On the sixth day of Black Lives Matter protests in Pittsburgh, Mayor Bill Peduto outlined an agenda and series of specific actions for police reform, some of which, he said, he expects to be enacted in the coming weeks.
These calls for reform in Pittsburgh come at a time when the movement to defund police departments is growing stronger in the U.S. and demonstrators all over the world have been marching for justice in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 26.
During a press conference Thursday, Peduto stated that “apparently” the use of tear gas on protesters had not been approved by commanding enforcement officers.
According to the mayor, Pittsburgh is, along with “a handful of cities” around the country, endorsing an “8 Can’t Wait” campaign that includes specific action points such as clearly defining force and weapons to be used for specific scenarios, explicitly prohibiting chokeholds and strangleholds, and requiring officers to “exhaust all other reasonable alternatives” before using deadly force.
Protesters gathered Downtown for the sixth day of Black Lives Matter protests in Pittsburgh.
