Fired Pittsburgh police can get jobs back, six-figure back pay checks

A Pittsburgh Police Bureau motorcycle officer on Saturday, Oct. 21, 2023, in Downtown. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource) A ruling to uphold the termination of the former Pittsburgh officer who used a Taser on the late Jim Rogers was promptly appealed. For now, it averts a common outcome: a firing’s reversal and a big back-pay check. “PublicSource is an independent nonprofit newsroom serving the Pittsburgh region. Sign up for our free newsletters.” by Rich Lord, PublicSource One former Pittsburgh police officer who was fired following the 2021 death of Jim Rogers won’t be returning to the beat any time soon. Three others, though, are back at work, and the city issued them six-figure back-pay allocations. On Wednesday, Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas Judge Alan Hertzberg overturned an arbitration decision that would have put Keith Edmonds back in a city police uniform. Edmonds repeatedly shocked Rogers with his Taser, and the 54-year-old man died a short time later. In a two-page order, Hertzberg wrote that two arbitrators “deprived the city of its due process rights by dishonestly finding that police officer Keith Edmonds did not violate a city policy, rule or regulation, when he admitted that he did and when the...