Thursday, February 28, 2008

A PRELIMINARY RESPONSE TO MS. BRAYTON AND HER BOSS; AN EXERCISE IN LOGIC

An initial attempt to respond to Ms. Brayton, whose original letter copy is enclosed in quotes.

"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."

-- Wrong. This is a tired rhetorical trick. Mr. Hummel's accusations undermine the integrity of a small group of officers and their civilian overseers -- and by definition supports the rest of the 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."

-- Correct -- it only addressed issues related to classification. So don't try to set up a straw man by stating the obvious with an air of discovery, not to metion with the intention to confuse.

"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%."

-- Correct. Mr. Hummel was not interested in discussing statistics that were immune to manipulation. Ms. Brayton, you cite them, non sequitur, in order to prejudice your response.

"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."

-- Now that's reassuring. Let's all agree to take you up on the offer.

"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."

-- Again, Mr. Hummel did not charge an entire police department with manipulation of statistics, but only a small percentage of that force plus its civilian overseers. Stop trying to play the conspiracy card, which you deal as part of an ad hominem attack on Mr. Hummel.

"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."

-- Apparently not always.

"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."

-- "Apparently not always. And do you seriously expect Mr. Hummel to state the obvious: 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."

-- Well by all means share those "upgrade" statistics, Ms. Brayton - perhaps within the context of your aforementioned and endorsed "fair and thoughtful review." And by the way, I'd add "impartial" to that list of adjectives.

"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."

-- Irrelevant to this discussion. We are at a different point in time, and allegations are being made by different individuals.

"Mr. Hummel knew, but deliberately chose to leave out, the broader context of the three incident reports used in his story. (descriptions omitted; see Ms. Brayton's original statement for details)"

-- Fine. Let's let the proposed review panel decide on the issue of context.

"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."

-- So it's once wrong, always wrong, is it? Are you prepared to hold your boss to that standard?

"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."

-- Ms. Brayton, your union-bashing genes are showing. Your anti-organized labor stance is in keeping with that of your boss, and we would expect nothing less from you.

"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."

-- My recollection is that the device originally was unidentified and deemed suspicious. Surely you are not claiming that Mr. Paniccia deliberately filed a false claim. Or are you? If so, please be specific rather than simply appear to be libelous.

"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."

-- I think you will agree that the "pass" given your boss by self-styled journalists in this town is despicable. Wait a minute ... no you won't. But I suggest that you get used to this sort of thing, for your Emperor is, not to put too fine a point on it, bare-ass, and he no longer can intimidate anyone of substance to compliment him on his wardrobe. As for an apology owed to the "men and women of the Providence Police Department: When will your boss draft one?

*****

So much for Ms. Brayton. Let's conclude with a bit of logic:

If Jim Hummel's report is sound, then ...

An unaware Col. Dean Esserman either has presided over a Police Department whose officers wilfully manipulate data to project a false decrease in violent crime in Providence, in which case he is incompetent and should be fired, or ...

Col. Esserman is complicit in the manipulation, in which case he is at best an untrustworthy public servant and at worst a felon and should be fired, and/or ...

Mayor David Cicilline is ignorant of the manipulation, in which case he is incompetent and should be recalled, or ...

Mayor Cicilline is aware of the manipulation and has not stopped it, in which case he is an accessory to the act and should be recalled, or ...

Mayor Cicilline is an active participant in the manipulation, in which case he is at best an untrustworthy public servant and at worst a felon and should be recalled.

So there are two, and to my mind ONLY two, ways to get to the truth:

1. Take Cicilline's "word."

2. Empower a truly independent investigative body to provide answers quickly, authoritatively, and substantively.

Of course, should you lean toward number 1, you might also continue to accept George Bush's word that there WERE SO WMD in Iraq.

The star of the Fat Sissy and Chief Quarter Mil is rapidly falling and all the "bend over" putative Journalism from Providence dailies and weeklies ain't going to change that.
85 murders under Chief Quarter Mil. More by far than the rest of the state COMBINED even though Providence has less than 16% of the state's population. Disgracefull.

I cannot have an intelligent opinion on the issue of crime reporting because i don't have all the facts and they are difficult to determine in such a subjective situation as classifying a specific incident.
However the segment on the Chief's compensation package was very enlightening and contained enough comparative information to be raise serious questions about the amount of money being spent by both taxpayers and a private institution on this individual.
I have two serious complaints about Esserman's policies-first the "Lucky Seven" matter which involved the circumvention of the criminal justice system in the case of seven drug dealers operating in the Lockwood area.At the behest of the Urban League in the person of Dennis Langley this specific group of seven African-American males from a very limited geographic area in the city were afforded treatment not available to anyone else-if they were deserving of a second chance there are two mechanisms that could have been employed in the judicial system-deferred sentencing and/or pretrial diversion,both of which would involve a decision by a judicial officer based on individual factors in each case.What was done in fact set up a special class which an attorney for a defendant not in this very limited group could use as the basis for a violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
The second issue I recall was that the Chief supported the Almeida-Perry Bill last year which would have effectively prevented the police and ICE from cooperating-this abominable bill,which I testified against was opposed by every other Chief in the state.Something tells me that Esserman is not right when almost 40 other individuals in his position oppose him on this issue.
The Chief's demeanor in the second interview with Hummel was arrogant and quite frankly smartass,which is unbecoming his office.
Lastly,this Chief never served on the street as a rank and file officer of any kind,which in my opinion,after serving 21 years on the street,makes him unfit for the position by virtue of the fact that he cannot understand the people he commands.

Esserman Fudges and Cicilline Lies


The recent disclosure of Police Chief Dean Esserman’s falsifying crime data from the City of Providence as reported by ABC6 may have come as a big surprise to many in the state, but for Providence police officers and firefighters this was old news. We are the ones who patrol the streets of the capitol city day and night – each and every day. We are the ones who respond to the aftermath of violent crime on our streets. We see the evidence that violent and serious crime has not dropped in the manner the statistics ‘seem’ to show – in fact I seriously doubt that it has dropped at all since Chief Esserman has taken command of the Providence Police Department.

Who can really say? We have no credible numbers either way. The Chief himself has seen to that. From day one his mission has been to ‘show’ that crime is down as the result of his leadership. It didn’t really matter to him if the numbers were true or not – only that the perception and the ‘statistics’ were accepted as the truth.

I have spent many nights at the scene of a violent crime talking to other firefighters and police officers. If it has been a fairly busy time period for these types of crimes, inevitably the conversation turns to the Chief. “Colonel Esserman is gonna be pissed Monday morning,” someone would say. We all understood what that meant. The Colonel just didn’t accept bad numbers when it came to serious crime. ‘Someone’ was going to have to make them go away. His contract with the city and his resume for prospective jobs after Providence depended on the statistics showing a drop in the crime rate - motive. This is what he knows – pushing papers and compiling reports. If he had ever worked a beat on the streets as a ‘real’ cop, the ‘real’ crime rate would be important to him. He has not.

For Mayor Cicilline to state that he had never heard that the Providence Police Department’s numbers on the drop in violent crime were inaccurate is either a downright lie or he is a worse administrator than even I had believed. In my opinion Mayor Cicilline was complicit in the falsifying of the official statistics. He had much to gain by having the reports show that crime was on the decline in the city. He had much to lose if the crime rate rose.

By spouting the declining crime rate he justified the exorbitant salary he was paying Esserman and he could use these statistics to lure commerce into the city. Surely, if the crime rate rose (or didn’t decline enough) he would be held to task by the Providence City Council, and ultimately the voters, for paying the Colonel more than twice the amount of money that any other previous Providence Police Chief. Mayor Cicilline has motive to lie about the statistics and to deny any knowledge of tampering with the numbers. He also has motive to stand behind Colonel Esserman at this point. It could only hurt him to waver in his commitment to such a high-priced administrator. If a scandal on this issue takes the Chief down, the mayor can assert that he has been bilked also. The problem with this, however, is that (as ABC6 reported) the Colonel’s contract would force the city to pay Esserman an exorbitant buyout. This contract was negotiated by the mayor.

The anti-corruption, honest government administration of David Cicilline has only begun to show some of the cracks in its foundation. Mismanagement of the school department by the only present member of Cicilline’s administration who earns more than Esserman, Superintendent Evans, has shown itself in the recent test scores of Providence school children. The Mayor, the Police Chief and the Superintendent were equally responsible for the fiasco in December regarding the school buses stuck in the snow. Instead of taking responsibility for their actions (or lack thereof), the Mayor found a scapegoat who was not one of his ‘inner’ circle – the EMA Director. Business as usual in the Cicilline Administration.


Lt. Tom Kenney
Providence Fire Department

I know first hand that this is BS the reason the crime rate has dropped is because the Providence Police do NOT make police reports know wonder the rate is low or they charge someone with a lower crime or let them go. I know this first hand my husband and 15 month old at the time were assaulted by scumbag family members they busted our mirrors to our automobile tried to get into it and pulled out a gun my husband had no where to go seeing they stopped there auto mobile in front of ours there were cars in back of him and traffic traveling in the opposite direction he drove up on the sidewalk and street to make sure our baby would not get shot striking two of them. He went to the Providence Police Station and was told to wait he waited over 45 minutes He was arrested and they went free one sargent said don't worry it was self- defense the detectives never even spoke to my husband or me even though I called the detective everyday and left messages to see how the investigation was going finally he called me and said the investigation is over ( the same day) there never was one they finger printed our auto mobile which there prints were all over it but the Providence Police said they Lost them how convenient My baby could of been killed and they did not care to make a long story short my husband received 10 years on a probation violation (32f) where is the JUSTICE???

Now to continue 6 months later I went to pay my rent with three of my younger children ages 21 months,5 years old and one day short of being 12 while I was parked getting the money order out my scumbag in laws started bagging on my auto mobile calling me a snitch and surrounded it my scumbag mother in law (which is not my husband mother she is five years older than us) handed my sister in law a knife to try to stab me my brother in law said I was going die and its coming soon no one even helped us mind you this is on a busy Providence street people were watching as if it was t.v show. I'm on my horn blowing it at yelling for help and trying to keep a eye on my children and them at the same time I did have a cell phone but I couldn't remember 911's number which I'll never forgive myself for that. Finally one person came out of the building and they left. I called the police my children were crying and scared the police took a half hour to get there. The police report says threats and they are still not arrested well my children are all in counseling my baby has P.T.S.D my five year old has depression,anxiety,nightmares,separation disorder and anger. My 12 year old has a lot of Anger gee I wonder why. Now where is the justice once again none. The Providence Police are doing such a great job explain that to my children. I can't even put a restraining order on these scumbags they move to much. Maybe the police will do there job when they kill my children or me but then again we are talking about Providence Police they are useless and inept.