Target 11: Allegheny County DA says ankle monitoring system not working
After announcing plans to run for re-election next year, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala blasted the current electronic house arrest system in Allegheny County.
“This electronic home monitoring, ... you guys were looking at that saying, ‘What clown is in charge of this?,’” said Zappala during an impromptu news conference Friday. It’s the first time Zappala has spoken to a gathering of news reporters in several years.
Zappala declined to elaborate on why he hasn’t been seen in public for some time, but he didn’t waste any time criticizing electronic house arrest.
His criticism comes after a jailhouse video surfaced showing defendant Shawn Davis on house arrest sliding his monitor device off and on his ankle, and joking and laughing about it with the inmate in a recorded call.
A month after that call and while still on house arrest after serving less than year for an aggravated assault with a firearm, Davis is accused of opening fire with another teen at a funeral in Brighton Heights, where five people were shot and another person was injured. No one was killed in that shooting.
It’s unclear if Davis was wearing the ankle monitor at the time of the shooting, but Target 11 has learned that an alert did come into the probation office because the bracelet was motionless for some time.
It’s also unclear if a probation officer responded to the home to check on Davis, but Zappala said Friday what is clear is that they system of electronic monitoring isn’t working.
“I mean, there’s no assurances that are given to the public that they’re going to be safe from these people,” said Zappala, who suggested that the county consider moving to a GPS-based monitoring system.
A couple weeks ago, Target 11 reached out to the Fifth Judicial Court administrator, who works with Allegheny County probation, and gave them a list of questions about the electronic monitoring program.
The county said they are still in the process of gathering answers and also reviewing what went wrong in the case of Davis.
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