Crowd Presses City on Man’s Arrest, Reform

Mayor says body-worn cameras will vindicate police; activists want officers fired, budget cuts

By Jason Togyer
The Tube City Almanac
April 02, 2025
Posted in: McKeesport and Region News

• RELATED STORY: Police say man tried to hit victim with brick

A large group of residents and visitors from surrounding communities crowded McKeesport City Council chambers Wednesday night to address concerns about the arrest of a 72-year-old man that resulted in his hospitalization.

A video of police officers arresting Callie Stinson Sr. on March 8 was widely shared on social media. Police allege that Stinson threatened a neighbor with a brick and had to be restrained after he threw a punch.

“My brother right now has four broken ribs in his chest, and another broken rib in his back,” Kay Stinson of McKeesport told city council, adding that Black residents of McKeesport are “still treated like it’s the 1950s and ’60s. Enough is enough.”

All McKeesport police officers are required to wear so-called body cams — body-worn video cameras — while on duty. McKeesport Mayor Michael Cherepko told the audience that the city has joined community groups to ask for body cam footage of the arrest to be released to the public.

But that decision, he said, is up to Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr.

Cherepko said he believes the body-cam videos will vindicate the officers and their conduct during the incident.

“I don’t want anyone to think that when you watch a video of someone being apprehended by the police that it’s comfortable — it’s not,” he said. “It’s not pleasant.”

But, Cherepko said, a frame-by-frame review of the video does not show police beating or mistreating Stinson. 

“What you will see is an incident where one gentleman swung at another, our officer attempted to intervene to create separation, and one gentleman fell down,” Cherepko said. “The officer then attempts to restrain the person who swung. Mr. Stinson was asked 10 times to show the officers his hands. He refused.

“He also was attempting to turn around, which puts the officer in a life-and-death situation,” he said. “He was struck with the flat part of the arm in the upper back area, twice. The only other blow that was thrown was from a knee. The ordeal was over in less than 50 seconds.”

Cherepko said police then called for an ambulance after realizing that Stinson had a tracheotomy tube.

The mayor said the case was referred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Pittsburgh and the FBI concluded that there was no police misconduct.

Cherepko’s comments were met with derisive responses from some people in the audience, many of whom attended the meeting in support of Take Action Advocacy Group.

TAAG has called for the city’s police budget to be defunded by 10 percent; for resources to be re-allocated instead toward mental health services; and for the city to participate in an independent citizen police review board.

“It doesn’t mean very much for one law enforcement agency to investigate another law enforcement agency,” said Justin Laing of Pittsburgh’s South Hills, who told council he was there to testify in support of TAAG’s demands. 

“The FBI has a terrible record in the Black community,” Laing said. “Who are they to say that this wasn’t excessive force?”

Laing pointed to the portraits of former mayors of McKeesport that hang on the council chamber walls — all of them white men — and said “this looks like something out of 1876 ... it’s white colonialism.”

Council President Richard Dellapenna Jr. told Laing that council could not change the fact that past mayors were white men: “It’s just history.”

Honey Rosenbloom of Wilkinsburg, who said they also were at the meeting in support of TAAG, called for the officers involved in the incident to be fired.

“That would all do a lot toward building trust,” Rosenbloom said. “That is what’s actually going to build a relationship with the community.”

Cherepko said city officials and police officers met with a group of about 100 citizens and members of the McKeesport unit of the NAACP to review the incident and listen to public concerns.

“The NAACP is bought and sold,” someone in the crowd said, loudly.

McKeesport resident Tiffany Siar, a community organizer with TAAG, told council that some members of the Black community are afraid to call the police for fear of escalation or retaliation, and claimed that officers “over-react” during traffic stops.

“Your officers seem to think it’s the WWE when they’re pulling people over,” Siar said. “In the last two months you have videos that have gone damn near viral for police brutality against your community members. That is something you should be embarrassed about. My organization has had three calls on its own.”

She repeated TAAG’s call for McKeesport to participate in the Allegheny County citizen police review board, or to create a city-wide civilian police review board.

“I know your cops want to go home at night, but so do your community members,” Siar said. “You have people who are terrified to call the police and terrified to get pulled over. What needs to happen? Does someone need to die?”

Cherepko said the city and the NAACP both would continue to press the DA’s office to release the body cam footage of Stinson’s arrest.

He added that new police Chief Josh Alfer is committed to improving police-community relations through programs, special events, school visits and other interactions.

The city is also working to relaunch its police cadet program and is committed to hiring officers from the community, and will pay for their training, Cherepko said.

Cherepko said that he believes the number of complaints against the department has dropped drastically over the past decade, which he attributes to better training, better communications skills and more empathy from rank-and-file police officers.

“The number of complaints is nowhere near what it once was,” he said. “The majority of our department has changed over, and we have a very special group of young men and women who are very personable, and will interact with you and talk with you. I want to get them into the community ... the compassion they have for the community is admirable.”

But Stinson’s sister, Kay, accused a still-serving police officer of assaulting her in 2009, and said the city’s Black neighborhoods suffer from an overall pattern of neglect.

“This used to be a beautiful city, but you don’t do nothing for the Black people,” she said.

Originally published April 02, 2025.

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