Swine Flu Pittsburgh

We still haven’t gotten around to part two… Originally published on November 27, 2022.

Allegheny County’s so-called Crisis Response Stakeholder Group might be the most powerful local organization you’ve never heard of. We’d be tempted to call it a secret cabal, but it’s not, quite at least, a secret. The group first came to light in September 2020 in an investigative piece by Public Source’s Rich Lord, who revealed that its membership consisted of movers and shakers involved in law enforcement, philanthropy, and government in Allegheny County. None of the members would comment on its activities for the record, but Lord was able to piece together some basics using leaked documents and anonymous statements from sources close to the organization. CRSG hasn’t raised its profile much since. After its cover was blown, the county mounted a bare bones PR effort, but the group still largely remained under radar. It has never issued a press release under its own name, and has no social media presence. Subsequent press coverage of the organization has been notably sparse, with a followup article by Lord late last year being the only substantive mention.

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This one was cute :). Originally published on November 22, 2018.

Well, this is fun. Trib Live wants us all to know how to defeat home monitoring devices, or at least it sure seems that way. They dropped a story on Friday about a guy who did just that, including a wealth of practical tips. A few takeaways:

• The things malfunction often. “You get hundreds of false alerts,” according to a probation officer quoted in the piece. That of course makes it much harder to know when someone has disabled one.
• Those ankle bracelets can sometimes be removed and put back on without cutting them. YMMV depending on make, model, and foot size, but still…
• Even if you get caught, you can just blame it on faulty equipment.

Ankle bracelet wearers should be sure to read the whole article for full technical details.

Homeless shelters are part of the carceral landscape, just like prisons, jails, schools and psychiatric hospitals. This post goes into some detail about how that works locally, using the then-new shelter next to Allegheny County Jail as a case study. Originally published on November 18, 2022.

In the summer of 2021, news dropped that the city had broken ground on a new homeless shelter downtown. Unlike pretty much every other shelter in the county, this one was going to be a low barrier facility – open around the clock, welcoming to couples, with room to store belongings, and even open to those with cats or dogs. Nor was the facility to be just a roof above residents’ heads. Showers, laundry, a medical clinic, and a daytime hangout area open to all were also on offer. The opening date was not specified exactly, but was said to be sometime in the summer of 2022.

Less celebrated in the media were the drawbacks. No one under 18 would be admitted, and there were only 95 shelter beds, plus another 45 single room occupancy rooms for longer term stays, nowhere near enough to accommodate Allegheny County’s growing homeless population. Residents would be charged $525 a month for the SRO rooms. Worse, Pittsburgh’s practice of opening warming shelters in the winter would cease once the new facility came on line. Regardless, Second Avenue Commons, the new shelter’s official name, was greeted by many leftists and nonprofits as a positive development. In some ways they’re right, but looking at it from a viewpoint of counterinsurgency and social control reveals a darker aspect.

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This was our first post, inspired by the departure of former Pittsburgh police chief Scott Schubert following Mayor Gainey’s ascension to office. Published originally on June 14, 2022.

Well, we won’t have Scott Schubert to kick around anymore. The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police chief announced his retirement just hours ahead of an impending mayoral press conference to make a major announcement concerning the police. He is, of course, claiming that his decision was made far in advance of the press conference and that the timing was purely coincidental, and he might not even be lying. Speculation that Schubert’s job was on the line had been flying since new mayor Ed Gainey replaced Public Safety director Wendell Hissrich, and it intensified with the release of the new administration’s transition team report recommending Schubert be fired. Schubert’s announcement a mere 10 days later that he was taking a job with the FBI indicates he was likely circulating his resume well in advance of his “retirement.” Hell, he might have seen the writing on the wall as early as Gainey’s victory in the Democratic mayoral primary last summer.

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Swine Flu Pittsburgh began in 2022 as an intermittent writing project looking at the underbelly of policing and social control in the Steel City. Recently, after experiencing technical difficulties with our old blogging platform, we decided to move to Noblogs and establish a social media presence. In the coming days we will be moving our old posts over to this site and publishing new ones. Stay tuned for further updates!