The recent City of Providence effort to revoke the pension of former Providence Police Chief Urbano Prignano Jr. (as well as the uncertain fate of the former police department HQ in LaSalle Square) got me thinking about the guy.
Back in the late '90s, the Providence PD was riven by problems. Even community policing, an approach that had been implemented in scores of American cities, proved a hard sell at the time.
During a 1999 interview in the old police station, Prignano offered his best Joe Pesci impersonation when I asked him about the department's woes:
Prignano, who has a reputation for being temperamental, becomes tired and impatient when questioned about the department's record-keeping problems. "Guess what?" he says. "We're fixing it."
Asked about [George] Kelling's prescription for community policing, Prignano says the approach is no different from the tactics used when he became a cop in 1966, when officers on foot patrol were expected by their supervisors to have a comprehensive knowledge of their beats.
But he acknowledges that the segregation of community policing as a distinct unit within the Police Department is a fundamentally flawed approach, shouting at one point during an interview, "You don't split patrol and community policing!"
In The Prince of Providence, Mike Stanton captured another classic Prignano moment:
A few days before his [Plunder Dome] testimony, he strolled into the courthouse, loudly proclaiming, "I'm a hostile witness." He was there to be immunized, compelling his testimony. And he was in a combative mood. He went after Providence Journal investigative reporter Bill Malinowski, who had written several exposes about police corruption, saying, "You don't write the truth about me because my last name ends in a vowel." Malinowski pointed out that his own name ended in a vowel. Prignano said it didn't, so Malinowski spelled it out for him. "Well, it's the wrong vowel," snapped Prignano.
I was standing a few feet away when this happened in US District Court, and it was one of the more surreal things I've encountered in a courthouse.
The Providence PD has since moved on, both literally and metaphorically, from its former difficulties. While the department is ensconed in its newish space across I-95, some of us ink-stained wretches maintain a fondness for old police buildings. I hope it can be saved.