Pittsburgh Police Handle Staff Shortages by Announcing No Officers in Dispatch Offices 3 a.m to 7 a.m. Daily

Pittsburgh’s Bureau of Police is responding to staffing shortages by foregoing any officer presence in dispatch offices 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. daily.

The Daily Mail reported that the cut was announced last month by Pittsburgh police chief Larry Scirotto, who noted, “Data said that from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m that we had 8% of our call volume, yet we had 33% of our personnel working during those periods of time.”

Scirotto’s decision comes as the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police has dwindled to just 740 officers.

In late February, Breitbart News pointed out Scirotto also made clear officers would not be responding to 911 calls that are not reporting in-progress emergencies, regardless of the time of day the calls came in.

11 News noted that Scirotto’s announcement “essentially means that calls for criminal mischief, theft, harassment, and burglary alarms, just to name a few, will all be handled by the telephone reporting unit or online reporting.”

There has been pushback against the cuts but thus far, Scirotto is standing his ground.

American Military News quoted Scirotto saying, “There is not any data to support us having our zones manned by personnel from 3 am to 7 am…For the very one off instance I can’t make an exception.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a pro-staffer for Pulsar Night Vision. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..