County police review board coming closer to completion

Allegheny County’s Independent Police Review Board is one member away from completion after county Executive Rich Fitzgerald announced a slate of four appointees Friday afternoon.

Those four come about a month after County Council approved its first four members for the board, which has been nearly four years in the making.

The ordinance creating the nine-member review board, which will investigate allegations of misconduct against police officers, dictated that council would get four appointees, Mr. Fitzgerald would get four appointees, and a ninth member would be a joint appointment.

Mr. Fitzgerald’s selections are former Pittsburgh police Detective Stacey Hawthorne for a three-year term; former county police Superintendent Coleman McDonough for a four-year term; longtime investigator Robert Meinert for a one-year term; and the Rev. Regina Ragin Dykes, a pastor and executive with the Pittsburgh Branch of the NAACP, for a two-year term.

The review board has been a work in progress since 2018 when it was first introduced in County Council. After years of council squabbles and myriad revisions, the bill passed in late April with a vote of 9-5.

The nine unpaid members will examine only allegations against Allegheny County police officers, though other municipalities within the county can opt into the review board.

In late August, council approved four appointments following their selection by a committee of council members. Those approved were Lynn Banaszak, Richard Garland, Keith Murphy and J. Leavitt Pearl.

Ms. Hawthorne, a certified polygraph examiner, retired from the Pittsburgh bureau in 2019, according to a statement from the county. She owns SH Polygraph Services. Before her 2019 retirement, she worked in the bureau’s Internal Affairs Unit, which included work investigating officers.

Mr. McDonough headed the Allegheny County police for nearly five years until his retirement last year. He’d previously led the Mt. Lebanon Police Department and rose to the rank of colonel in the Pennsylvania State Police.

Mr. Meinert, an investigator and partner at Cyber Protection, has worked as a private investigator, manager of security, police officer, magistrate, professor and law enforcement instructor over the course of his career.

Rev. Ragin-Dykes, a pastor at New Life A. M. E. Church in Pittsburgh’s Homewood section, also is first vice president for the Pittsburgh NAACP branch. She previously worked for the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh in workforce development and was executive director of the Hazelwood YMCA.

County spokeswoman Amie Downs said Mr. Fitzgerald and council members have already begun to collaborate on the ninth and final selection.