While it would be nice to believe that we have arrived at a color-blind society, this is obviously not the case, particularly as it pertains to the criminal justice system. Two examples from last week, via the NYT.

No. 1:

More than two decades after President Ronald Reagan escalated the war on drugs, arrests for drug sales or, more often, drug possession are still rising. And despite public debate and limited efforts to reduce them, large disparities persist in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, even though the two races use illegal drugs at roughly equal rates.

Two new reports, issued Monday by the Sentencing Project in Washington and by Human Rights Watch in New York, both say the racial disparities reflect, in large part, an overwhelming focus of law enforcement on drug use in low-income urban areas, with arrests and incarceration the main weapon.

No. 2:

WASHINGTON — Secret Service supervisors shared crude sexual jokes and engaged in racially derogatory banter about blacks, and passed around an anecdote about a possible assassination of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, according to internal e-mail disclosed in a federal court filing on Friday by lawyers for black Secret Service agents.

The filing includes 10 e-mail messages that were among documents the agency recently turned over to lawyers for the black agents as part of an increasingly bitter discrimination lawsuit. The messages were written mainly from 2003 through 2005, and were sent to and from e-mail accounts of at least 20 Secret Service supervisors.

On a related note, Ariel has a piece in the current Phoenix about Justice or Just Us?, a festival that offers a critical look this week at criminal justice in America:

“Justice or Just Us?,” which Reilly describes as a “series of events designed to make us question the state of justice in our society” marks the realization of many of [Bruce Reilly's] dreams. Taking place from May 12 to 18 at Perishable Theatre and AS220 (95 and 115 Empire St., Providence), the festival offers 26 events, ranging from music, comedy, and slam poetry to film, theater, and a free discussion series sponsored by the RI Coun-cil for the Humanities.

Over the past several years, a complex debate on criminal-justice reform has been pushed to the surface by community-based organizations (the Family Life Center and Direct Action for Rights & Equality); legisla-tors (Providence Democratic Representatives David Segal and Joseph Almeida, and Senator Harold Metts), and activists such as Reilly. “Justice or Just Us?” offers an opportunity for Rhode Islanders to take part in advancing this dialogue.

The featured activists and speakers will include former prisoner and current Drug Policy Alliance fellow Tony Papa; former narcotics officer John Tommasi of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP); Brown University Professor Glenn Loury, Department of Corrections Director A.T. Wall; Segal, Almeida, and Metts; and filmmakers Dylan Avery and Korey Rowe, who will present their film Loose Change: Final Cut, a critique of the official narrative of the War on Terror.

Poets Jimmy Baca (Albuquerque) and Lemon (Def Poetry, NYC) will perform, as will the sketch comics of In House Freestyle. On the mic will be local artists Who Dem?, Fedd Hill, Chachi, the Low Anthem, and the What Cheer? Brigade, as well as the nationally celebrated Saigon (as seen on HBO’s hit show Entourage) and Immortal Technique. Theret will also be performances of the off-Broadway sensation The Exonerated, directed by Reilly and 1000 lbs Guerilla.

We're at a point where Governor Carcieri, legislative leaders, and A.T. Wall, director of the state Department of Corrections, basically agree on the need to expand treatment options for non-violent criminal offenders. Doing so is smart policy and more cost-effective than keeping such criminals warehoused at the ACI. Yet making progress on this front remains difficult, as Te-Ping Chen writes in this week's Phoenix:

It was after midnight, and Dawn Jacques lay sleepless in her cell at the Adult Correctional Institutions, shuddering. Bathed in sweat, she stared at the ceiling for hours until it blurred. When the occasional wave of nausea ran through her, she lurched toward the toilet, vomiting.

It could have been the first time she was incarcerated or the tenth. Jacques, a 31-year-old from Cranston, has been addicted to heroin and in and out of jail for 10 years, and the long nights of withdrawal were the same every time.

“It felt like I was going to die,” Jacques says. Jail made her feel “miserable,” she says, “like [she] had no choice but to keep using.” And upon leaving prison, that’s exactly what she would do: return to the streets and start shooting up again.

Across the state, Jacques’s story is a familiar one. America’s drug war has devolved into a domestic quagmire, costing $500 billion without discernible success. Yet while a wealth of studies indicate that treating addicts is more cost-effective than incarcerating them, access to treatment remains limited in many states, including Rhode Island. In fact, according to data from the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rhode Island has the second-highest rate of addicts that need treatment but don’t receive it.

Not surprisingly, the state prison system is feeling the crush. Since 1976, the ACI’s population has exploded by 457 percent, with what Department of Corrections Director A.T. Wall calls an “ever-increasing number of offenders with substance abuse problems being swept [in]” — and with similar cost increases for the state. Today, 70 percent of ACI inmates report substance abuse problems (mostly heroin, alcohol, and cocaine). And without treatment, the majority of these offenders who are released will end up imprisoned again.

Yesterday, on the same day when a Providence streetworker was seriously injured during an assault, the New York Times Magazine carried a compelling story about the evolution of efforts to treat urban violence like a disease.

This is basically what the streetworkers based at the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence do locally, as I wrote about in 2003.

And while the injuries suffered by Sareth "Tony" Kim point to the risks of the work, there is little doubt that the streetworkers and their counterparts in Chicago and other American cities are making a difference. This is particularly important since, as Alex Kotlowitz noted in his NYTM article, gunplay continues to plague poor communities, even with significant decreases in homicides in some communities.

The traditional response has been more focused policing and longer prison sentences, but law enforcement does little to disrupt a street code that allows, if not encourages, the settling of squabbles with deadly force. Zale Hoddenbach, who works for an organization called CeaseFire, is part of an unusual effort to apply the principles of public health to the brutality of the streets. CeaseFire tries to deal with these quarrels on the front end. Hoddenbach’s job is to suss out smoldering disputes and to intervene before matters get out of hand. His job title is violence interrupter, a term that while not artful seems bluntly self-explanatory. Newspaper accounts usually refer to the organization as a gang-intervention program, and Hoddenbach and most of his colleagues are indeed former gang leaders. But CeaseFire doesn’t necessarily aim to get people out of gangs — nor interrupt the drug trade. It’s almost blindly focused on one thing: preventing shootings.

CeaseFire’s founder, Gary Slutkin, is an epidemiologist and a physician who for 10 years battled infectious diseases in Africa. He says that violence directly mimics infections like tuberculosis and AIDS, and so, he suggests, the treatment ought to mimic the regimen applied to these diseases: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source. “For violence, we’re trying to interrupt the next event, the next transmission, the next violent activity,” Slutkin told me recently. “And the violent activity predicts the next violent activity like H.I.V. predicts the next H.I.V. and TB predicts the next TB.” Slutkin wants to shift how we think about violence from a moral issue (good and bad people) to a public health one (healthful and unhealthful behavior).

As this article makes clear, street workers and violence interrrupters can't singlehandedly resolve the problems in communities gripped by poverty and joblessness. Yet they play a vital role -- and one worthy of broader support.

To the surprise of no one, the release this week of Grand Theft Auto IV has inspired much media hand-wringing.

Yesterday, AG Patrick Lynch put out the obligatory "consumer advisory" about the pending sale of GTA IV:

“As video games become more realistic and in many cases, more violent, parents must become more vigilant before buying them or letting their children use them,” said Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch. “Also, retailers and salespeople have a responsibility to better inform parents how violent these games actually are. Grand Theft Auto IV is obviously rated M for a reason, and parents need to keep a game like this away from their kids.”

Lynch is advising adults purchasing video games to check the rating symbols on the front of virtually every game package sold at retail. Each package bears one of the following age recommendations, which have been developed by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB): EC (Early Childhood 3+), E (Everyone 6+), E10+ (Everyone 10 and up), T (Teen 13+), and M (Mature 17+). The rating also is printed on the back of each package, along with content descriptors providing information about content that may have triggered the rating or that may be of interest or concern to parents.

Not unreasonable, eh? Yet this became the basis for a prominent story on Channel 10's 11 pm newscast last night, faintly suggesting that this video game is a serious menace to all that is well and good, the denials of the one young person interviewed notwithstanding.

Such coverage hardly hurts Lynch's gubernatorial aspirations, since it caters to the fears of the state's suburban demographic. Yet Lynch, in his mild approach, compares favorably with the most zealous self-styled video watchdogs, as Mitch Krpata wrote in last week's Phoenix:

Florida attorney Jack Thompson, one of the most strident anti-games voices around, described the newest GTA installment as “a murder simulator for violence against women, cops, and innocent bystanders” and promised to bring legal action against the game’s publisher, Rockstar Games, and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, if any copies of the game were sold to minors.

Similarly, in a move reminsicent of how she tried to stoke fears about school violence here in RI, there's this:

In 2005, Democratic New York Senator Hillary Clinton, along with co-sponsors Independent Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman, Democratic Indiana senator Evan Bayh, and Democratic South Dakota senator Tim Johnson, introduced a bill to the United States Senate that would have made the sale of M-rated (Mature) games to minors a federal offense. Although the proposed Family Entertainment Protection Act died in committee, it’s telling that the legislation contained no similar provision for R-rated movies. There seemed to be no doubt in the senators’ minds that games didn’t fall under the aegis of the First Amendment — that it wasn’t up to retailers to decide what they wanted to sell.

Krpata knows about what he speaks in his thoughtful essay on video games, which treats the subject with the complexity that it deserves, as with this:

The government shouldn’t impose limits on what software parents can buy for their kids. But just because they’re wrong doesn’t mean that anything we do in response is right.

Violence is overblown in some games. Non-whites are underrepresented among video-game heroes. Ironically, Grand Theft Auto is on surer footing than most games in both these regards. It’s true that GTA empowers players to commit violent crimes, but doing so attracts the attention of the police, which in turn makes the game world more perilous for the player. It’s an elegant risk-versus-reward mechanic that makes it much more than a brainless crime simulator. And GTA protagonists since the Vice City installment have been, serially, an Italian-American, an African-American, and now an immigrant from an unspecified Eastern European country. Far from trying to gloss over the diversity issue, Rockstar has embraced it. More developers should be taking this approach.

Ariel Werner, familiar to readers of the Daily Dose, makes her Phoenix debut this week with a short report on debt-related incarceration in Rhode Island:

Every day, an average of 18 people are incarcerated at the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) due to their inability to pay court fines, according to a new report issued by the Rhode Island Family Life Center (FLC), a Providence-based nonprofit that provides reentry planning for and policy advocacy on behalf of ex-offenders. 

Prior to the 19th century, debtor’s prisons — facilities for the incarceration of those unable to pay debts — were common in both the United Kingdom and United States. The UK abolished imprison-ment for debt with the Debtors Act of 1869, and the US eliminated the practice of imprisoning debtors at the federal level in 1833. Though many states followed suit, it remains possible for state govern-ments to incarcerate for debts relating to fraud, child-support, and alimony, fines levied as part of a sentence, restitution, and court costs. 

The US Supreme Court, in Bearden v. Georgia (1983), Tate v. Short (1971), and Payne v. Mississippi (1984), has ruled that individuals cannot be summarily jailed for debts when unable to pay and mandates the consideration of alternative measures before incarceration for debt.

Yet the FLC report, “Court Debt and Related Incarceration in Rhode Island from 2005 through 2007,” explains how our criminal justice system has propagated the practice of incarcerating debtors and the effect of this practice on the state’s already overcrowded prison.

Meanwhile, as the NYT reported yesterday, the US has a remarkably high rate of incarceration, even compared with more populous and authoritarian China:

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)

According to audio, via WPRO, from the Providence Police Department's news conference today, Police Chief Dean Esserman says the Providence department won't participate in Governor Carcieri's order calling on local police to work with federal authorities on illegal immigration.

Esserman expressed concern that the order could make Providence residents less likely to report crime. He said he doesn't want to risk the trust that the police have developed in the community.

Dan Yorke, a sharp critic of Esserman, talked about the issue a short time ago with Superintendent Brendan Doherty of the state police. "Reasonable minds may differ," said Doherty, who indicated that the state police will follow the details of Carcieri's immigration order. To not address it, Doherty said, "would be hiding from the issue."

Btw, here's part of the official PPD release about today's newser:

PROVIDENCE- Mayor David N. Cicilline and Providence Police Chief Dean M. Esserman today announced the findings of the United States Justice Department’s five-year investigation into patterns and practices at the Providence Police Department.  The federal probe by the Civil Rights Division began in 2002 under the previous administration following allegations that Providence Police were using excessive force and providing police services in “a discriminatory fashion.”  In issuing its findings, the Justice Department concluded that the Providence Police Department “has made significant improvements” under Chief Esserman’s leadership.

 

“The Department of Justice has completed its review into the Providence Police Department (PPD),” stated the head of the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division, Shanetta Y. Cultlar, in a letter to Chief Esserman, “We want to thank you for your leadership and cooperation throughout the duration of this matter and we are pleased to report that the matter is now closed.”

 

“This is a police department that used to exist under a cloud of corruption, low morale and was at war with the community,” said Mayor Cicilline.  “The Justice Department’s findings validate the hard work of the men and women of the Police Department to transform this agency into a national model in law enforcement.”

 

“Credit goes to the rank and file of this great police department for all the success and recognition here today,” said Colonel Esserman.

Seth Gitell has a tasty post up on his blog: Buddy Cianci analyzing the fall of Eliot Spitzer and diagnosing his future prospects.

Of course, it's natural that Cianci's story makes political reporters (see here and here) invoke F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gitell, formerly a political scribe for the Boston Phoenix, does this, too.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said “there are no second acts in American lives.”

Fitzgerald never met Vincent “Buddy” Cianci was the larger than life former mayor of Providence, Rhode Island not once, but twice. Cianci’s first 9 consecutive years in office came to an end after his resignation in 1984 after he plead no contest to charges that he assaulted his estranged wife’s paramour. Cianci came back as mayor in 1990 having won a rousing election campaign. He lead Providence for another twelve years, helping to revitalize downtown Providence and making it one of America’s comeback communities, all until being convicted on one count of racketeering conspiracy, out of an indictment that originally carried 30 counts. He resigned and completed four and a half years in federal prison. Since last May, he has been back in the limelight in Providence, hosting a highly-rated radio talk show on WPRO appearing as a political analyst on the city’s ABC television affiliate.

If any politician in American can help the disgraced former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, find a way to rebuild his life and reputation, it’s Cianci.

Cianci is quick to distinguish his case from Mr. Spitzer’s. First, he says, he fought prosecutors tooth-and-nail on the charges against him, ultimately being convicted on only one of a slew of charges against him. Second, he always maintained a significant portion of his popularity in Providence: “I was mayor for 22 years and I’ve been to ever bar mitzvah and every first communion and every wake. I became part of the fabric of the city.” Third, he points out, he never portrayed himself as a moral paragon as Mr. Spitzer did.

Of the events that lead to his first comeback, Cianci says, “the first thing … a guy was fooling around with my wife and I gave him a couple slaps. It’s a lot different.” Of the charges that lead to the second, he says “I was found not guilty of all the predicate acts but guilty on the conspiracy.” All this, he emphasizes, is different than being linked to prostitution, particularly for a politician who made a name prosecuting others. “When you fall from grace, it’s a lot more difficult to come back.”

The first shock Mr. Spitzer will have to overcome, Cianci says, is the adjustment after years of being an elected official to returning to life as an ordinary citizen. “This guy’s going to go through some tough time when he wakes up and finds he doesn’t have the trappings of office,” Cianci says.

Another obstacle Mr. Spitzer faces, according to Cianci, is the possibility that legal charges could be brought against him. “He’s lucky he’s rich,” Cianci says, noting the financial cost of protracted court fights.

Despite the differences he cites, Cianci talked about the pain of a draining legal battle and prison sentence. “I went to work every day after court,” he says. “But it does take a toll on you. You have to have a lot of testicular fortitude to go through that.”

Surviving prison, he says, was a challenge. “It’s boring. It’s not a pleasant place to be,” he says. “The first six months I was there, I worked in the kitchen mopping floors. Then I got a job in the library.” Through it all, he took things “one day at a time.”

Before Mr. Spitzer or anyone else reclaims his public image, he must restore his relationships with his family and his own psyche, Cianci says. “You have to reach down into your soul and believe in yourself and have tremendous self-confidence,” he says.

Cianci’s come back has been helped that his gift of gab is coupled with a roguish but inherently likable personality, which, of course, is one recipe for a successful talk show host.  Cianci has shown up on the airwaves after both instances of downfall. It’s hard to imagine the often-dour Mr. Spitzer jousting with work-a-day callers on the airwaves. Still, it’s possible to envision Mr. Spitzer some day down the line teaching or writing after the passions of the moment subside.

The street workers associated with the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence in Providence have been doing important work in reducing violence since they emerged on the scene in 2003, so it was good to hear about their receipt earlier this week of $352,000 in federal money. As those in the field know, making the case for prevention-based programs is always difficult, because it's hard to document those shootings and murders that don't happen.

I wrote about the street workers program in 2003:

IN SOME WAYS, the street workers seem to face daunting odds. Guns are easy to find in Providence, shots are fired virtually on a nightly basis (even if no one is hurt), and the conditions that influence violent crime — include poverty and longstanding beefs — aren’t easily remedied. Still, after shadowing the street workers in their rounds on two recent nights, it’s hard not to have a sense that they’ve accomplished a lot in a short period of time. Everywhere they go, it seems, they know the players, the terrain, the history, and what’s at stake.

As noted in the ProJo's coverage, the situation is complicated by the foreclosure crisis and by cuts in state-funded social programs.

Teny Gross, the institute’s executive director, said that the Streetworkers Program is the only one in the country that does not receive state or city funding. Instead, it is dependent on grants and private donations.

Gross said that the federal grant money couldn’t come soon enough. He said that the poor economy, foreclosures on homes and budget cuts have created “the perfect storm” for a violent summer.

“The poor need us most when the times are tough,” he said. “The poor need us now.”

A few months ago, Gross and two of the streetworkers traveled to Northern Ireland to work with youths in Belfast. Streetworkers also have testified before Congress about gang violence and two weeks ago the city of Los Angeles called the institute seeking advice for its outreach workers.

From the Jewish Federation of RI:

PROVIDENCE – A car on loan to a young Israeli spending a year in the U.S. on a community service mission was vandalized Thursday night while the woman was participating in a celebration of the Jewish holiday of Purim in Providence’s East Side neighborhood. Nothing was taken from the car, and the damage was limited to a broken window.

 

The incident is the third in less than a week involving Jewish targets in Providence, leading Jewish leaders to urge caution and stepped up security among synagogues, Jewish day schools and agencies.

 

“At this point, we do not know if these incidents are related,” said Marty Cooper, director of community relations and security coordinator for the Jewish Federation of Rhode Island. “But taken together, they are a reminder to our community that we must be vigilant about security and we must look out for one another.”

 

Last Saturday, two firebombs were thrown at the apartment of an Israeli working at the Brown University/Rhode Island School of Design Hillel, and on Wednesday three youths were arrested in connection with a firebombing at a vacant synagogue on Broad Street. The Providence Police Department is investigating both incidents, but has said they do not appear to be related.

 

In Thursday’s incident, Hadas Naki, 18, discovered the damage to her car when she left a Purim celebration at the Providence Hebrew Day School. Naki, who is in the U.S. for a year under the auspices of the Jewish Agency for Israel, works for the Rhode Island Bureau of Jewish Education and lives with a host family in Providence.

 

“We are thankful that Hadas was not hurt and that the Providence Police Department is investigating this vandalism seriously, particularly in light of the previous incidents this week,” said Cooper.

Former Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey says he'd outflank legislative Democrats, if elected governor, by making far more effective use of the bully pulpit than Governor Carcieri. The Republican, who emitted a loud laugh when I noted that he's expected to run for governor in 2010, made the comment during a taping this morning of WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers.

For the record, Laffey told me, off-camera, that he's not ready to divulge his plans for 2010.

Yet in response to my question during our taping, he pointed to how he mobilized citizens during his time as mayor in Cranston, and says that he would do the same thing if he were in the governor's office. The galvanization of the public, he says, would be sufficient to have an impact on the majority Democrats in the General Assembly.

Laffey seemed in campaign-mode, talking up the state's budget problems and quickly changing the subject when I asked about the source of the foreclosure crisis, and whether it's due to a regulatory failure. (He said he could talk all day about the federal government's role in economic bubbles, but turned the subject back to the state.)

Earlier in Governor Carcieri's tenure, it seemed as if his communication skills would help to advance his political agenda. Now, though, the governor appears bogged down and it's open to question if things will improve, particularly with a likely growing amount of staff departures, before he leaves office in 2011. When previously asked on Newsmakers about his inability to outflank legislative Dems, Carcieri has pointed to the paucity of Republicans in the General Assembly.

Also joining Steve Aveson, Arlene Violet, and myself were URI economist Leonard Lardaro, and, in a separate segment, Teny Gross, executive director of the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence. Newsmakers is broadcast Sunday, at 5:30 am on Channel 12 and at 10 am on Fox 64.

In a lighter moment before we began taping, Laffey indicated he got a chuckle out of my recent bit describing his uncanny similarities to muckraker Greg Palast.

You just knew that things were headed in this direction concerning the Central Landfill in Johnston.

Via BeloBlog:

A preliminary audit of activities at Rhode Island’s $70 million trash agency has found possible "irregularities and appearances of impropriety," as well as potential criminal activity warranting further investigation.

The 33-page report, released today by Governor Carcieri, points to ``many apparent relationships and possible conflicts of interest regarding current and former commissioners and employees’’ of the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corp.

Carcieri plans a 1 p.m. press conference.

The auditors, who spent 45 days digging into a host of concerns raised by new executive director Michael O’Connell, recommend a full-scale forensic audit to explore, among other things, unspecified allegations of ``employee theft’’ and ``other activities that might be criminal in nature.’’ The report also raises concerns about payments for services not rendered or services of questionable value, potential state ethics violations and violations of procurement procedures.

Much of the report is devoted to questions about the corporation’s development of a controversial industrial park near Rhode Island’s Central Landfill in Johnston. As a result of slipshod practices, the corporation stands to lose millions of dollars on the project, while taking land off the Johnston tax rolls.

And it singles out former Johnston Mayor William A. Macera, who supported creation of the controversial industrial park while ``members of his own family would benefit through land sales.’’

As part of the continuing clash this week between Channel 6 and the City Hall of Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, WLNE-TV plans to do a story today at 4 and 6, reporting on the letter sent by chief of staff Deb Brayton in response to Jim Hummel's questioning of crime stats compiled by the Providence police.

I talked to Hummel, and he declined to comment on the controversy.

Cicilline, during a taping this morning of Newsmakers, was asked by Steve Aveson whether there should be a review of the PPD's crime data. The mayor responded by repeating many of the points argued in Brayton's letter.

Cicilline had been scheduled to be on Newsmakers a few weeks back, but he rescheduled due to a conflict. He is also slated to appear this weekend on WJAR-TV's 10 News Conference.

Here's the text of a letter sent by City Hall in response to Jim Hummel's Tuesday night report on crime stats in Providence:

February 28, 2008

 

Regent Ducas

News Director

ABC6 WLNE

10 Orms St.

Providence, RI 02904

 

 

Dear Mr. Ducas,

 

I am writing with regard to your February 26, 2008 story about Providence crime statistics as reported by Jim Hummel. I believe it displayed a serious breach of journalistic standards for broadcast news. Very serious accusations were made that undermine the integrity of the men and women of the Providence Police Department. Below are the assertions made in the story, and the reasons why they did not meet the standard.

 

1. Assertion that Providence’s drop in crime is exaggerated

 

Mr. Hummel claims to “cast doubt” that crime is down 30% since 2002 in Providence, but never presented evidence to the contrary. The reporting did not dispute that there were 4,218 fewer incidents of Part I crime in 2007 than in 2002. It only addressed the classification of crime.

 

Mr. Hummel knew, but deliberately chose to leave out, statistics that show a steep drop in crime where a change in classification is impossible – the murder rate and the victim of gunshot rate. From 2002 to 2007, murders dropped 39%. Gunshot victims dropped 45%. 

 

2. Assertion that the Providence Police “downgrade” crimes

 

The Providence Police are devoted to total accuracy in crime reporting and welcome any fair and thoughtful review. Accurate crime data is one of the chief reasons behind the success of the Providence Police. It determines crime prevention strategies. It is critical to knowing exactly where, when, and what kinds of crime have taken place.

 

Mr. Hummel made an insinuation about a department-wide conspiracy based on three incidents (there were roughly 9,821 Part I crime incidents last year). The allegations came from anonymous sources and one former union president, who had made discredited claims against Department leadership in the past.

 

Mr. Hummel knew, but deliberately chose to leave out of the story, the system for reviewing crime classification. Command staff and Lieutenants review classifications in a setting that includes community partners and law enforcement partners.

 

Regularly present at these meetings are the U.S. Attorney, members of the Office of the Attorney General, and FBI officers. Instead Mr. Hummel reported a second-hand rumor about a meeting, and did not report that the PPD contradicts the account.

 

Mr. Hummel knew, but deliberately chose to leave out, dozens of crimes that were “upgraded” in the process of review, including specific cases to which he was given access.

 

Mr. Hummel knew, but deliberately chose to leave out of the story, that after a similar allegation made by two members of the Providence City Council, the PPD asked for a review by the State Police. The State Police review found the data to be accurate.

 

Mr. Hummel knew, but deliberately chose to leave out, the broader context of the three incident reports used in his story.

• One incident involved two well-acquainted individuals who were known drug users and were arguing over $5 worth of crack cocaine. One had a closed pocket knife but was not holding it in a threatening manner. When the officer broke up the altercation, both asked the officer not to press charges. The officer decided to make an arrest under disorderly conduct charges. Mr. Hummel claims that this should have been classified as assault with a dangerous weapon.

• Another incident involved an individual who offered six different versions of a story about a phone being stolen from his vehicle. It was ultimately classified as “person annoyed.” Mr. Hummel believed it should have been differently classified.

• The third incident involved two victims of an attack, who, when questioned, asked that no charges be brought. The officer pushed for a charge. It was ultimately classified as a simple assault.

 

Mr. Hummel knew, but deliberately chose to leave out, that the same sources of many of these allegations also told Mr. Hummel that they “knew about parking ticket fixing” by the Chief of Police.  The Chief presented Mr. Hummel with evidence to completely discredit the source’s allegations. Mr. Hummel still based his story on their other allegations.

 

Mr. Hummel knew, but deliberately chose to leave out, that his single on-the-record source, Robert Paniccia is the former head of the Fraternal Order of Police Union. Mr. Hummel deliberately chose to leave out that Paniccia had a highly adversarial relationship with the Department over many issues.

 

Mr. Hummel deliberately chose to leave out that Mr. Paniccia had falsely claimed that PPD leadership planted a surveillance device in a patrol office in the highly publicized “blinky light” incident.

 

I think you will agree that this story falls far short of the journalistic standards that this community expects. The subject of crime affects everyone in our community: residents, business owners, tourists and prospective investors. I hope you will take appropriate action, including a sincere, on-air apology to the men and women of the Providence Police Department.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Deborah Brayton

Chief of Staff

Office of Mayor David N. Cicilline

 

 

Cc:  Stephen Doerr, Vice President & General Manager, ABC6

      Kevin O’Brien, Owner, Global Broadcasting, LLC

      Robinson Ewert, Owner, Global Broadcasting, LLC

Last night, Channel 6 featured the second installment of Jim Hummel's look at the Providence Police Department, focusing this time of the salary and benefits of Police Chief Dean Esserman. Co-anchor Allison Alexander, in introducing the piece, said she thought a lot of people would be surprised by the information, but, as Matt pointed out yesterday, much of this was reported more than four years ago by Amanda Milkovits in the ProJo:

After a three-hour meeting with Esserman, Cicilline decided he'd found his next chief. He was going to use all he had to get Esserman here.

Cicilline arranged meetings with the state's top law enforcement players. He assured Esserman City Hall wouldn't interfere with the Police Department. He offered a four-year contract, starting at $138,000 (about $50,000 more than previous chiefs made) with $5,000 annual raises. Plus, inclusion in the city pension, which takes 10 years to be fully vested, and a portable pension.

The city would pay travel and living expenses for the first six months. Esserman bought a half-million dollar home on the East Side, and was reimbursed for $5,300 travel and moving expenses and $3,700 closing and house- inspection costs. He was also permitted to bill the city for his outside expenses as chief.

Cicilline also got Esserman a spot as senior law enforcement executive in residence at the Roger Williams University Justice System Training and Research Institute for $30,000 a year. The position in the university's School of Justice Studies is funded by a private grant.

Personally, I think the important question is not so much one of Esserman's pay and benefits, but whether hiring him was a smart decision, and whether he has succeed edin significantly improving what had been a very troubled police department. The answer to those two questions, IMHO, is "Yes."

For a sense of where things were  in 2001, consider this:

Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse is among those who have pressured [Buddy] Cianci to consider outside candidates for the permanent chief's job. "Somebody who is inside the department, as long as they bring an outsider's independence and judgment, can do a good job and will have the additional advantage of knowing the personal and administrative terrain," Whitehouse says. But that's clearly a pretty difficult standard to meet, and, as the prosecutor says, "I think it will get worse before it gets better as the Justice Department inquiry, Plunder Dome, and all those things go forward."

In looking at the best and worst of David Cicilline in 2006, I wrote:

Not that long ago, the Providence Police Department was caught in a dysfunctional cycle that ill-served residents, particularly in poor parts of town, and reflected badly on the department itself. Cicilline moved quickly to make a firm break with the past by choosing Dean Esserman, the kind of outsider needed to bring long-overdue change, as the department’s new chief.

Activists credit Esserman and his emphasis on community policing with dramatically improving how the city and the police are perceived on Providence’s South Side. There remains room for improvement in getting more officers to embrace the spirit of community policing. But one observer goes so far as to say that Esserman’s lack of tolerance for abuse, as well as a number of retirements within the department, have transformed what had been one of the bigger scars in the city into a badge of honor.

Esserman can be short-tempered with the media, a trait that has not endeared him to some. Some cops might not like him because of his untraditional background, or because he changed the status quo. Such things are less important than his achievements in Providence.

Bob Walsh has an acute political sense, so I think he knows about what he speaks, in making this response on Matt's blog yesterday.

Referendum

If the next election for Mayor of Providence turns into a referendum on the police chief, the candidate who vows to keep Chief Esserman in place wins.  It really is as simple as that.

---

by: Bob Walsh @ Wed Feb 27, 2008 at 21:23:39 PM CST

It has become an article of faith for critics of Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline that the Providence Police Department is artificially lowering its crime statistics. Some city councilors have groused about this issue, and WLNE-TV's Jim Hummel last night took a crack at the story. You can find a link to view his report here.

As Hummel notes, Cicilline and Police Chief Dean Esserman have steadily touted declines in crime in recent years, in contrast to trends in other cities. Could this news be too good to be true? It's possible. Viewers of The Wire, created by David Simon, an ace former cop reporter at the Baltimore Sun, are familiar with the machinations used by departmental brass in that show to juice crime stats.

Hummel, who says in his report that he looked "at dozens of incidents," describes three cases that appear to have been undercharged, including the three-year-old assault in downtown Providence on then-Cariceri chief of staff Jeff Grybowski and Jeff Britt. He cites "disturbing trends in crime reporting." Robert Paniccia, the retired head of the FOP, is the only on-the-record source who backs the underreporting theory, although Hummel asserts that in talking to people in the AG's office and the state police, "The word is the same: Providence is not being straight with the numbers." 

Cicilline and Esserman, in interviews with Hummel, basically stand by their existing positions.

In my view, the Channel 6 newsman's report amounts to a case of he said/he said. In introducing the spot, Hummel acknowledges that the answer to the question of whether Providence is playing with its crime stats "depends on who you ask."

Bottom line: It would require a more extensive investigation -- which would be incredibly time-consuming -- to offer a definitive answer to the provocative question raised in his report.

Let's acknowledge a few points:

-- Esserman, because of his volatile personality (which is not that unusual for a police chief), can be his own worst enemy. Yet he has also succeed in significantly improving what had been a highly dysfunctional and behind-the-times police department.  It's no surprise that Buddy Cianci is embracing Hummel's report. But let's remember that in 1999, when community policing had become a widely accepted practice in American police departments, integrating it in Providence remained an odd struggle.

-- Police union officials might indeed have legitimate gripes, but a current or retired FOP official speaking critically of a police chief is about as natural as a dog chasing a cat.

-- Hummel's story, while not exactly the "explosive" report described this morning on WPRO-AM by Cianci, has succeeded in creating some buzz, both within the police department and for Channel 6.

A.T. Wall, director of the state Department of Corrections, says fears about appearing soft on crime help to explain why Rhode Island has struggled to move forward with criminal-justice reforms that could save taxpayer money.

Considering this, it's no surprise that he got a chuckle when I shared, off-camera during a taping this morning of WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers, this well-turned observation from Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox: Elected offcials focus on the three Rs -- revenge, retaliation, and retribution -- because it leads to the fourth R -- reelection.

Be that as it may, Rhode Island has been left in the dust. California, Arizona, and other states have responded to exploding prisons costs by diverting non-violent offenders to drug treatment. Here, though, even with a growing consensus among ACI officials, the General Assembly, and Governor Carcieri about the value of different approaches, moving ahead remains a big challenge. Despite this, Wall said he is hopeful about the outlook for progress.

Tom Mooney has written in the ProJo about Wall's battles with unionized correctional officers at the ACI. When I asked Wall whether unions have undue influence in Rhode Island, he responded by citing the need for the formation of a union when COs at the ACI were facing constant injuries from inmates about 30 years ago. Yet while the officers needed to band together for self-protection at the time, Wall said, they have maintained an outdated siege mentality. "It is time to let go of the old mindset," he said.

The show will be broadcast Sunday, at 5:30 am on WPRI and at 10 am on Fox 64.

Both via BeloBlog:

PROVIDENCE -- Former House Majority Leader Gerard M. Martineau this morning was sentenced to 37 months in prison on corruption charges.

Judge Mary M. Lisi also ordered him to pay a $100,000 fine and serve two years of supervised probation following his release.

He will have to report to a prison to be determined by 2 p.m. March 14.

Martineau, a longtime state representative from Woonsocket, pleaded guilty in November to corruption charges for steering legislation that benefited the CVS drugstore chain and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, with which he had plastic and paper bag contracts worth more than $800,000.

Martineau was sentenced in U.S. District Court, Providence. He faced a maximum of 46 months and a fine of $1.8 million on each count.

Elsewhere:

Former [Lincoln] Town Administrator Jonathan F. Oster, who was convicted yesterday of bribery and conspiracy, is dead, the victim of an apparent suicide, Lincoln Town Administrator T. Joseph Almond said.

Almond gave no other details and said the matter is being handled by State Police.

A Superior Court jury returned its verdict yesterday afternoon, after deliberating less than two days. It found him guilty two counts of bribery and two counts of extortion for actions he took while town administrator from 2000-2002.

From Bruno Uno:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Social activist and educator Angela Davis will deliver the 12th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture at Brown University on Thursday, Feb. 7, 2008, at 4 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101. Her talk, titled “Recognizing Racism in the Era of Neo-Liberalism,” is free and open to the public.

Through her activism and her scholarship in recent decades, Davis is known for her deep involvement in our nation’s quest for social justice. Her work as an educator – both at the university level and in the larger public sphere – emphasizes the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial and gender equality.

Davis has spent the last 15 years at the University of California–Santa Cruz, where she is professor of history of consciousness, an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program, and professor of feminist studies. Her teaching career has also included positions at San Francisco State University, Mills College, UC–Berkeley, UCLA, Vassar, the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford University.

Davis is the author of eight books and has lectured throughout the United States and around the world. In recent years a persistent theme of her work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the early 1970s as a person who spent 18 months in jail and on trial after being placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List.” She has also conducted extensive research on numerous issues related to race, gender and imprisonment. Her most recent books are Abolition Democracy and Are Prisons Obsolete? She is now completing a book on Prisons and American History.

Not that this has much to do with anything, but I've heard Hillary speak twice in person, once in Boston with Marian Wright Edelman when Bill was president, and then when she was in Rhode Island almost 10 years ago, helping, as I wrote at the time, to fan fears about school violence:

Hillary Rodham Clinton smiled frequently and sported a tasteful brown pantsuit when she visited Cumberland High School earlier this week, but she might as well have been wearing a fright mask. Basking in an exuberant reception from hundreds of students gathered in the gym, Hillary quickly set to fanning fears about school violence. "Except for war-torn places around our globe, we are among the most violent of any societies," the first lady intoned. Speaking one week after a 13-year-old was charged with shooting and injuring four classmates at a middle school in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, she added, "Thirteen young people die every day from gunshot wounds." By the time Hillary's rap session ended an hour later, it was hard not to conclude that youth violence is pervasive and getting worse.

In fact, despite the Columbine massacre and the relatively new phenomenon of school shootings, the number of homicides by 14-to-17-year-olds has plummeted in the last six years, according to figures from the Clinton administration's own US Justice Department. And schools -- which have actually gotten less dangerous during the same period -- remain a safer environment for kids than the streets and even their own homes, according to the US Education Department. But you're unlikely to hear Hillary or other candidates acknowledge this reality, because it doesn't serve their political interests.

Although American society is violent, our concern about the impact of gunplay varies sharply with the socioeconomic status of the victims. There were relatively few outpourings of concern by politicians -- and little middle-class hand-wringing -- when the crack epidemic of the late '80s and the widespread availability of handguns sparked an unprecedented level of youth violence in predominantly minority neighborhoods in Providence, Boston and other cities. But Columbine, and the resulting wave of copycat threats, served notice to suburban America that our kids might be in danger.

That's why, even at this early point in the campaign season, making at least a token expression of protest about school violence is a staple for candidates on the stump. Context remains the missing ingredient. As a longtime advocate for children, Hillary surely knows better. But what she failed to mention about the 13 kids who die each day from gunshots is that they typically suffer the violence not in schools, but on the streets of America's poorest neighborhoods.

Darrell West, a professor of political science at Brown University, expects rhetoric about school violence to intensify as the 2000 campaigns get going in earnest. "Everyone wants to talk about school violence," he says. "It's a subject that's very much on the minds of voters, but I haven't seen any spirit of bipartisanship to try to grapple with the issues. Politicians are more interested in scoring political points."

The average observer has good reason to be confused about this situation. Violent crime has dropped sharply through the '90s in most cities, and Americans are less likely to die from gunfire than at any time since the '60s, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in November. But the school shootings that started to erupt in recent years indicate deeper problems in our culture and serve as a blunt reminder of how violence can flare unexpectedly. The disproportionate amount of media attention given to these attacks -- once again, without context -- results in an exaggerated sense of menace and anxiety.

The December 6 shooting in Oklahoma, for example, was the most prominently displayed story the next day on the front of the Providence Journal and scores of other newspapers across the country. Prominently played on the Journal's jump page were a box highlighting nine school shootings since 1997 and a story about the teenage boys who, after assaulting one counselor and tying up another, fled a wilderness camp in Utah for troubled youths. Both stories are legitimate, but without any perspective on the extent of teen violence, the implicit message remains: the youth are out of control.

In reality, the frequency of homicides by 14-to-17-year-olds tripled from 1985 to 1993, from 10 per 10,000 people to 30 per 10,000, before dropping to 18 per 10,000 in 1997, according to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. The overall rate of school-related crime for students, ages 12-18, fell from 164 crimes per 1000 students in 1993 to 128 per 1000 in 1996, according to the Department of Education.

It's telling that a random selection of Cumberland High students who spoke with the Phoenix before Hillary's arrival expressed no concerns about danger at school. "Generally, I think they've done a good job of making the kids feel safe," said Jonathan Sun, a 16-year-old senior, in a typical remark.

For her part, though, the first lady-turned-New York senate candidate tried having it both ways, praising young Americans as "the best young people in the world and probably the best we've ever had." But then she happily picked up the thread when a student paraphrased one of his teachers and anxiously asked, "If schools are this bad now, what will it be like in 10 years?"

If the threat of school violence is really as dire as Hillary suggested, one wonders why her Secret Service detail focused their energy in searching the camera bags of print and broadcast photographers, rather than in screening the students from nine communities who were invited to the carefully choreographed event.

Click here to read the whole thing.

David Simon, the creator of HBO's The Wire -- far and away, the best thing on television -- has lived the fantasy of a lot of reporters by naming one of his less enviable characters for a former newspaper colleague he doesn't much like.

Here's how Margaret Talbot described the situation in an October profile of Simon in the New Yorker:

Evidence of Simon’s feuds often ends up on “The Wire.” In the fourth season, Simon introduced a highly unpleasant supervisor of the major-crimes unit—someone who is more than willing to close down any investigations that might embarrass politicians, and of whom a sergeant says, “He doesn’t cast off talent lightly. He heaves it away with great force.” His name is Marimow.

The real William Marimow, who is now the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, says that he’s baffled and dismayed by Simon’s “obsession” with what went on at the [Baltimore] Sun: “He is as monomaniacal as Captain Ahab pursuing the white whale.” Marimow says that the Sun made great strides in narrative and in-depth journalism—and was acknowledged for doing so in the Columbia Journalism Review and other publications—during the same years that Simon “claims we were destroying it.” He recalls only two conflicts with Simon: one over a raise that Simon wanted, and one over an article that Simon wrote about “metalmen”—people who strip houses of copper piping and sell it. Marimow didn’t like Simon’s use of the word “harvesters” to describe “people who were destroying homes. I thought it glorified them. He disagreed.” Now, Marimow says, “it’s this drumbeat, year after year, of rewriting history.”

With the final season of The Wire set to begin Sunday, this conflict, as well as the new focus on the downsizing of newspapers, has become something of a cause celebre in media circles, getting a fair bit of attention on the industry Web site Romenesko. For example, from the Los Angeles Times:

For many Sun staffers, the anticipation of seeing their paper depicted in "The Wire" is mixed with leeriness about the prospect that it has been colored by Simon's bitterness.

"David left here upset at the way people who were then editors treated him and has made no bones about it," said outgoing associate Editorial Page Editor William Englund, whose wife, Kathy Lally, is one of 10 former Sun employees who appear in cameos this season. "It's not going to be a love letter to the paper, that's for sure."

Simon said as much in a talk he gave in April as part of a Baltimore storytelling series, in which he said he watched Carroll and Marimow "single-handedly destroy the Sun." He described how he named an obnoxious police lieutenant "Marimow" in "The Wire" last season as "a little kick in the ass" and called the series' final focus on media "my fantasy for revenge," indicating that he modeled the top editors in the show after the two men.

Simon now dismisses those remarks as "hyperbole."

"I wouldn't waste 10 hours of HBO programming to settle a particular score with anyone," he said via phone from Johannesburg, South Africa, where he was working on his next HBO project, "Generation Kill," a miniseries about a group of Marines in the 2003 Iraq invasion. (He declined to do publicity for "The Wire" because of the writers strike but agreed to speak about his portrayal of the Sun.)

"The story line reflects the problems that I saw inherent in journalism, and those problems have to do with more than the Baltimore Sun and more than those particular editors," he added.

Still, Simon acknowledged that his frustration with [John] Carroll and Marimow was "one aspect" that inspired the story line, saying: "Every now and then we take a potshot. I'd like to think they're deserved."

I'll just give props to Simon for creating something incredible -- universally described as "novelistic," with remarkably detailed characters and plot lines -- on the small screen.

The Sun's own critic was unimpressed with the new season. Writing in the Phoenix, David Bianculli, however, gives it the thumbs-up:

If you’ve been a Wire fan since the beginning in 2002, you’ll be stunned from the start, just to learn what has happened to some of the characters in the year or so (in their world as well as ours) since we’ve seen them. Some former addicts are straight, while some former teetotalers aren’t. Marlo’s cold-blooded killers, including Felicia “Snoop” Pearson as a particularly ruthless hit woman, are still at large. The mayor tries to avoid being eaten alive by the barracudas surrounding him — and so, on the illegal side of the fence, does drug lord Proposition Joe.

Simon, a former police reporter for the Sun, knows this stuff cold, and it shows. This season of The Wire presents the best, most true-to-life depiction of newsroom journalism and politics since the movie version of All the President’s Men. And though I can’t wait to see the conclusion of this final season, The Wire once again is off to a thrilling start.