South Side crime drops as police presence doubles for Street Fest

Arrests and gun seizures on East Carson Street fell sharply this summer amid heavier police patrols and private security.

By JUSTIN VELLUCCI and JULIA BURDELSKI TribLive

The guns were quiet this summer in Pittsburgh’s biggest entertainment district.

After a rowdy 2025 punctuated by shots fired and troublemakers tossing lit fireworks at police officers, violent crime along bustling East Carson Street cooled off substantially over the past three months.

“We had zero gun violence overall this summer,” Pittsburgh police Cmdr. Jeff Abraham, whose Zone 3 includes the South Side, told Trib-Live Wednesday.

Arrests on the bar- and business-filled stretch of East Carson, which police closed to traffic between 12th and 18th streets for weekend festivals this summer, fell to 55 from 79 last year. That’s a 30% drop, the data show.

Gun confiscations plunged to 15, less than half of the 38 seized a year ago.

“There’s no doubt this is the safest summer we’ve had in South Side in many, many years,” Pittsburgh Councilman Bob Charland, D-South Side, said Wednesday.

“This was not by accident,” added Don Berman, founder of South Side Community Action Network. “These numbers are huge. They did exactly what we wanted them to.”

A changing narrative

Police credited expanded patrols with helping them clamp down on violence even as a new festival, the South Side Street Fest, filled East Carson with pedestrians and bar patrons this summer between June and August.

About 2,000 people attended the street fest each night, according to Peter Margittai, president of the South Side Chamber of Commerce.

“I think there was a concerted effort to make the Street Fest safe,” Abraham said.

Pittsburgh police nearly tripled the number of officers assigned to patrol the area to 29, up from its typical summer roster of 11, Abraham said. The police bureau launched an entertainment patrol in 2023 to clamp down on problems in the business district.

Berman’s group, often called South Side CAN, did not sit on the sidelines. State officials gave them $125,000 to pay for about 15 private security guards to supplement the police bureau’s rank and file.

Those guards checked IDs and manned metal detectors during the weekly festival.

“This is changing the narrative about the South Side,” Berman, 71, a South Side resident for nine years, said.

Margittai agreed. “We had never seen the kind of crime we saw after covid,” the architect and chamber president said Wednesday. “We’re really hoping this will change the trajectory of the South Side — and its reputation.”

Bad publicity

The neighborhood was more chaotic a year ago.

Crowds became unruly after bars shuttered each night. Around Independence Day, shots were fired and revelers threw fireworks at officers.

Abraham said that wasn’t the tone there this summer, though one sexual assault did trigger headlines.

Police last month charged a man with raping a woman in a South Side parking lot on South 14th Street. Larry Pappy Johnson, 37, of Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood, was not in custody as of Wednesday afternoon, according to online court records.

The incident prompted Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. to crack down on the bar, Capo’s. That resulted in a controversial consent agreement to curtail certain behavior while allowing the bar to remain open.

Street Fest — which was over by the time the rape victim was found around 3:30 a.m. on Aug. 8 — was overseen by a heavy security presence, Abraham said.

Increasing security there allowed authorities to tackle lesser offenses that still cause public headaches, like parking and traffic-related problems.

Parking citations along East Carson were up this summer, police data show. But non-traffic citations — which track low-level crimes such as disorderly conduct, public urination, retail theft and loitering — plummeted nearly 70% year over year.

“The proof is in the numbers,” said Christie Miller, 44, of Baldwin Township, who has operated Twelve Whiskey BBQ and Doce Taqueria on East Carson for more than a decade.

“The police have done a fantastic job,” Miller added. “The teens? I don’t see them at all anymore. And they used to be everywhere.”

Parking revenue holds steady

The data behind parking also matters, Charland said. Parking meters in South Side churned out more than $330,000 in revenue for Pittsburgh in 2025, according to the city’s operating budget.

This summer, even while police were shutting down a large swath of East Carson to motor vehicles each weekend, the tally dropped just $148, Charland said.

“To lose six blocks of parking and only lose 150 bucks in revenue?” Charland asked. “That’s a hell of a summer.”

Charland said other metrics also illustrate a shift in the business district. About 25% of retail storefronts on East Carson Street were vacant this March, he said. That number is now down to 15%, he said Wednesday.

Then, there’s the media. Charland said he frequently spoke with reporters on Monday mornings last summer to recap the weekend’s violence. This year, he’s held one press conference on South Side — about Capo’s.

Next, Charland hopes to focus more aggressively on the neighborhood’s business activity.

“This is a multiphase approach,” he said. “We were looking to solve the safety issues first — and that’s working really well.”

Crime trends were mixed this summer throughout the entirety of the South Side Flats neighborhood, which stretches from the Monongahela River to the hills bordering the city’s South Side Slopes.

The number of aggravated assaults there has remained stable — 14 reported in summers in both 2025 and 2026, police data show.

Arsons were up this summer, police data show. Burglary and robbery reports dropped.