‘The Purge’ Comes to Pittsburgh

“The Purge” is coming to Pittsburgh between the hours of 3 a.m. and 7 a.m., and if that works out well enough for the city’s criminal class, maybe they’ll expand those hours.

For those not in the know, “The Purge” is a series of dystopian thrillers — the first was decent, but the four sequels proved increasingly unnecessary — set in a near-future United States where, for one night each year, all crime is legal. Whatever it is you want to do, from shoplifting to killing your mother-in-law, it’s all good.

Maybe the changes being made to the Pittsburgh Police Department’s rules and hours aren’t quite that extreme. But from my vantage point, it looks like city officials saw how organized crime rings had taken shoplifting to entirely new levels in under-policed cities like San Francisco and said, “Hold my donut!”

Under the new rules that went into effect at the end of February and were just given nationwide attention by End Wokeness on Twitter/X, there will be no Pittsburgh police at the city’s six police stations between the hours of 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. More ominously, police will no longer respond to calls “that aren’t considered in-progress emergencies,” according to WPXI-11 News. “That means calls like criminal mischief, theft, harassment, and most burglary alarms will all be handled by an ‘enhanced’ telephone reporting unit.”

Just not, you know, by an actual police officer. I don’t care how “enhanced” a telephone reporting unit might be, it’s still just a fancy answering service.

Police Chief Larry Scirotto explained, “We don’t have very many crimes of violence in those periods of time.” Maybe not. But announcing a four-hour window with minimal policing certainly incentivizes criminals to work the overnight shift that police won’t.

“To tell people that you’re not going be protected at certain hours of the day, that doesn’t make any sense to me when I heard it. I don’t know what the rationale of that is, and I think that’s something the chief has to explain,” District Attorney Stephen Zappala told WPXI.

“We are nimble and fluid enough that when one of those emergencies occurs that we respond with rapid deployment with the right amount of personnel to keep the community safe and officers safe,” Scirotto claimed.

While police say they will respond to ongoing emergencies without any cops on call late during late night hours, they also request that you schedule your emergencies during regular business hours from 7 a.m. through 3 a.m.

I’m kidding about the scheduling request. Everything else is true.

On the other hand, it isn’t like anyone has ever depended on the police to respond instantly to an ongoing break-in or violent crime. “When seconds count, the police are minutes away” is an old adage for good reason. What should be only seconds away is whatever weapon you keep (and train with) for home defense.

So maybe the best that can happen is that the worst won’t quite happen. Still, I miss the days when “The Purge” didn’t feel quite so much like non-fiction.