Category: default || By jt3y

I didn't realize until I saw the front page of yesterday's Courier that William "Mugsy" Moore had died Aug. 6. He was 81 and had lived with diabetes for years.

Best known as Pittsburgh's first black police chief and credited with "blazing a trail" for other African-American patrol officers in the 1950s, I knew him later, after he retired from the Pittsburgh force and served as chief of the Braddock police department in the 1990s.

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Frankly, there would be more pleasant ways to spend your retirement --- like working as the target in a knife-throwing act.

The Braddock police force had been disbanded several years before Moore was hired, and standards and procedures were almost non-existent. So was the budget for police gear and salaries.

The borough's leadership was almost dysfunctional --- state troopers had to break up one council meeting when members started throwing chairs at one another --- and micromanaged the police department's every move.

Moore struggled valiantly and with some success, I thought, to instill a sense of pride, professionalism and responsibility in his colleagues, and to insulate them from interference.

When he retired for a second time, Braddock brought in a police chief from Joliet, Ill., who had blue-ribbon credentials but lacked Moore's diplomatic skills, and the borough council soon fired him. Chief Moore came out of retirement to serve Braddock again for a few months, but his health was failing and I don't think his heart was in it. He didn't last long.

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There were controversies during his tenure, to be sure. Once he was charged with DUI by police in a neighboring borough, but Moore said he wasn't drunk, that his sugar was low, and there were whispers around town the chief in the other community was jealous of the attention Moore got.

And despite his political finesse, Moore still tangled with Braddock council regularly; he tried to get one councilman removed from office on the grounds that the man was a convicted arsonist (he had done time in federal prison) and thus ineligible to serve under Article II, Section 7 of the state Constitution.

I was more disturbed by the fact that the volunteer fire department had elected the guy fire chief.

No, I am not kidding. Only in the Mon Valley do we make a convicted arsonist the fire chief.

The state attorney general's office and the Allegheny County district attorney's office chickened out, and refused to remove the guy; the councilman swore revenge against Moore. A few years later, he wound up being convicted of skimming money from the fire department's bingo.

Chief Moore, on the other hand, was buried last week with a full police honor guard, including Pittsburgh police Chief Nate Harper and Assistant Chief Maurita Bryant.

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The website Freedom Corner lists him as one of the "legends" of Pittsburgh's civil-rights movement; it notes that as riots tore American cities apart after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Moore joined a peace march from the Hill District.

Besides fighting for equal rights for African-Americans, Moore also stood up for the right of women to take leadership roles. Before Moore became a supervisor, Pittsburgh's female officers weren't allowed to drive police cars. He changed that insane policy, and as chief he appointed the city's first woman police commander.

As a peace officer, wrote Moustafa Ayad in an obituary for the Post-Gazette, Moore had an "old-school ethos of policing that combined compassion and kick-in-the-pants discipline."

I can't say I knew him well, and I had lost touch with him several years ago, but I admired and respected and liked William H. Moore.

And I looked up to him. That's probably why I never felt comfortable calling him "Mugsy." It's a diminutive, and for whatever his flaws, there was nothing small about him. He was a giant of a man.

Requiescat in pace.

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To Do This Weekend: Did you eat too much at International Village? Here's your chance to dance away the calories. CountryFest will be held tonight, Saturday and Sunday at Stephen Barry Field in Renziehausen Park.

Dallas Marks headlines a full slate of local and national performers who also include Lois Scott & The Plum Loco Band, Girlz in Black Hats, T.J. Houston, Cranky Yankee, Jerry Schickling, Bryan Cole, Buc Wyld, Southern Discomfort, Blind Date and Whiskey Grin.

There will also be games, craft displays and food, and fireworks tomorrow night starting at 10:30 p.m. A portion of all proceeds benefits the American Cancer Society; admission is only $5. Visit countryfest.8m.com for details.