We, as residents of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area that reside in, work in, shop in, and/or frequent the City of Pittsburgh on a regular and/or necessary basis;

and

We, as concerned members of the community that find fault with current realities of “Stop And Frisk” (also known as “warrantless searches”) interactions between police forces and communities of color throughout the country, including here in the City of Pittsburgh, and thus petition to have these practices discontinued immediately;

and

We, as citizens of the United States of America that are afforded all protections and rights as enumerated by the United States Constitution and established by decades of legal precedent as set by the courts of this nation, including the Supreme Court of the United States;

We understand, as contemporaries living in modern-day urban America, the plights of violence, substance abuse, and illegal activities that corrupt many neighborhoods and threaten the lives of many innocent American citizens;

and

While we, as community members, volunteers, and activists, are actively engaged and committed to ending the wrongful behaviors that hamper the lives of millions of Americans across the United States and thousands of our neighbors, friends, and family members within the City of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area;

We also understand that, as we all are fully-protected American citizens by way of the United States Constitution, we cannot in the fullest sense of ethics, morality, justice, and citizenship, ask our brothers and sisters to cease and desist activities that infringe upon the safety of our community members while, simultaneously, overlooking and/or condoning other behaviors that infringe upon their rights as American citizens; 

and

We also note and declare that implicit, written, and/or condoned policies and practices such as the policing practice commonly referred to as “Stop And Frisk” (also known as “warrantless searches”) have become a daily reality that infringes upon the civil rights of thousands of American citizens from the City of Pittsburgh to towns throughout our region and our nation;

and

We also know and experience the alienation that thousands of American citizens undergo as a result of such policies, an alienation that leads to a further chasm between these citizens and a true pursuit of happiness in America, a further chasm of trust between communities of color and law enforcement officials, and a further achievement gap between the pursuit of safer neighborhoods and the actualization of this common goal;

and

We also observe that many police chiefs around the nation, including new City of Pittsburgh Police Chief Cameron McLay, have supported in some capacity the continued use of “Stop And Frisk” policing tactics (also known as “warrantless searches”) as a necessary law enforcement tool in dealing with targeted communities, a majority of which are communities of color;

and

We also emphasize that empirical evidence throughout America shows that these policing tactics yield highly imbalanced results, where the civil rights of many Americans under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution (concerning illegal search and seizure) and the doctrine of “illegal under proven guilty” (as established by decades of criminal law precedent) are violated at a rate grossly incommensurate with the amount of arrests coming about after “Stop And Frisk” incidents;

and

We are painfully aware of the physical, psychological, emotional, and societal damages that the continuation of “Stop And Frisk” practices have had in the City of Pittsburgh and throughout the nation, including the shooting of Leon Ford, Jr in the City of Pittsburgh, the assault upon Jordan Miles in the City of Pittsburgh, and the assault upon Darren Manning in the City of Philadelphia, among other incidents nationally;

and

We witness the statistics that show that the application of “Stop And Frisk” (also known as “warrantless searches”) is applied at rates that reflect a targeting of communities of color, including in the City of Pittsburgh where “Stop And Frisk” involves an African-American over 60% of the time despite African-Americans making up only one-quarter of Pittsburgh's population;

and

We profess that, due to case law and societal experiences over recent times, the practice of “Stop And Frisk” (also known as “warrantless searches”) has been fundamentally altered or eliminated in some towns throughout the United States due to its controversial and counter-Constitutional nature yet, as of now, this practice has been publicly condoned and/or advocated for use in the City of Pittsburgh in its current objectionable fashion;

and

We acknowledge and proclaim that any advocacy for a standard of law and order in one capacity in communities of color while tolerance of a breach of trust and Constitutional law, protections, and rights as a standard of life for these communities in another is inconsistent and un-American;

Therefore,

We, as residents of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area that reside in, work in, shop in, and/or frequent the City of Pittsburgh on a regular and/or necessary basis, do hereby call for the official and law-binding renouncement of “Stop and Frisk” practices (also called “warrantless searches”) in the City of Pittsburgh by Police Chief Cameron McLay, City of Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, Pittsburgh City Council, and appropriate civic leaders in order to repair, restore, and elevate the level of trust, cooperation, and prosperity building between communities of color, the Police Bureau of the City of Pittsburgh, and all of our neighbors throughout the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area that interact regularly with the City by way of residency, work, school, or leisure.