKeesport’s main drag from the hulking Dura-Bond Pipe facility on the south bank of the Monongahela River. 

The cruiser parks, and an officer (later identified as Gerasimos “Jerry” Athans, 32) exits the driver’s side and walks around to open the back right door. Suddenly Athans stumbles back, stunned, (we’d learn later he’d been shot in the neck and shoulder, spots left uncovered by his ballistic vest) and moves behind the hood of the cruiser. A man in a black hoodie (later identified as Koby Lee Francis, 22) exits the backseat and points his arms toward Athans, presumably shooting at him once more, before running east, away from the station and out of the frame, ducking to avoid Athans’ returning shots. (We’d learn later that Francis fled McKeesport at some point after this, and Athans was flown to UPMC Presbyterian in Oakland to be treated for wounds to his neck and shoulder.)

This is the entirety of the released footage. There’s no audio, just a thirty-second clip of video. It’s exactly the sort of scene that our televisual mass culture loves to latch onto: a single moment of shocking violence, immortalized by a fly-on-the-wall camera. The story was broken by several local reporters and the accompanying footage was rapidly released on social media, including via the official Twitter accounts of the Allegheny County District Attorney and the US Marshals Service. 

Unsurprisingly, the video clip of a Black male suspect shooting a white policeman rapidly became the story in itself among right-wing and pro-police social media circles. Under a tweet from KDKA, one user posted a YouTube link to his own electric guitar cover of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which he dedicated to Officer Athans. “Back the Blue,” “Blue Lives Matter,” and “Thin Blue Line” stock images began popping up on posts about the shooting. Racist jokes about absentee fathers abounded. Under a photograph of Francis tweeted by KDKA, one user wrote, “No graduation pic!!?? Dindu Nuffin, better call Crump.” Three BLM-era tropes are rehashed here—the mocking allusion to the media’s use of graduation photos when covering victims of police brutality like Michael Brown, Jr.; the use of racist moniker “Dindu Nuffin,” a neologism derived from the AAVE “didn’t do nothing”; and the reference to Black civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who has famously represented victims of racist murder from Trayvon Martin to Jacob Blake. Echoing the nineteenth- and twentieth-century zeal for lynching, other users called for Francis’ summary execution: “Black lives don’t matter with this one! Put him down!” wrote one. “Give him the needle,” commanded another. “And that my friends is what we call a rabid animal,” wrote a third. “You act like one, you get taken down like one. Hope the officer is OK.” 

It’s no coincidence that all these tropes are deeply anti-Black and deeply pro-police. We know now that throughout American history, white supremacy has convened under the auspices of “law and order.” Just look at the number of rioters at the Capitol on January 6th who belong to police and military units from across the country. White supremacists (who, as it so happens, need not be white themselves) act as self-declared crusaders against “Black criminality” (an ideological construct, they refuse to acknowledge, that has been built by and for white supremacy).

Not all the responses to Athans’ shooting were virulently and explicitly anti-Black. But even the most benevolent both-sides-ism (“police are scared, too!”) is deeply misleading because it smudges away all the context that surrounds interactions between police and civilians. As abolitionists, we must grapple with the fact that Francis and Athans were entangled in a much broader relationship of power and authority than what is visible in those thirty seconds of CCTV footage.

The video of the shootout is sensational and upsetting. It was an “easy A” for some local reporters—you get a story you can follow, neatly reported by the police; you publish it, and you get to watch as the public swarms to it and picks it apart for meaning, bringing you ad revenue and social-media clicks. But it’s not actually very substantive. Simply viewing and reviewing this highly-clickable video doesn’t actually tell us much about what we’re seeing. And it certainly doesn’t constitute critique.

Why did this violent event occur? How did two young men living and working in the same community—one a white, 32-year-old cop; the other a Black, 22-year-old civilian—end up in a nearly-deadly shootout? The dominant mode of thinking (as exemplified by the Twitter users above) tells us that this all occurred because Black people are inherently prone to criminality, and instinctively attracted to violence. This explanation, of course, is pure ideology. It’s less connected with reality than it is with the white supremacist and anti-Black ethos of the American state project in general, and of the carceral apartheid regime of Allegheny County in particular. 

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In order to truly understand that moment on December 20th, 2020, let’s rewind. 

September 2016. A former Pitcairn Police and current McKeesport Police officer, Melissa Adamson, a white woman, was fired after posting a Snapchat photo of herself in uniform with the caption, “I’m the law today nigga.” The firing (somewhat surprisingly) got reported by national and international newsrooms, and became a local cause célèbre. That Adamson ever thought this Snapchat selfie was a good idea says a lot about the types of people working in Allegheny County’s municipal police departments (PDs). Koby Francis was high-school age at the time, in a school district with double-digit racial achievement gaps and a superintendent who had to be threatened with federal legal action by the ACLU before he would allow students at McKeesport Area High School to form a Black Student Union. (The superintendent told reporters that “he grew wary of the initiative…[once] it became apparent that local activist and McKeesport mayoral candidate Fawn Walker-Montgomery was behind the effort.”)

November 2017. Koby Francis was 19 years old. He and another 19-year-old from McKeesport named Savonce Williams were facing a battery of charges after an alleged October 24th robbery. They were both held for court on $5,000 bail by Magisterial District Judge Eugene Riazzi—himself a former McKeesport Police Detective. Apparently unable to post bail, Francis was held in the Allegheny County Jail instead. 

In summer 2018, Francis pled guilty to the charge of criminal conspiracy and was sentenced to three years’ probation by Common Pleas Judge Donna Jo McDaniel. This process left Francis with over $4,000 in court fees, according to his criminal docket. Here’s the October 24th, 2017 event that led to Williams and Francis being arrested in the first place, according to Mon Valley paper The Tube City Almanac: “McKeesport police said that an Abraham Street resident reported that two men visited her home to ask about an apartment for rent. When they left the house, she noticed a video game console was missing. She confronted them as they got back into their car, police said, but the men drove away, knocking her to the ground.” 

What would it look like if this dispute had been settled according to the principles of transformative justice, rather than punishment and retribution? What if Francis and Williams had been charged with the simple task of replacing the Abraham Street woman’s video game console? What if the woman, accompanied by a social worker, had been able to sit down Francis and Williams and tell them, face-to-face, how they hurt her?

In early December 2018, Judge Donna Jo McDaniel, who had sentenced Francis in this case, resigned amid accusations of bias and sanctions by the Pennsylvania Superior Court. 

The very same week, Koby Francis was arrested again as part of a massive drug sweep that local police had reportedly been planning for over half a year. At just 20 years old now, Koby was one of the youngest arrestees in a sweep that ended in charges being filed against 70 residents of Allegheny County. 

Francis was assigned Judge Jeffrey Alan Manning in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. Manning has a judicial history that can only be described as sordid. He’s known for his commanding personality, raucous outbursts, and cigar-smoking. Among Black Allegheny County residents and activists, Judge Manning is notorious for upholding white supremacy in his courtroom; among women attorneys, he is notorious for his misogyny. In April 1998, Manning was brought before Pennsylvania’s Court of Judicial Discipline for allegedly having referred to two Black women as “nigger[s]” on two separate occasions. In 1999, the Allegheny County Bar Association refused to recommend Manning for retention, citing, in part, his sexism as perceived by female lawyers and judges. “Those who know him best say he is a sexist,” wrote the Post-Gazette in 2001. In 2007, Manning faced a federal investigation by the FBI and IRS after allegedly giving special treatment to long-time friends of his, particularly criminal defense lawyer Patrick Thomassey, with whom Manning worked as a teenager at a local country club. No charges were ultimately filed. In 2008, he cleared the now-infamous Pittsburgh Police officer Paul Abel of all charges related to an incident in which Abel’s gun went off as he drunkenly pistol-whipped a twenty-year-old man on the South Side, shooting him through the hand. Manning’s decision allowed Abel to continue working (until 2020, when he was fired, unsurprisingly, for excessive force). In 2015, Manning “broke a legal norm” by accepting a lenient plea deal that offered probation to three of five white men who ganged up on a Black man and threw him onto the train tracks at the Wood Street T station after a Kenny Chesney concert. Manning told reporters he “felt compelled to accept” the deal. After all of this, in 2018, protestors demanded that Manning be removed from the trial of East Pittsburgh Police officer Michael Rosfeld, who shot 17-year-old Antwon Rose, Jr. three times in the back as he ran away from Rosfeld. Rosfeld was to be represented in Manning’s court by none other than attorney Patrick Thomassey.

This 2018 trial in the court of Judge Manning again left Francis with thousands of dollars in legal fees. It’s unclear which controlled substances Francis was accused of being involved with. In any case this sweep was conducted in a day and age where the War on Drugs has been declared an abject failure, and policy experts around the world are urging against criminalization and incarceration as a response to drug trafficking. This War-on-Drugs-era sweep is exactly the type of police offensive that resulted in the murder of Breonna Taylor in March 2020 (and so many others). 

Again, as abolitionists, we must ask the question, no matter how kooky it may seem in the eyes of our opponents to the right: what would Koby Francis’ life be like today if the hair-trigger reaction was not to incarcerate him for being involved in drug dealing, but rather to give him the support needed to transform and heal his life?

For Black American men like Koby Francis, the likelihood of being incarcerated within one’s lifetime is one in three (compared to one in seventeen for white men). Black adults, while representing just 12 percent of the US’ population, make up 33 percent of the US’ prison population (which, in turn, is the largest group of incarcerees on the planet). Black people are disproportionately likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drug-related offenses, despite using drugs at the same rate as all other races.

This reality of carceral apartheid only gets clearer when we zoom in on a place like Allegheny County, one of the most deeply segregated metropolitan areas in the country. It’s one of many American metro areas that serve as touchpoints for the prison-industrial complex, with the carceral geography of Greater Pittsburgh culling scores of oppressed and exploited people—largely members of the Black working class—into its dangerous machinery.

Recent research by ALC has borne this out. The new report “Apartheid Policing in Pittsburgh: Why Defunding the Police Can’t Wait” details how, in 2019, Black people made up only 23.2 percent of the Pittsburgh population, and yet they made up 43.6 percent of individuals involved in traffic stops, 71.4 percent of all frisks, 69 percent of individuals subject to warrantless search and seizures, 63 percent of all arrests conducted by the Pittsburgh Police, and 60 percent of all use-of-force incidents.

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This was the context that followed Koby Francis to the McKeesport Police station just before 3 PM on Sunday, December 20th. It was an hour before the shootout. He had been summoned to receive a protection-from-abuse (PFA) order, a type of restraining order for adults or the minor children of adults who suffer abuse by members of their household. 

It’s unclear exactly why Francis was served this PFA order, but we know that it covered his four-month-old son and the child’s mother. Just over an hour after Francis left the station, police were called to the sprawling Crawford Village public housing complex adjacent to the McKeesport & Versailles Cemetery. The caller, a relative babysitting Francis’ child reported that Francis was sitting outside the apartment of the person who had obtained the PFA order. Police arrived on scene but Francis had left. They searched the perimeter, and eventually, at the 1500 block of Yester Square, found an upset and combative Koby Francis sitting in a parked car, which they searched before arresting him. Somehow, despite being handcuffed and arrested, police say Francis was able to keep a handgun concealed and move his arms from his back to his front. Officer Athans drove him back to the Downtown McKeesport station—and what followed is, of course, all on video.

Policing has been trotted out over and over again in response to abuse and intimate violence. But, ironically, the literature suggests that police officers are among the most likely demographics to commit domestic violence. The families of police officers are two to four times more likely than others to experience violence at home. 

According to the National Center for Women and Policing, “even officers who are found guilty of domestic violence are unlikely to be fired, arrested, or referred for prosecution.” As the New York Times concluded in a 2013 investigation, “In many departments, an officer will automatically be fired for a positive marijuana test, but can stay on the job after abusing or battering a spouse.”

Abolitionist feminists have long argued against policing and prisons as a “solution” to domestic violence. Carceral responses, they argue, represent their own kind of violence, which gets layered on top of already-existing harm, exacerbating rather than alleviating suffering, especially when the victims are femme, of color, and/or undocumented. 

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This was all compounded exponentially by police’s heavy-handed and unconstitutional response to Officer Athans’ shooting. Almost immediately after the shooting, a bevy of law enforcement agencies descended upon the Mon Valley: not only McKeesport Police and other small Mon Valley municipal departments, but also the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police; the Allegheny County Police; the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office; the Pennsylvania State Police; the state Attorney General’s Office; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATF); and the US Marshals Service. 

This is what residents of Allegheny County are faced with on a daily basis, though many agencies regularly go unseen. The region’s topography and modern history have resulted in a messy, jigsaw-like municipal map that lends itself to over-policing, as jurisdictions overlap, multiplying police presence (particularly in Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela River valley cities like McKeesport). On an average day in McKeesport, you might find not only McKeesport Police in operation, but also the Port Authority Police, Penn State Greater Allegheny Police, McKeesport Area School District Police, the County Sheriff’s Office, the County Police, and officers from the surrounding PDs of Port Vue, Glassport, West Mifflin, Versailles, North Versailles, and others.

Working in concert, at least ten different policing agencies locked down and occupied the city of McKeesport on December 20th. At least four checkpoints were set up, ostensibly stopping every single vehicle attempting to enter or exit the city—on Lysle Boulevard, Walnut Street, the McKeesport-Duquesne Bridge, and elsewhere. SWAT tactical vehicles were posted up Downtown. Police searched home after home, summarily, indiscriminately, searching for a harbored Francis without warrant. 

Tanisha Long, the founder of Black Lives Matter Pittsburgh & Southwestern PA and a student at the University of Pittsburgh, happened to be driving into McKeesport on the evening of the 20th to visit with a family member at the UPMC hospital there. But when she attempted to cross the Monongahela River into the city around 6 PM, she noticed something odd. 

I got searched twice coming and leaving UPMC. This man was made to get out his car pic.twitter.com/qdrhh98FR8

— Tanisha Long (@Tanishaevonne) December 21, 2020

“There was a long line of cars…which was confusing,” Long tells me. “There appeared to be police officers, so I assumed there was a car wreck, [but] there was not. There were officers looking through windows…Cars were being ushered through. Some cars were stopped, and they were asked to come out the car, open up their trunk. Some people had to take things out of their vehicle[s]. The car in front of me, they made him get out of his car and empty out his trunk. That’s the one I took a picture of…I asked the officer, why are you stopping us? And he wouldn’t answer. And I’m like, what is this search for? And he wouldn’t answer…[The officer] made me roll all my windows down, and they were just looking through [my car]…There were, like, four other points in McKeesport where they did similar things or did a quick search…You couldn’t get through McKeesport. It took me an hour to get to the hospital.”

Fawn Walker-Montgomery, co-founder and executive director at Take Action Mon Valley (TAMV), an anti-violence and community organizing group based in McKeesport, immediately knew something was wrong in her city.

“There were police everywhere in the city. There were over ten police departments. We had the SWAT here, we had the county, we had the state…Just police everywhere, walking around the streets with shotguns…As I rode around, and I went to [Crawford Village], there was people out, so I obviously told them [about] what happened. There were about eight cops just riding through the housing project. So I went home after I seen that, and honestly, I do feel like I was having a panic attack. I came home, and I just did a [Facebook] live, and I said, ‘look, Black people in McKeesport…stay home.’ Because my biggest fear was that they were gonna kill anybody that looked like Koby that night. So, basically, that’s any Black person. I just figured they was gonna kill anybody Black. And as I’m doing this live, I’m getting calls and texts [saying], ‘Fawn, they run up in my house. They pointed guns at my kids. They were just searching the house, looking for Koby.’ This was people who were related to him, people who are not related to him. And I got calls from people [saying]…if you were leaving or trying to come in, they were searching your trunk. And [civilians] would say, ‘well, you don’t have permission.’ And [police] would say, ‘well, you don’t have an option.’ And they would just do it anyway. They were pulling some people out at gunpoint. They were rolling up to people’s houses. They had no warrants. They weren’t even giving people the opportunity to say yes or no. They were breaking some people’s property, they were arguing with some people. They were telling his family, and basically anybody, that they were shooting to kill.”

Until about 4 AM that night, as K-9 units roamed the streets, car after car was arbitrarily searched, and homes were raided, Walker-Montgomery trailed police to document their actions and to connect victims of aggressive police searches with legal counsel and mental healthcare. 

She and her organization reached out to contacts at the American Civil Liberties Union, and Pennsylvania Legal Director Vic Walczak quickly slammed police activity in McKeesport, saying, “The shooting of any individual is tragic, but it does not give police license to run roughshod over peoples’ constitutional rights in their effort to arrest the suspect. Now, a day after the terrible shooting of the police officer, it is highly unlikely the McKeesport police can justify continuing the search methods we witnessed yesterday. Warrantless, non-consensual entries into peoples’ homes, suspicionless vehicle stops and searches of motorists’ cars and trunks, and checkpoint stops cannot be justified under the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution or Article I, section 7 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.”

Nothing justifies police violating the 4th Amendment by searching vehicles and homes without probable cause and without a warrant. Read our statement on the actions of McKeesport police by our legal director, Vic Walczak.

Nothing justifies police violating the 4th Amendment by searching vehicles and homes without probable cause and without a warrant. Read our statement on the actions of McKeesport police by our legal director, Vic Walczak. https://t.co/3QrIbZ0hUT pic.twitter.com/trHffZCtP3

— ACLU of Pennsylvania (@aclupa) December 21, 2020

The testimony that TAMV has collected on these illegal police actions—including the accounts of 18 victims and eyewitnesses—are likely to form the basis of class-action litigation against the agencies involved. Walker-Montgomery tells me she instructed terrified civilians to comply with police searches that night, fearing that any altercation could lead to more violence. “‘Don’t argue with [the police], just let them [search], because I want you out alive,’” she remembers telling people over the phone. “And they’re saying, ‘well, do they have rights to do this?’ No, they do not. But at this point, we gotta decide if we’re going to argue with them, and possibly die, or just let them [search]…Being in that position is very traumatic, because you know you have rights, but you know if you use those rights, if you bring them up, you could die.”

Brooke Harris, Francis’ cousin, told reporters that her and her mother’s home were searched without warrant within hours of Athans’ shooting. “They opened up the door [to my mom’s house]. The babies were standing right here. They opened up the door and they had the guns aimed…they [pushed] my mom and my uncle out of the way, who are both elderly in their 70s, and charged upstairs,” she said, and added that when they searched her own house across the street, police damaged her closet and pulled some curtains down before tossing them in a baby’s crib.

Responding to community criticism of the unconstitutional and aggressive searches, Allegheny County Police superintendent Coleman McDonough said, “I just find it hard to believe that we’re talking about these issues when Mr. Francis is still out there in the community, endangering innocent citizens…I think that’s the priority that we ought to be talking about today.”

But is concern about harm coming to the community of McKeesport really moving the police here? Their drastic, martial response seems more connected to the fact that the victim was a police officer rather than the actual substance of the crime. A Black civilian being shot is part and parcel of the system of policing to which McDonough belongs. But a Black civilian shooting a police officer? The full force of police’s violence work must be felt. 

Police/(para)military occupations are carried out when state regimes feel they must consolidate their monopoly on violence. That is what the McKeesport crackdown was about. 

If they cared so much about community harm, where was all of this action in late May 2020, when 32-year-old Black transgender hairstylist and ballroom emcee Aaliyah Johnson was found dead outside her apartment on Sinclair Street in Downtown McKeesport? It took grassroots movement builders like Dena Stanley of Trans YOUniting to get the public eye on Johnson’s case. What about when George Brosey was found shot to death at Crawford Village in June? What about Niko Dawson, 31, or Keith Jones, Jr., 20, both murdered in July? Officer Athans is thankfully still alive today. A lot of McKeesport residents can’t say the same about their loved ones.

Walker-Montgomery shares my suspicions here, that the police’s response to the Athans shooting was not only disproportionate, but cynical. “[The police response was] just further confirmation of what we already know about police. They’re violent. They have a strong blue line, to where they really care about their own,” she says. “There are a lot of shootings in McKeesport. A lot. On a weekly basis. There have been triple homicides, double homicides in this city. People have died, children have died, parents have died, mothers, fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins. And we have never had that many police resources in our entire lives. I know families, including my own, that would kill to have that many resources available to get justice for their loved ones. It made me sick to my stomach…You have people over here who’ve been waiting for justice for ten years plus for their loved ones, and weren’t able to have that kind of attention.”

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Within a week, four more young adults between 19 and 25 years old were charged with hindering apprehension for allegedly helping Francis to escape after being seen on CCTV footage entering a convenience store and riding in a car with Francis after the shooting.

Shortly after Athans’ shooting, the BATF had put up a $10,000 reward for tips leading to Francis’ arrest, which was followed up by an additional $5,000 from local automobile dealer Richard Bazzy, putting a $15,000 bounty on Francis—and on December 29th, after nine days on the run, an anonymous tipster called the US Marshals Service with knowledge that Francis was hiding out at the Oakmound Apartments in Clarksburg, West Virginia (a city anchoring the southern portion of the Pittsburgh megaregion). Police entered the apartment where Francis was staying by himself, unarmed. “He was actually asleep when we came in and arrested him,” Chief Deputy Terry Moore of the US Marshals Service said, suggesting Francis was arrested via no-knock warrant (a strategy that has been decried by lawmakers and activists since Breonna Taylor’s assassination). Lieutenant Venerando Costa of the Allegheny County Police said in a press conference that Francis’ arrest had been carried out by the Northern Office of West Virginia’s Mountain State Fugitive Task Force in an interjurisdictional collaboration with at least twelve policing agencies—McKeesport Police, Allegheny County Police, the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office, Pennsylvania State Police, the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, West Virginia State Police, the US Marshals Service, the BATF, the FBI, the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office, the Clarksburg Police Department, and the Greater Harrison County Drug and Violent Crime Task Force.

On Friday, January 8th, the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office successfully extradited Koby Francis back to Pittsburgh. Allegheny County Sheriff’s deputies shuttled Francis from the North Central Regional Jail in rural Doddridge County, WV to the Allegheny County Jail in Downtown Pittsburgh. 

Both of these facilities are death traps. In 2019, the West Virginia Division of Corrections was sued by the mother of inmate Zachary Bailey, who died under disputed circumstances at North Central just a few weeks after Janson Davenport was found dead in his cell there. Then, in December 2020, two inmates at North Central were pronounced dead after being found unresponsive in a quarantine cell. And at this point, Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) can no longer hide its medical neglect, excessive force, abuse of the mentally ill, unsanitary conditions, and staggering suicide rate. Timothy Pauley died at ACJ in April 2019 after a suicide attempt, Daniel Pastorek was found dead in his cell there in November 2020. And on top of all this normalized violence, we are in a pandemic, and detention facilities are superspreading factories for the coronavirus. 

Koby Francis is at ACJ until further notice. On Tuesday, January 12th, 2021, he was denied bail by Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Edward J. Borkowski. His preliminary hearing, scheduled for today, January 21st, was postponed until mid-February.

The entire Francis-Athans debacle was precipitated by a single interaction between officer and civilian. In our abolitionist future, this type of interaction wouldn’t happen again. 

What if this whole situation—the PFA order, the violation—had been given over to a talented social worker, of which Allegheny County has many? The situation—Koby Francis sitting in a car outside the apartment of his alleged abuse victim—was potentially disturbing, but it wasn’t an emergency that required armed personnel to respond. What if a local social worker had had an existing relationship with Francis, allowing them to effectively step in and de-escalate the situation?

How can we transform harm? That is the question we keep coming back to. As abolitionists, we are animated by a hunger for healing, not retribution. Justice means nothing if it does not transform the original conditions from which harm emerged.

When a contingent organized by TAMV tried to call all of this out at the McKeesport City Council meeting on the evening of January 6th, they were barred from entering. Fawn Walker-Montgomery says that the group, about eight strong, had signed up for speaking slots through all the proper channels—but when they arrived, they found a note on the door indicating that the meeting was closed to the public due to the coronavirus. Though they could see civic officials carrying on a meeting inside, this group of residents was literally locked out. Walker-Montgomery says this was in direct violation of Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act, a statute which guarantees the right to witness open governmental proceedings, holding that “the right of the public to be present at all meetings of agencies and to witness the deliberation, policy formulation and decision-making of agencies is vital to the enhancement and proper functioning of the democratic process.”

The City Council has another meeting coming up on Wednesday, February 3rd at 7PM. Walker-Montgomery is asking all who are able to call, message, and email McKeesport City Council, and show up to their February meeting to be heard in person. 

Contact McKeesport Mayor Michael Cherepko. Contact McKeesport Police Chief Adam Alfer. Contact Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala, Jr.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

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Suhail Gharaibeh is a Chicanx and Arab American writer born and

We seek the abolition of cash bail in Allegheny County – and everywhere else in the US colonial project.

We believe cash bail contributes to a violent system of apartheid policing and punishment, and exacerbates economic precarity and poverty by governance thru debt. 

We recognize cash bail as a feature of racial capitalism that benefits white people, the ruling class, and state power thru parasitic exploitation and dispossession of Black people and poor community members – not as a legitimate pretrial condition for securing one’s appearance in court.

We observe the wild inconsistencies of how cash bail is imposed among magistrates, revealing a crisis of legitimacy in their courts; since there is no standard, the financial and carceral fates of community members are merely entropic.

We reject the use of surveillance, algorithmic violence, and predictive policing, which rely on risk assessment “formulas” that are inherently anti-Black; these practices are often offered up as “alternatives” to cash bail thus co-opting initial abolitionist demands.

We situate our objective of abolishing cash bail within our larger protracted goals of ending state violence and transitioning from a punitive paradigm to one that centers healing, accountability, and community power.

– ALC COURT WATCH

by Courtney E. Colligan

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” This past Saturday, NPR All Things Considered Saturday Host Scott Simon mused about the lasting nature and questioning legacy of William Butler Yeats and his poem, “The Second Coming.” Yeats, an Irish poet and dramatist of the 20th century, wrote the poem in response to the catastrophes that plagued the world through 1920. Yet Simons asks a provoking question of Yeats, a provoking question many of us ask about the Great Writers and Artists of the past: Do their politics, their loyalties, their ideas inform their art and by consuming their art, do we consume these ideals? Yeats was a known nationalist. He supported Mussolini, condoned eugenics, and saw promise in authoritarian regimes. Simon muses that, like with all art and literature, we choose how we navigate these relationships between creator and creation.

This quandary plagues many of us who study the Humanities, who ask if by studying Shakespeare or Kipling we further some of the darkness surrounding the works. Or do we let the work speak for itself? Can a piece take on relevance and meaning in the present while also bearing the layers of history? These questions stem from the act of reading, from the act of experiencing art. And with the latest book ban from Allegheny County Jail, incarcerated individuals cannot ask such questions or create their own meaning under the limited purview of the list of “allowed” books. 

On November 18, 2020, Charlie Deitch’s article “Fahrenheit 412” was published in the Pittsburgh Current, laying bare the news of the Allegheny County Jail’s decision to ban physical books for yet-to-be-specified “security reasons.” Yet as Deitch and Juliette Rihl’s piece in Public Source makes clear, the ACJ’s move to tablets speaks to the continuation of a for-profit incarceration system in which physical books fail to bring in the profits. Looking at the pattern of book bans across the U.S.’s prison system, bans arise when prisons partner with telecommunications companies and introduce tablets across the wards. Recent bans in Seattle and West Virginia have been overturned thanks to public pressure.

At the time of publication, ACJ has partnered with the eBook distributor OverDrive, which will supposedly allow those incarcerated to access thousands of free eBooks. However, this effort has several problems:

1. Not every individual has access to a tablet, depending on their ward.
2. The wi-fi in the ACJ is notoriously unreliable.
3. There is a 90-minute time limit while using these apps.

So while the ACJ strives to spin this ban as an act of “care” or praises the “value of education, recreation, and mental health stability” (according to Warden Orlando Harper), the roots of this ban move beyond access to reading materials and unveil the undercurrent of the prison industrial complex and the brutal systemic treatment of incarcerated individuals. 

Due to COVID-19, those at the ACJ are confined to their cells for 23 hours a day. Although this fact is frequently used to describe incarceration’s tortuous detainment, it is worth reflecting on what this long-term solitary confinement truly means. This type of prolonged solitary detention falls under inhumane treatment, according to the United Nations. Mental health, already fragile in such violent conditions, can rapidly decline without access to meaningful acts of communication and activity. Books thus become incredibly valuable in prison, held with care by their readers. 

The Allegheny County Jail’s population is 67% percent Black while only 13.7% of Black people make up the county’s demographics. This statistic shows a drastic over-policing and detaining of the Black population. The Abolitionist Law Center labels this unjust criminalization as “apartheid punishment,” rooted in anti-Black racism. Such racism additionally occurs in the latest book ban and the selection of works accessible on these new tablets. 

ACJ published a list of books currently available through Overdrive.

I have repeatedly searched this list and confidently say that the list is entirely made up of white Euro-American writers.

Aside from the fact of the complexities of race, ethnicity, and how we label writers of color (I.e., if one were to argue that by having Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote on the list that this proves a writer of color and therefore absolves the ACJ of white-washing literature), the books listed feed into the theory of the Classics as rehabilitative. There is a lengthy history of allowing Dickens, Aeschylus, Hemingway, and Whitman into prisons – writers who those running the prisons assume to preach strong societal values and make an individual learnéd. While one could readily argue for the subversive nature of some of these writers, the issue with these now-available books is that they contribute to the idea of using art to produce a civilizing effect. By offering access to a reading list composed almost entirely of “Classics” (many which are conveniently also out of copyright) with the idea of using art solely as a rehabilitative tool, the prison provides an outdated, white Euro-American perspective on what it means to be a “good citizen.” But returning to the idea that consuming art prompts difficult and productive questions, how can one empathize, critique, question, or even genuinely enjoy these questions without works that reflect their experiences, identities, and livelihoods?

The lack of representation on the list of available books privileges the white Classics and de-emphasizes the importance of valuable BIPOC literature.

I don’t ask such questions with the expectation of an answer from a system that thrives off of the 19th-century notion of punishment and quasi-rehabilitation, but rather to highlight the space books and art occupy in our psyche. The banning of books holds a powerful place in the public sphere, harkening back to the burning of books in Nazi Germany, the suppression of literature by the Irish Free State, or banning literary works in the Soviet Union. Frequent book bans occur in schools and other institutions in the United States, with Catcher in the Rye, Beloved, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, and Native Son appearing on lists of challenged and banned titles. (Notably, these books also do not appear on ACJ’s available titles list.) The cruel and profit-motivated removal of literature from detention centers offers an entry point to explore the interconnected issues of racism, injustice, and legalized torture in the ACJ. At ALC Court Watch, we call on the public to get involved with the fight for abolition by first helping to  put public pressure on the latest moves at the ACJ.

The book ban’s eventual overturning starts us on the path towards abolition, but the ban is just the first step of many in a complete dismantling of the prison system as we know it. 

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Courtney E. Colligan is a PhD Candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Courtney’s areas of study include performances of social justice, Early Modern theatre and performance, queer theory, and museum studies. She has worked for GirlGov, Pitt’s Archives and Special Collections, and is co-founder of the Archive Theatre Project. 

by Sofia Huang

In the time since this piece was written, there have been several developments:

Formal charges were brought against Tranquilli by the Judicial Conduct Board to the Court of Judicial Discipline on August 12th.

Tranquilli wrote an apology, not to the victims of his racist remarks “the courts and our community,” that was published in a tweet on August 26th.

On the same day, The Court of Judicial Discipline ordered that Tranquilli be suspended without pay.

In turn,  on September 3rd, Tranquilli’s legal team issued a Respondent’s Brief in Support of Relief from the courts order to suspend his pay. The Brief argues that certain items in the complaint are not true, and that the decision to suspend him without pay is without precedent

However, the case against Tranquilli is moving along as per the order dated, August 26th, “the case will be conducted on an expedited basis with discovery to be completed by September 15, 2020, Pre-trial Memos of the parties filed by September 18, 2020, the Pre-trial Conference to be held on September 21, 2020, and the Trial will commence on October 5, 2020.”

Last week, Judge Mark Tranquilli apologized for his words and expressed his "hopes to 'regain your confidence.'" #ResignTranquilli https://t.co/kRmWor9ijG

— alccourtwatch (@ALCCourtWatch) September 3, 2020

We seek the removal of this racist judge from Allegheny County Courts.

We demand his resignation. 

Throughout his tenure, Tranquilli has embodied white supremacy in the courtroom. If he does not resign, and if he is not fired, then he must be recused from all cases involving Black communty members, including jury members, witnesses, and the defense. #ResignTranquilli

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With protestors across the nation rising up against police brutality and the systematic targeting of Black and Brown people by law enforcement, it is time we also pay attention to the racism festering in other parts of our criminal justice system: the judiciary.

In January of 2020, Judge Mark Tranquilli of the Allegheny Court of Common Pleas was exposed for making racist, anti-Black statements. Tranquilli called a Black Juror “Aunt Jemima” and speculated that she had a “baby daddy” at home who is “slinging heroin.” Since then, several of Judge Tranquili’s other racist remarks have come to light, such as when he mockingly employed African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) while lecturing Black parents in a custody conciliation on how they should communicate: “And when I say communication, I don’t mean, ‘and den da bitch done dis, and den da bitch done dat.’”

Due to Judge Tranquilli’s blatantly racist statements, the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board filed charges against him alleging six counts of judicial misconduct on August 12, 2020. This begs the question of how a virulently racist judge, who has been under fire for judicial misconduct since 2005, has been allowed to keep his seat for so long.

Judge Tranquilli is protected by a system of criminal “justice” that not only tolerates but perpetuates racism and white supremacy. The three major institutions of the criminal justice system–the judiciary, police and law enforcement, and prisons–work in tandem to systematically oppress Black and Brown people. While the criminal justice system is often portrayed as a series of institutions involved in the fair administration of justice to those who have committed crimes, judges and the judicial system should not be seen as impartial arbiters of justice. Black people are 50 percent more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder and 12 times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of drug crimes than white people. One out of every three Black boys born today can expect to be sentenced to prison, compared to 1 out 6 Latino boys and one out of 17 white boys. This is a institution that is systematically targeting racial minorities, while it purports to be race-blind.

With the national discussion focused on the Black Lives Matter movement to address police brutality, our calls to defund and abolish the police should be paired with an equally critical examination of our judiciary and prison systems. Let’s take Tranquilli as simply one clear example of the racist legacy of our criminal justice system that extends back to the “Slave Patrol” of the 1700s and continues to target Black communities today. This is a man who admits to having “no milk of human kindness left in these veins,” in reference to his low tolerance for probation violations. The Judge’s clearly deep-seated racist biases and systematic targeting of Black people in his courtroom represent just one example of how the criminal justice system has perpetuated the systematic oppression of Black people for centuries.

To draw attention to such deeply rooted racism within the criminal justice system, we at the Abolitionist Law Center Courtwatch and the Pittsburgh Women’s March partnered for a week of action (August 3-9) to demand Tranquilli’s resignation and further investigation. While the subsequent action taken by the Judicial Conduct Board is a step in the right direction, we are calling for further evidence of his racist disposition to be brought to light. Therefore, we are putting out a call for public comment from any individuals affected by Judge Tranquilli’s systematic racial bias.

It is time for us to demand justice for the centuries of racism that continue to structure our criminal justice system. From judges to police and prisons, we must leave no stone unturned until the fair administration of justice is not just a myth, but a reality.

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Sofia Huang is a rising second-year doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology at Duquesne University. 

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References

“2018 Annual Report.” 2018-Annual-Report-Judicial-Conduct-Board-of-Pennsylvania-, 2018, judicialconductboardofpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018-Annual-Report-Judicial-Conduct-Board-of-Pennsylvania-1.pdf.

“Judge Accused of Making Racist Remarks Forbidden from Hearing Cases.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6 Feb. 2020, www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2020/02/06/Allegheny-County-Common-Pleas-Judge-Mark-Tranquilli-racist-remarks-forbidden-hearing-cases/stories/202002060120.

Ward, Paula Reed. “Allegations of Racist Comments Put Judge Tranquilli under Scrutiny.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 Mar. 2020, www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2020/03/08/Allegations-of-racism-put-Judge-Mark-V-Tranquilli-under-scrutiny/stories/202003040183. 

Silver, Jonathan D. “Uncivil Court Prosecutor to Apologize for Dustup at Hearing.” Gazette, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 17 May 2005, www.post-gazette.com/uncategorized/2005/05/17/Uncivil-court-prosecutor-to-apologize-for-dustup-at-hearing/stories/200505170226.

Bonczar, Thomas  P. “ Prevalence of Imprisonment in the U.S. Population, 1974-2001”. Bureau of Justice Statistics. August 2003. US Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs.

NAACP. “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet”. 2020, https://www.naacp.org/crimina

by Ines Borges

“You’re either racist or antiracist; there’s no such thing as ‘not racist.’”

Ibram X. Kendi

With high-powered protests sparking significance around the country, many are asking how they can continue to show their allegiance for the Black Lives Matter movement. I felt it was necessary to share the current circumstances surrounding racial justice at the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. Our Court Watch is committed to transformative, racial justice by holding the courts accountable through our observation and reporting. The knowledge we expose holds immeasurable value when looking at the difficulty our community faces through our justice system.

In March of this year, it was announced that Judge Mark Tranquilli of Allegheny County’s Court of Common Pleas had been suspended from hearing any cases according to a court order issued by President Judge Kim Berkeley Clark. In a written complaint, Judge Tranquilli is accused of referring to a Black juror as “Aunt Jemima” during comments in chambers. These claims came after the acquittal of a drug case. As specified by the complainant, Judge Tranquilli also refers to the woman as having a “baby daddy” who is likely to sell drugs, leading her to make a biased decision and ultimately the not guilty verdict. After the verdict, Judge Tranquilli allegedly made these racially insensitive comments in his chambers in the prosecutor’s presence, Ted Dutkowski, and the defense attorney, Joe Otte. According to Judge Clark’s order, Tranquilli will be restricted to “administrative duties only, effective immediately.”

With this recent incident comes a history of additional inappropriate comments and complaints of Tranquilli’s harmful language in the courtroom. According to an article by The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, many defense attorneys at the court of common pleas have made past complaints about Judge Tranquilli, “alleging that he forces defendants into plea agreements, has a prosecutorial bent and makes intemperate remarks.” The article goes on to highlight an incident from a 2018 hearing. Tranquilli openly condemned a woman about having her two children out of wedlock while she was pleading guilty to drug charges. According to a transcript, Tranquilli is quoted saying,

“Are you familiar with the phrase, if you lay down with dogs, you wake up with fleas…you have woken up with two lovely children, probably two lovely children I’m betting you were probably not planning on…And for the cost of three shiny quarters in any bathroom in any rest stop in Pennsylvania, you probably could have gone a different direction.”

In another incident, Tranquilli is said to have spoken in ebonics in a complaint filed by an attorney in February. The attorney quoted Judge Tranquilli to have said, “And when I say communication, I don’t mean, ‘and den da bitch done dis, and den da bitch done dat.'”

Before being an Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge, Tranquilli was a deputy district attorney for the county, with complaints stemming decades back prior to being a judge. A Pittsburgh Post Gazette article from back in 2005 claims, “Deputy District Attorney Mark Tranquilli plans to write a letter of apology to District Judge Rob Wyda…Tranquilli and Assistant Public Defender James Sheets launched into an angry back-and-forth during a preliminary hearing for a homicide suspect”. The article continues with a statement from DA Stephen Zappala, “We have concluded that although [Tranquilli] may not have violated any rules of disciplinary conduct, he violated the rules of civility.”

Following his recent administrative leave, the Pennsylvania Judicial Board has neither confirmed nor denied if a current investigation into Tranquilli is being held.

“In a racist society, it is not enough to be nonracist. We must be anti-racist.”

Angela Davis

The Pennsylvania Constitution established a specific mechanism for judicial officers’ discipline, independent of the legislature or state governor. The provisions created the Judicial Inquiry and Review Board, with the intent and authority to investigate reports of judicial misconduct and prosecute and adjudicate them. Once a complaint is made to the Judicial board an investigation is launched. If warranted, it files charges against the accused judge in the Court of Judicial Discipline. The court then hears formal charges brought against a judge by the board and decides whether or not to impose discipline. The judge may appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, or if he/she is a Supreme Court Justice, to a Special Tribunal.

While Judge Tranquilli still obtains access to the court’s administrative duties, it is alarming that the Pennsylvania Judicial Board no less than confirms that an investigation is indeed occurring.  With no indication of future removal,  Judge Tranquilli continues to unjustly hold such an influential position. Considering a decade of complaints made by attorneys and court officials, what will it take to see the permanent removal of this judge from our courtrooms. Someone who does not suitably use their judicial power normalizes this behavior for future cases and judges to treat defendants as offensively as Tranquilli has thus far. Now is the time for the court of common pleas to take action on a situation that challenges the integrity of Allegheny County’s judicial system. 

“The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it – and then dismantle it”

Ibram X. Kendi

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Ines Borges is a senior at the University of Pittsburgh, majoring in Administration of Justice. She is also an active member of the Court Watch program and an intern with ALC.

Header graphic by William Lukas

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REFERENCES

“2018 Annual Report.” 2018-Annual-Report-Judicial-Conduct-Board-of-Pennsylvania-, 2018, judicialconductboardofpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018-Annual-Report-Judicial-Conduct-Board-of-Pennsylvania-1.pdf.

“Judge Accused of Making Racist Remarks Forbidden from Hearing Cases.” Gazette, 6 Feb. 2020, www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2020/02/06/Allegheny-County-Common-Pleas-Judge-Mark-Tranquilli-racist-remarks-forbidden-hearing-cases/stories/202002060120.

Silver, Jonathan D. “Uncivil Court Prosecutor to Apologize for Dustup at Hearing.” Gazette, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 17 May 2005, www.post-gazette.com/uncategorized/2005/05/17/Uncivil-court-prosecutor-to-apologize-for-dustup-at-hearing/stories/200505170226.

Ward, Paula Reed. “Allegations of Racist Comments Put Judge Tranquilli under Scrutiny.” Gazette, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 Mar. 2020, www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2020/03/08/Allegations-of-racism-put-Judge-Mark-V-Tranquilli-under-scrutiny/stories/202003040183.

by Sofia Huang

It’s been exactly one month since our publication on Renewal halfway house’s defacto private prisons conditions. Since then, there’s been little to no changes of procedure on behalf of Renewal, Inc. to allow residents to move freely in and out of the complex. Residents are still trapped inside, for upwards of 70 days now, under the same cramped, lockdown conditions that do not allow for proper social distancing measures.

Residents have been hearing mixed accounts of how their movement will continue to be restricted, even as Allegheny County moves into the green phase of eased restrictions surrounding COVID-19.^[1] According to residents inside, Darren Hood, the case manager supervisor at Renewal, Inc. had previously told those inside that they would be allowed out yesterday (6/5/20) due to the transition to green phase. However, individuals are now being told they will not be let out so long as the protests related to George Floyd’s murder continue, though some may be let out for work or medical appointments starting next week. This policy disregards the fact that many who have been laid off due to COVID-19 will still be stuck inside. Mike Henry, a Renewal resident who was been laid off due to the pandemic, reports, “this is still not fair to the guys who don’t have a job [who are] punished and still stuck in this building.”

While we were unable to reach Morris Robinson, the regional director of the Bureau of Community Corrections in PA (Region 3 which includes Allegheny) for comment in the last article, we have now confirmed that the DOC is not only aware of Renewal’s fascistic policies, but is directly involved in enforcing the continuing lockdown and restrictions at Renewal. When contacted for comment, Morris Robinson stated that they are not letting all residents out due to the protests in order to “keep everyone safe…there is a lot of looting and things of that nature going on.”

Morris Robinson did not cite any legal reasons for why protests have any bearing on individuals’ right to be outside. Individuals at Renewal are not inmates, and have the right to freely move about during daytime hours as per Renewal’s guidelines.^[2] This is a clear suspension of the civil rights of Renewal’s residents.

In other halfway houses around the country, residents imprisoned inside have brought class action lawsuits against the Department of Corrections to address the suspension of rights and inadequate provision of resources during COVID-19.^[3]

It is not a coincidence that protests surrounding the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless Black and brown people are being used to justify the continued suppression of rights of the residents of Renewal.

It is time we recognize the complicity of Renewal, Inc., PA’s Department of Corrections, and the policing and criminal justice system in our country in stripping the rights of individuals at will — whether that be individuals locked inside halfway houses, trapped in prisons and jails, or being brutalized by police in the streets.

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References:

[1] https://www.governor.pa.gov/process-to-reopen-pennsylvania/

[2] https://www.cor.pa.gov/community-reentry/Documents/Handbooks/Region%203/Renewal%20Handbook.pdf

[3] https://wamu.org/story/20/04/02/prisoners-sue-d-c-s-federal-mens-halfway-house-over-coronavirus-response/

Sofia Huang is a rising second-year doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology at Duquesne University. She is the author of last month’s Court Watch article, “RENEWAL HALFWAY HOUSE: PITTSBURGH’S DE F