PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh City Councilman Anthony Coghill is calling for changes in how the council interviews the city’s next police chief.
This comes after 11 Investigates discovered that chief Larry Scirotto had returned to refereeing basketball, after telling the council he would not do that while serving as chief.
>>> Pittsburgh Police Chief Scirotto takes second job as basketball referee
Coghill introduced a rule change that would allow the council to put the next chief under oath during the confirmation hearing before city council.
During his confirmation hearing two years ago, Larry Scirotto, who spent more than 20 years with Pittsburgh Police and retired in 2018, told the council he was done officiating college basketball.
Coghill asked him specifically about that.
Coghill: I know you have committed not to pursue that profession while you’re here as a Pittsburgh police chief, correct?
Scirotto: That is correct.
Scirotto was not under oath during that hearing before city council.
Sixteen months after telling council he wouldn’t referee basketball games, 11 Investigates discovered that he had already returned to refereeing.
Coghill said he felt duped by Scirotto.
“I feel we hired him under false pretenses. I played the video, you saw him, I asked him directly,” Coghill said during an interview in his office in city hall on Wednesday afternoon.
Mayor Ed Gainey then revealed he had a secret agreement with Scirotto, that he could return to basketball as soon as the murder rate dropped.
>>> With murder rate down, Pittsburgh police chief is free to referee, Mayor Gainey says
Coghill said the council had no idea.
“We hired him under false pretenses. This mayor has some backroom deal with him,” Coghill said.
Under fire because he would be away for more than four months during the college basketball season, Scirotto eventually retired again, but not after nearly doubling his pension to almost $100,000 a year.
>>> 11 Investigates: It’s official, retired Pittsburgh police chief doubles pension
In an effort to prevent this scenario from happening again, Coghill on Wednesday introduced a rule change to allow the council to put a candidate for the chief’s job under oath.
“They’re going to be under oath, and if they lie to us, like Chief Scirotto did, or weren’t so truthful, however you want to put it, that we will be able to have the recourse to go back. We will have legal recourse and at least save the taxpayers of the City of Pittsburgh the extra pension fund that we are on the hook for,” Coghill said.
Coghill believes if they had Scirotto under oath, they could have ultimately used that testimony to go to court to block the higher pension payout.
The rule change also applies to all other chiefs and directors who go before city council for confirmation.
City council will debate the change next week and then vote on it.
Coghill told Earle he’s confident it will pass, and the next chief for the City of Pittsburgh will be required to testify before the council under oath.
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