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Waiting to begin
Despite improvements, lasting change won't come to the Providence police until after the resolution of allegations of wrongdoing within the department
BY IAN DONNIS

Richard T. Sullivan (Photo by Richard McCaffrey)

The Providence Police Department pulled together a summit last March at the Holiday Inn Downtown in which ranking officers sat down and conversed with 200 community leaders and neighborhood activists from throughout the city. Although this kind of get-together was hardly remarkable after a decade in which community policing became a widely accepted mode throughout the nation, it marked a decided change for the Providence police.

It was hardly coincidental that the summit occurred less than two months after Richard T. Sullivan, a 24-year Providence police veteran, was sworn in as the department's interim chief. Sullivan, who was introduced by Mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr., as "Mr. Accountable," seemed more in tune from the start than Urbano Prignano Jr., his aloof and temperamental predecessor, who exited only after a prolonged series of difficulties and embarrassments, including the surfacing of allegations that some officers cheated on promotional tests or paid for promotions. And for neighborhood groups around Providence, which had long been clamoring for a more robust commitment to the problem-solving philosophy of community policing, it was as if their cries had finally been heard.

Eleven months later, Sullivan continues to get praise for the visibility and accessibility that's he's demonstrated as interim chief, and for moving the department toward some overdue changes. Although city councilors and neighborhood activists criticize the elimination of a separate community policing unit, Sullivan says plans to integrate the approach throughout the department remain in sync with the 18-month schedule that he outlined after becoming chief. As he describes it, the department has already started to embrace the spirit, if not the letter, of community policing. Overall, "I think we're headed in the right direction," Sullivan says. "I don't think we're headed off course."

The interim chief may be right. From his third-floor office in LaSalle Square, which offers a view, across Interstate 95, of the police department's future home, an almost completed public safety complex on Federal Hill, it's tempting to think of a brighter future. Still, to paraphrase Will Rogers, just to be moving in the right direction isn't a guarantee of success. And even in a best-case scenario, the department remains at an early stage of transitioning toward the more responsive brand of policing long sought by residents.

Prignano's exit was forced by a parallel situation: a growing public sense, exemplified by charges that an officer assaulted a downtown parking lot attendant in December 2000, that some cops were out of control (in December 2001, a jury found Officer Peter E. Flynn innocent of two felony counts of assault and convicted him on two misdemeanor charges), and anger within the department's rank-and-file about the allegations -- which came up during the federal probe of municipal corruption in Providence -- that promotions may have been linked to payments or other illicit actions.

Although the department has come to be perceived more favorably on Sullivan's watch, the resolution of these allegations, which remains the subject of departmental and state investigations, can't come soon enough for many officers. Even the promise of a new home to replace the department's dingy 62-year-old headquarters seems trivial in comparison to the battering that morale has taken in the interim.

As put somewhat blandly by Public Safety Commissioner John Partington, a former US marshal who oversees the police and fire departments as a civilian, "A number of things are not under normal conditions in the city." Yet Partington, who says the police get insufficient credit for their day-to-day efforts, notes that the department is young -- 64 percent of the department's 469 officers have 14 or fewer years on the force -- and he believes that time is on their side. "As far as the future of the department," he says, "I want to get the word to the youngsters -- it's yours to have."

Still, the tough sledding remains to be done. Police departments, under the best of circumstances, tend to be bureaucratic and highly resistant to change. It's even more difficult for an interim chief like Sullivan, who, rather than being able to select his own top commanders, inherited the command staff and the corresponding culture of his predecessor. With a search committee leading the process to select three finalists for the permanent chief's position, it also remains to be seen whether Cianci will select Sullivan -- the only one of 10 candidates to be identified thus far -- for the job within the next month or two. In effect, despite the interim chief's best efforts, the department remains largely in a holding pattern.

From a distance, it would seem that Sullivan, 49, has an advantage in landing the permanent job, particularly because of the lengthy search process and since out-of-town candidates don't have the same opportunity to locally strut their stuff. As put by City Council President John J. Lombardi, who assesses the interim chief's tenure with a B-, "I think it's Colonel Sullivan's to lose. I think he's really had some opportunities to stand out on some issues." Other observers, however, point to ongoing morale problems within the department and rancor over the community policing program in predicting a different outcome. "I would say that the scales are tipped against him right now," says one source.

The challenge of moving the department forward only gets more daunting with the unresolved allegations that some officers bought jobs or cheated their way into them. As a practice, Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse doesn't comment on the status of investigations being conducted by his office, but he's not shy in dissecting the impact of the related charges: "When young officers in the Providence Police Department look up to their senior officer, to the extent that they question whether they got there by bribery or cheating, that's hardly conducive to having confidence in the command structure."

Sullivan has built a measure of goodwill since starting as interim chief in February 2001, and even the department's most vociferous critics give him some credit. In October, a Brown University survey showed that 56 percent of city residents think the police are doing a good or excellent job, with minorities rating the department more favorably than whites -- a finding that might reflect the higher prestige associated with law enforcement in the aftermath of September 11.

Still, Sullivan was caught by surprise when the department was found to be failing to comply with a state-mandated racial profiling study, and as a result, the department faced a lawsuit from the unlikely pairing of the attorney general's office with the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

It's this kind of mix that Steven Brown, executive director of the local ACLU chapter, thinks of as he assesses Sullivan's time as the city's top cop. When it comes to significant change, "it's something that one has to look beyond a year to see progress," Brown says. "I can't really say whether there is a glacial change taking place through the colonel's leadership -- I don't know. He's said many of the right things, but the difficulties in ensuring compliance with the DWB [Driving While Black legislation] and continued complaints from the minority community about police misconduct generally demonstrate that there's still a long way to go. I'm not sure anyone could address those types of entrenched problems in a year. The question is, has he laid the groundwork to changing the culture? That's the real question."

SULLIVAN SEEMED to recognize a relatively narrow window of opportunity when he got the nod to lead the department, and he quickly set to work, immersing himself in community meetings and other opportunities to interact with the public. From the start of his administration, the interim chief says, he targeted communication, both internally, to assess the concerns of officers and let them know "it wasn't a top-down management," and externally, to try to reduce the sense of distrust among some parts of the community and the police. The March 2001 summit at the Holiday Inn Downtown, in which ranking officers shared tables with community activists, was part of this outreach.

Intense and with more than a trace of the military bearing left over from his hitch in the Army, Sullivan has spent almost all of his working life with the Providence police. The native of South Providence's Glenham Street nonetheless indicated early in his tenure as interim chief that he'd leave to become a history teacher if he doesn't get the permanent position.

During the summit, captains and lieutenants were introduced as liaison officers, their names, pager numbers, and areas of responsibility were made available, and the nine lieutenants in the patrol bureau were given subsequent responsibility to remain in weekly contact with leaders of neighborhood watches and similar groups. Some of these ideas were borrowed from Boston and other communities that have been in the forefront of building stronger ties between police and neighborhood leaders.

Details on problems in particular neighborhoods were sent through the chain of command, and police acted as brokers, Sullivan says, to attract help from the department of public works or other city departments. "If there was something we picked up at a meeting, we didn't keep it to ourselves," Sullivan says, and after being identified, problems were routinely checked at periodic intervals. "I think we've had pretty good success," he says.

But although Sullivan gets kudos for his presence in the community, the jury remains out in the minds of neighborhood activists on the effectiveness of his tactics.

Dorothy McCaffrey, a member of Concerned Citizens of Mount Pleasant, credits Sullivan with doing a good job, but not without reservation. "He's at all the neighborhood meetings, and he tries to answer all the questions. I know I could pick up the phone at any time and call the chief, and so could any other neighborhood group." Still, McCaffrey, like many other community activists, misses the kind of focused presence that came with the department's previous community policing effort. "It was really working where we could notice the difference and then they stopped," she says.

Sullivan represents progress, says Shakira Abdullah, a board member of the activist group Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), but his approach has yet to permeate the department. "As much as I feel that Colonel Sullivan has come out to community meetings and listened to things that people have said, I feel that the problems here are not problems that can be changed overnight or by one man. He is at the top and a lot of our problems exist with people who tend to enforce the law at the bottom. We don't have very many interactions with them."

The Reverend Marlowe V.N. Washington, president of the Ministers' Alliance of Rhode Island, says Sullivan has started the process of change, although he feels that South Providence, where much of the city's violent crime occurs, continues to suffer from a lack of adequate police coverage. Sullivan credits an ad hoc task force with helping to squelch shootings last summer in Mount Hope and the South Side, but Washington laments the fact that downtown, not the South Side, is the focus of ongoing task force. "If New York City can do it, why can't we?" asks Washington, referring to the way in which innovative police tactics helped to dramatically reduce crime in that city in the '90s. "To me, it goes back to civic leadership. We're using the wrong methods."

For all the gains that Providence made during the '90s, other observers echo Washington's view that the police continue to practice an antiquated style of policing and aren't responsive enough in solving problems. One community activist, who requested anonymity, feels that the department hasn't matched the demonstrated desire of a motivated core of residents to work together in reducing crime. And while it might make sense to replace the separate community policing unit with a more integrated approach, "It's never been very clearly spelled out how they're going to do these things that were done by community police," the activist says.

There's no shortage of other important needs, including an absence of minority officers above the rank of sergeant with Major Cornel Young Sr. on leave due to an illness, although the city has prioritized hiring women and minorities among new recruits. When it comes to the internal review process, Sullivan believes it can work and a backlog of complaints has been reduced under his leadership. Critics, however, feel the internal process is fundamentally flawed, and they continue to put their hope in a civilian review proposal that has made halting progress, despite some strong support, since being introduced last year in the city council.

Although it would be unrealistic for these concerns to be cleared within a year, the unmistakable presence of uniformed officers at Flynn's trial struck some observers as a thinly veiled form of old-school intimidation. Sullivan says he would look at such situations on a case-by-case basis, but in this instance, he says, "the judge didn't have a problem with it. He questioned the jury if they had a problem, and they said, `No.' " It seems questionable, though, whether jurors would indicate discomfort in such a case even if they felt it.

When it comes to the future, Sullivan says, every officer in the department underwent training in community policing in July, but that the department will be insufficiently staffed to implement the approach until 45 new officers are slated to go on the job in late summer. "We said we would not be able to commit ourselves to the program for 18 months," he says. "Eighteen months will be in August and we're on schedule." With more formalized standards being used in the hiring of new officers, it also takes considerable time to select them through a complex, multi-step progress. "It's not like putting an application out and you can start three months later," Sullivan says.

Lombardi, the council president, like many of his colleagues, remains impatient about the addition of new officers, citing the way in which money for the additional personnel was allocated two years ago, after the carjacking slayings of college students Amy Shute and Jason Burgeson. "Right now, I think what we really need to do is to decide once and for all who's going to be the police chief," Lombardi says, and then get the department fully staffed. While the new public safety complex represents a symbol of potential rejuvenation for the department, "Many of the council members are frustrated, upset, and, I think, justifiably upset," because of concerns about crime in less affluent neighborhoods and slow response times by police.

Michael Marcoccio, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, didn't return calls seeking comment, but it's no secret that the rank and file is still waiting for a shoe to drop when it comes to the state investigation of the police department. State Representative David N. Cicilline (D-Providence) took up the topic of internal dissatisfaction -- as well as concerns about neglected neighborhoods -- in formally unveiling the start of his challenge to Cianci on Monday, February 11. "Recently, I spoke to a police officer [who] talked about how demoralized he felt," Cicilline said during his announcement at the Webster Avenue School in Providence's Silver Lake section. "Despite the fact that he was qualified, worked hard and played by the rules, he knew he would not be promoted because of his lack of political influence."

One veteran observer of law enforcement lays part of the blame for problems within the police department on Cianci, whose trial on federal racketeering charges is scheduled to start in April. Although Sullivan has done a strong job in getting into the community, "I think the problem still is that City Hall has far too much input into policy and until that stops some of these [morale] problems are going to continue to exist," the source says.

Partington, the public safety commissioner, however, dismisses suggestions of Cianci's influence as "a myth." Asked how much influence the mayor has within the department, Sullivan says, "I would say none. He's the mayor. The mayor doesn't call me to say, `We need to do this, We need to do that,' no. He just wants to be aware."

For his part, Cianci offers characteristic support for the police, and he denies interfering in so much as the search being led by a diverse 18-member panel for the new chief. "The air needs to be cleared and I hope it is cleared," Cianci says. "If there is anything [wrong] going on over there, it ought to be ferreted out." On the whole, he says, "I have nothing but confidence and faith that it's a good police department."

THE PHYSICAL DANGERS of being a Providence police officer were made extremely clear when a mob attacked and injured Officer Sean Carroll after he responded to a January 17 shooting on Weybosset Street in downtown Providence. The assault restarted the debate about two nearby pizzerias, Saki's and Pizza Queen, that had been operating until 4 a.m., and Cianci briefly closed them before they reopened and scaled back their closing times to 2 a.m. There's no doubt that policing, done well, is truly heroic, and Sullivan picks up a related point in emphasizing a bottom line made all the clearer by September 11. Referring to the selfless bravery demonstrated by the police officers, firefighters, and EMTs who raced to their deaths inside the World Trade Center, he says, "That's what a police officer does. That will never change."

And yet some observers, like Lombardi and Providence Journal columnist David Brussat, question how the long-running problems associated with late-night crowds loitering near Saki's Pizza on Weybosset Street, have remained fundamentally unsolved after ebbing and flowing for more than 10 years. In the same way, it was telling that Superior Court Judge Stephen Fortunato, in backing the right of Saki's to remain open until the License Board makes a decision, encouraged Cianci to take some tips from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who presided over that city's celebrated reinvention of policing.

There's no denying that the Providence police have a particularly difficult job. The capital city, with a fraction of the state's population, has more than its share of the mayhem. It's equally true, though, that the citizens of the city deserve a department of responsive officers and forward looking leaders who exercise creative thinking and the best spirit of public service in doing their jobs.

As Brussat noted in a February 7 column, there's a corollary between the Weybosset Street situation and the difficulties associated with Providence nightlife that have led police and others to support the concept in recent years of banning 18-to-21 year olds from bars and clubs. Sullivan still believes this ban would go a long way to reducing problems, and he says the department lacks the number of officers necessary to impose a zero-tolerance approach to the problems associated with nightlife. There's no doubt that there's far more nightlife in Providence than there was 30 years ago, and this is part of the city's enhanced appeal. This expansion, though, has yet to be matched by a sufficient amount of administrative attention. So it goes, it often seems, as the Mobius strip of unsolved problems comes around again.

Richard Sullivan deserves credit for bringing some positive changes to the police department, but much more remains to be done. If we're lucky, the difficulties of recent years will one day be viewed in hindsight as a turning point.

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com..

Issue Date: February 15 - 21, 2002