After the I-95 shooting, it’s time to stop Pa. state troopers from investigating themselves

Last weekend, Pennsylvania State Police troopers responded to a call reporting kids driving wildly on I-95 in Philadelphia, doing “burnouts” and racing. At the scene, a trooper shot and killed 18-year-old Anthony Allegrini Jr., who was in one of the cars. At first glance, nothing good can come out of this situation. A young man is dead, and a trooper is being investigated for a homicide.

But there is one clear opportunity for positive change because of this terrible event: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro can order the state police to stop trying to investigate themselves when a trooper kills a civilian.

You read that correctly. Right now, as Allegrini’s family grieves, the Pennsylvania State Police are running the investigation into whether one of their own members committed a homicide. (Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office will also conduct its own review of the shooting.)

There are many troubling questions to answer in this case: Was Allegrini trying to run over troopers, or was he just trying to flee from the area? Was there a clear danger to the troopers? Did anyone render aid to Allegrini after he was shot, as one video shows him still alive and struggling on the ground? It’s fair to question whether the state police can field an unbiased investigative team to provide the public with answers.

Shapiro has the authority to order that an independent agency investigate the Pennsylvania State Police in officer-involved shootings. The only question now is whether he will have the courage to exercise this authority.

The Pennsylvania State Police are a tradition-bound law enforcement agency, with jurisdiction across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. They do not appreciate anybody telling them what to do, particularly when it comes to investigating their own troopers for potential crimes. As a result, when a trooper shoots and kills a civilian, state police insist on investigating themselves, a clear conflict of interest. (In Philadelphia, police are also empowered to investigate their own in these cases.)

This issue has reared its ugly head on numerous occasions. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a self-proclaimed progressive on criminal justice reform, refused to order state police to subject themselves to an independent investigation after an officer-involved shooting, stating in 2017, “This is the way they’ve been doing it and I think they’re trying to do the right thing.” Shapiro now has a chance to correct this mistake made by his Democratic predecessor.

The state police have been called out by other actors in the criminal justice system for the incestuous practice of trying to investigate themselves for a potential murder. The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association is the organization representing the collective knowledge of prosecutors across the commonwealth.

In 2016, the association endorsed using an independent investigative agency for every police shooting of a civilian, reasoning that nobody expects an agency to be impartial when investigating itself, particularly in homicide cases.

This means that if a police officer from the Pittsburgh Police Department shoots a civilian, then Pittsburgh police may not investigate themselves for the shooting. Instead, an independent law enforcement agency must be assigned to do the criminal investigation. And in fact, this is what happens in Pittsburgh, as the Allegheny County police investigate when a Pittsburgh Police Department officer is involved in a shooting.

The Pennsylvania State Police, however, refuses to allow an independent agency to investigate when one of their troopers kills a civilian. This issue came to a head in 2017 in Northampton County, when two state troopers shot and killed a civilian with mental health problems.

The district attorney in Northampton County demanded that the state police allow county detectives to run the investigation of the shooting. In an extraordinary standoff, the state police commander refused to turn the scene over to the district attorney’s office. Instead, Northampton County prosecutors were forced to use a grand jury to investigate the shooting.

The grand jury report was scathing in its criticism, calling out the state police as “arrogant” for believing that they were better than other law enforcement agencies and “recalcitrant” in refusing to modify their policies on officer-involved shootings. (One of the troopers in that case eventually was responsible for four separate fatal shootings of civilians.)

In a less-noticed section of the same grand jury report, the then-commander of the state police, Ty Blocker, was asked what would happen if the governor ordered the state police to subject themselves to independent investigations in the case of trooper-involved shootings. Blocker admitted that he would be forced to implement the policy or resign. Of course, he never was faced with that choice, as then-Gov. Wolf refused to give the order.

Shapiro has the chance to fix this urgent and recurring problem. As Pennsylvania’s chief executive, he has the explicit authority to order the Pennsylvania State Police to be subjected to independent investigations when a trooper kills a civilian.

Will Shapiro do the right thing, both for the sake of the young man who was killed and the principle of actual criminal justice? Or will it be business as usual for the state police in Pennsylvania?

Tom Hogan has served as a federal prosecutor, local prosecutor, and elected district attorney. He currently is in private practice.