Providence Mayor Cicilline wanted the best and he was willing to pay for it. Police Chief Dean Esserman’s total oackage, including a teaching job, comes to nearly $200,000 a year.
BY Amanda Milkovits, Providence (R.I.) Journal
PROVIDENCE -- Dean M. Esserman was hired to run a place where everything had gone wrong.
He didn’t have much time to prove he could get it right.
Some said the Providence Police Department was dysfunctional. The community didn’t trust the police. The police didn’t trust each other. The largest police force in the state had a reputation for being in the back pocket of City Hall.
Esserman was walking in into a place where allegiances are everything.
On Jan. 10, last year, sun shone through the glass atrium, creating shadows across the second floor of the Providence Public Safety Complex. Esserman’s youngest son, Sammy, and daughter, Nellie-June, and oldest, Rolando, shifted in their seats. His former colleagues had driven hours to witness his swearing-in. Local politicians and high-ranking officials watched from front seats.
Esserman was looking at the Providence cops when the mayor introduced him as “the best police chief in America.” Most stood at the back. Some folded their arms.
They’d heard about him. Some had read articles and found books on policing that included his name. They knew he wasn’t like the chiefs before him. Ivy League-educated. A son of privilege. A New Yorker. And his resume showed a trajectile climb.
He was the fourth chief in two years. The mayor said he would turn around the department, end corruption and raise morale.
Esserman began by telling the officers that “he loved cops.” He believed in them.
They listened.
He told them he didn’t want the department to betray them anymore. He didn’t know the half of it, some thought.
He seemed to draw back into his prosecutorial days of wooing a jury.
He said he wanted them “to love their department again.”
Some of the officers hoped he meant what he said. Others wondered how long he’d last.
Esserman knew the officers along the wall were judging him. But he didn’t see everyone. Behind him to his left, the men in his new command staff stared sullenly at him.
RELATIONSHIPS and alliances within the Providence Police Department are pivotal. Many of the cops have grown up together. Some patrol their old neighborhoods.
Esserman, 46, may as well have beenfrom another world. He’s from the Upper East Side of Manhattan. His father, Dr. Paul Esserman, was a well-loved physician who counted among his patients the writers Tom Wolfe and Isaac Asimov, and ambassador Huang Hua of the People’s Republic of China. The doctor brought the family each summer to Third World countries giving medical aid to the poor.
His mother, June Esserman, was a child psychologist. When he was 12, two bigger kids had rubbed a lit cigarette in Esserman’s left hand and grabbed his gold Schwynn bicycle away from him in Central Park.
Esserman told his mother. Run at me, she replied. He did, and she flipped him over her shoulder. He stopped thinking about being a victim. He took judo lessons, earned a first-degree black belt, and became an instructor in college and law school.
In judo, you have to believe you can beat your opponent. You cannot drop your guard. You think strategy, technique, take your opponent’s anger and energy and use it against him. Evidence of a broken nose shows Esserman’s past miscalculations.
HE THOUGHT he’d be a doctor. At the Fieldston School of the Ethical Culture Schools, where students are required to take internships, Esserman, then 16, applied to work on an ambulance. It was the first time he’d met any police officers.
Three years later at Dartmouth College, Esserman interned with the New York City Transit Police and started a medical rescue unit. He wrote a grant, got certified as an instructor, and then trained two dozen transit officers in medical rescue.
Eventually, Esserman decided to be a prosecutor. He’d work with cops. He graduated from New York University School of Law, interned with the Police Executive Research Forum, and got a job as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn. He later became general counsel to the New York Transit Police. That’s where he began dating his future wife, detective Gilda Hernandez, and where he met Chief William Bratton, his mentor.
Bratton, who later became commissioner in Boston and in New York City and now is chief in Los Angeles, gained fame for turning around troubled police departments and reducing crime.
His mantra: Work with the community to prevent and solve crimes. Put more cops on the streets. Go after the causes of fear, crime and disorder. Plan strategies by mapping out crime statistics.
When Bratton became New York City police commissioner, he put Esserman on his transition team to focus on corruption issues. Esserman was then assistant chief in New Haven, Conn. He later became chief of the Metro-North Police in New York, and then chief in Stamford, Conn. Crime dropped overall.
As an outsider, he wasn’t bound by tradition. He saw cops as social workers, teachers, and leaders. Part of that thinking reflects the evolution of policing. Esserman sees police work as a form of social justice. He keeps a copy of the U.S. Constitution with him and gives copies to the cops.
“In many ways,” Esserman said, “the battle for the nation’s soul is going to be won on the streets, whether we can learn to live together, whether we can live without fear, where we have to share parks and sidewalks and schools, and the most visible forum of the government is the uniformed police officer.”
The social justice side comes from his father. His mother taught him to fight.
PEOPLE on the street dubbed Providence cops “Buddy’s Boys.”
It didn’t matter who the cop was. They were all seen as part of former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr.'s clubhouse -- with favors, promotions and special treatment dealt to those who contributed to his campaign.
By the late 1990s, federal agents investigating Cianci under Operation Plunder Dome looked into the Police Department. A woman said she paid $5,000 to get her son into the police academy. Evidence the police seized, including cars, drugs, jewelry, and stereo equipment, were missing. A scandal over cheating on promotional exams was surfacing.
During the Plunder Dome trial in May 2002, retired Chief Urbano Prignano Jr. testified under immunity that he’d helped some officers cheat on their promotional exams.
Nothing came of it. A statewide grand jury came up empty. So did two investigations under previous police administrations.
The union vetoed promotion tests for sergeant, lieutenant or captain until the scandal was resolved. The controversy has been a bitter issue in the department. Those who’d missed getting promoted wondered whetherthey’d been squeezed out by cheaters.
Regarding race relations, the department barely participated in a statewide racial-profiling study requiring all police to keep traffic-stop statistics to determine whether minorities were being stopped disproportionally. The ACLU sued the department and won a court order forcing the Providence police to comply fully.
Meanwhile, the department was still dealing with the shooting of off-duty Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. by two fellow officers in January 2000. Young was black and the son of the department’s highest-ranking minority; the officers were white. Both were cleared of criminal wrongdoing, but the tragedy prompted a public outcry and a federal lawsuit by Young’s mother.
City Councilwoman Balbina A. Young called the police “murderers.” Investigators from the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division launched an ongoing inquiry into the department. A local and statewide commission studied the department for ways to professionalize the force.
The Police Department drew itself into a cocoon.
With few exceptions, the police haven’t worked with outsiders. Not the Department of Corrections, where 40 percent of the inmates and many of the people released on probation are from Providence. Not the state police. Not with federal law enforcement. Not with the private security guards in the city, the colleges, nor the faith or community leaders or social service agencies.
From the Providence police, the message was clear: We know our streets, our neighborhoods, our criminals and we don’t need you.
Keeping its business inside its walls bred favoritism and cliques, say many interviewed for this article. There were other morale spoilers. Paychecks were tossed into a pile on a desk, open for anyone to see. Jobs were handed out and vacancies filled without notice -- even to the supervisors. New managers weren’t given training as supervisors . Dedication and hard work were overshadowed by scandal.
There was no stability at the top. The last permanent chief was Prignano, who left in January 2001 under pressure over allegations of police misconduct, misplaced evidence, and the promotions cheating. Acting chief Richard T. Sullivan was hastily appointed by Cianci and demoted 18 months later by acting Mayor John J. Lombardi, who promoted Maj. Guido A. Laorenza to chief. Three chiefs. Twenty months.
“Nothing was going on the way it was supposed to,” said Patrolman Clarence Gough. “The guys felt no support in their house [the station], no support from the City Council, and no support in the community. . . . Then you lay on favoritism, the testing scandal, and on top of that, the community hated you.”
MONTHS BEFORE taking the mayor’s office, David N. Cicilline knew he had problems in the Police Department.
He’d heard complaints all through his campaign. People said the police were unresponsive. They said they didn’t trust the cops.
The cops didn’t trust the administration, at City Hall or within their own department. Their biggest concern was the testing scandal. No reforms were going to work until it was resolved.
“It’s one place that’s an example of the worst Providence endured in corruption of the public trust,” Cicilline said. “There was admitted wrongdoing of a police chief. . . . and the badly demoralized men and women of the department deserved something better.”
Cicilline wanted a chief to turn around the department, bring in community policing and resolve the testing scandal. His volunteer consultant on law enforcement, Andy Rosenzweig, encouraged him to ask Esserman for advice.
Rosenzweig, of Newport, is a retired New York City detective lieutenant and former chief investigator of the Manhattan district attorney’s office. He and Esserman knew each other from working on Bratton’s transition team in New York City and in Bratton’s consulting company.
Esserman had left Stamford after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to work for Thacher Associates safeguarding the demolition and construction work at Ground Zero. He was a federal monitor for the troubled Police Department in Wallkill, N.Y., and consulting for the Brown University police.
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.
Cicilline set up a meeting between Esserman and the investigators behind Operation Plunder Dome -- FBI Special Agent W. Dennis Aiken and prosecutor Richard Rose. Esserman asked about the police: Were they ready for a change?
Aiken “looked at me and said, ‘There are good policemen here, and they need to be led out of where they are,” Esserman recalled.
ONE OF THE FIRST things Esserman did was to hire Rosenzweig as a consultant. Rosenzweig has the street-cop experience Esserman lacks.
Esserman “wasn’t welcomed with open arms. As a career Providence policeman, you want to see one of your own rise to the top of the ranks,” detective Maj. Paul Kennedy said. “But I absolutely know no one in this position could have acceeded to the top of the rank and do the job he’s done. No one. Not me. Not anyone. We’d reached a point in our history where we needed someone from the outside to come in.”
There was no sense of job security, one lieutenant said, just the realization that everyone had a short window of time “to get in the game.” The beginning was a “feeling-out process” on both sides, said Kennedy, one of a few people whom Esserman promoted last summer.
Esserman called the old department “The King’s Army.”
“People were promoted because of loyalty and money, which infected the ranks of those who weren’t. People were hired who shouldn’t have been, which affected the ranks of those who deservedly got in. People were raised not on a merit system,” Esserman said, “and in time, there became a sense of ‘this movie is never going to end.’ ”
He turned on his prosecutorial glare more than the charm. He stomped on toes and snapped at people. “He came in with an attitude that we’re all corrupt,” said Sgt. Robert Paniccia, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 3. “I think he believes this union is part of that corruption, and I don’t think he was aware of how strong this union was. But his philosophy is ready, shoot, aim.”
People groused. Some mourned the old days. Others didn’t.
“He was treated with some apprehension. His personality didn’t help that situation, because he is a strong-minded individual who tends to know exactly what he wants to do and how it’s going to be done,” said Patrolman Gregory Bolden. “A lot of people weren’t ready for that, but we needed that. We needed the direction. . . . We needed a clear-cut mission: Where are we going? What are our goals?”
THE NEW CHIEF has a quote from Attila the Hun taped in his bathroom: “Chieftains make great personal sacrifices for the good of their Huns.”
At headquarters, Esserman knew his actions would matter more than his words.
He assigned a team of respected detectives to investigate the testing scandal. He worked long hours and greeted police officers on the streets. He demanded to be called for every shooting, and he’d go to the hospital to see the victims and talk to the cops investigating the crimes.
Veteran cops, who could count on one hand the number of times they saw past police chiefs, were seeing Esserman everywhere. He praised them. He asked them what they thought the department needed -- and he found a way to get them equipment, training, and grants for manpower overtime.
“He made us feel we were an important part of the restructuring of the department, as opposed to being an afterthought,” said Gough, an investigator in the domestic violence unit.
Within a few months, most of his immediate command staff had either retired or stepped down. He appointed two lieutenants as majors and promoted a sergeant to inspector of internal affairs. And he named Rosenzweig deputy chief.
Job transfers were now posted, and officers had to apply. He started a field-training officer program, having veteran cops certified through Roger Williams University and paired with rookies for evaluations and on-the-job training.
Esserman tapped his national network of law enforcement contacts. He connected Providence police with officers throughout the Northeast to talk about similar crime problems. The Providence cops were skeptical, but found they were dealing with the same issues.
Then he demanded results.
Last winter, two men were robbing restaurants on the East Side, hitting one every few days. “Let me tell you, he wasn’t happy at all,” said detective Lt. Stephen Campbell.
“He said, ‘Tell me what you need and I’ll get out of your way and let you do your job,” Campbell said.
The lieutenant got more manpower. The business owners and security heads got a private meeting with the police about the investigation. The robberies stopped. When the detectives got a tip the culprits were in Virginia, Esserman told them to go after them.
“No panic, just ‘Get it done,’ ” Campbell said. “ ‘I’ll give you the resources you need. Just get it done.’ ”
AGAIN AND AGAIN Esserman told the news media and his officers that Providence was going to have community policing. Figure out how to divide the city into districts, he told his lieutenants.
There’d been a community police unit before, but it was separate, small and ineffective.
Under community policing, officers are responsible for their beats. They get to know the people they serve, building trust and taking responsibility for bringing down crime. Esserman had applied this plan at his other police departments.
The chief wanted officers posted in the neighborhoods. Instead of one lieutenant in charge of the whole city each shift, the city was split into nine patrol districts. Each district was commanded by a lieutenant, who by contract got a 9-percent raise.
The commanders were told to find donated office space for substations and volunteers to help with office work. So far, eight of the nine substations have opened, all to crowds of well-wishers.
“He’s given me my career back,” said Lt. George Stamatakos. “It’s gotten more interesting than sitting behind the glass [office] all day. . . . Now you’re going to have as much success as you put into it. What more can you ask for?”
People who never spoke to the police before are now working with them, he said.
But not everyone. Someone shot up the substation in Mount Hope soon after it opened. The police replaced the shattered windows and kept the bullet holes in the walls for a little “character.” After the shooting, two dozen people volunteered to work at the substation.
GUN VIOLENCE was Esserman’s top priority. Drive-by shootings flared up weekly. Shootings or reports of gunfire occurred daily. Young kids were packing guns like accessories.
In late April, a 14-year-old boy was shot by his 15-year-old friend as both were shooting at a passing car.
The murdered boy’s family blamed the police for the shooting. Esserman called a meeting. He included the police with federal and state law-enforcement members, probation and parole officers, ministers, community leaders, and the family members of people causing gun violence.
The cops were going after the guns and the criminals. The community had to spread the word about the crackdown. The U.S. Attorney’s office, the attorney general’s office, and the Department of Corrections also brought together hundreds of people on probation and parole.
Their message was simple: no illegal guns in Providence. Carry one and go to jail. Convicted felons with guns will go to federal prison.
The timing was right for an antigun alliance. Money was coming from the federal government in a nationwide crackdown on gun violence. The money put streetworkers in the neighborhoods for mediation, prosecutors from the attorney general’s office in the police districts, and payed for an aggressive gun task force.
Esserman had done this before. Rhode Island hadn’t.
Providence is a small city. When one criminal after another started facing federal prosecution, the word spread through the Adult Correctional Institutions and on the streets. It’s one thing to be in jail in Cranston, another to end up hundreds or thousands of miles away in federal prison.
“The word is out there,” said Sherrod Jones, the founder of the Cursebreakers program, a group that works to reduce violence. “Especially when they see their brothers and friends going to federal prison.”
The antigun alliance meets weekly to discuss crime and shootings. Some members had been shut out of the department before. Others never considered working with the police.
The Rev. Jeffrey Williams of the Cathedral of Life said the stories of corruption kept him from getting involved. Now, he tells his large congregation to trust the police. He believes in what the police are doing.
The police are in the neighborhoods and reaching out to people, instead of just locking them up, Williams said. He’s seen the police visit families involved in some of the violence and heard them say, “This has got to stop.”
A MAP OF Olneyville flashed up on the far wall of the chief’s conference room. The streets were marked with a week’s worth of crime.
Esserman calls weekly meetings with the supervisors to talk about crime across the city. Each district lieutenant displays a map of his neighborhoods and talks about what he’s dealing with. The idea is if they share information, they can help each other find solutions.
Lt. Hugh Clements Jr. had a bad week of shootings. “You’re responsible for most of the crime,” Esserman said dryly. “You shouldn’t even be showing your goddamn face here.”
Some cops chuckled. Clements was rueful. He was investigating the shootings and a nightclub where there’s been a history of trouble. His officers also found a 13-year-old boy driving a stolen car.
“I know that kid!” interjected Sgt. Daniel Gannon. He’d arrested the boy before. He’d yet to find a family member.
“He cries and says I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I need help,” Gannon said. Other cops nodded.
Esserman asked Lt. Keith Tucker, of the youth services bureau, to get involved. The boy’s mug shot was passed around the room. He had a sad, angry face and eyes that appeared older than his years.
Minutes after discussing the 13-year-old, the police got Family Services involved in his case.
“We’ve learned about the police as human beings and how much they care,” said Margaret Holland McDuff, Family Service director. “I’ve been very impressed with them for taking an extra step and saying, ‘This kid could use counseling. The mother could use some help.’ ”
The 13-year-old is now at the Rhode Island Training School.
UNDER ESSERMAN, the police no longer work alone.
They consult with advocates of domestic-violence victims. They share crime statistics and information with security officers in the city. And when a secret telephone taping system was discovered within the public safety complex, Esserman called state police Col. Steven Pare to assist the investigation.
Later, state troopers patrolled festivals with Providence officers. This summer, the events were peaceful. This was also the first time the state police patrolled with the Providence police, Pare said.
Esserman toured the ACI -- said to be a first for any chief in Rhode Island -- and spoke to Department of Corrections Director Ashbel T. Wall about the agency’s work with high-risk offenders. Then, they put a corrections investigator on the gun task force and paired police with probation officers in home visits with high-risk offenders. Working together helps the police solve crimes: the corrections investigators know their inmates’ habits and connections.
“The Providence Police Department had the mindset that didn’t foster collaboration. Dean [Esserman] has taken it to a whole new level,” Wall said. “He’s made it clear to those below him that this is the model he wants to see in place. He’s changed the culture of the department in ways that have encouraged a lot of talented people to be creative and forward-thinking about the way they provide public safety.”
When the results of the racial profiling study showed every department in the state had problems -- with the highest disparity in Providence -- Pare and Esserman were already working on a solution. They plan to begin sensitivity training this year and to continue to monitoring traffic stops.
The ACLU was dismissive, but Pare called the plans a start. Racial profiling is a statewide issue, he said, and this was the first time he’d seen the Providence police address it.
“There are a lot of things we can do together,” Pare said. “He has an awful lot of responsibility in changing how the Providence Police Department does business. . . . He needs time in that agency to make changes.”
Last month, Esserman and Cicilline announced the investigation of the testing scandal was over. They said they would move to revoke the pensions of Prignano and his former director of administration Capt. John Ryan. Two officers were suspended on departmental charges.
Esserman growled, at a news conference, that more would be punished.
Later, the union president said he wasn’t satisfied. Given past history, he questioned whether Esserman and Cicilline can accomplish any of this. An effort against Prignano’s pension late in 2002 stalled. The Rhode Island Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights may prevent any internal discipline. But the police union is expected to discuss lifting its veto on testing later this month.
Going forward, the department has redesigned the way it selects recruits. Last spring, Esserman and Rosenzweig threw out a class of recruits about to begin training at the police academy. They questioned the way they were chosen by the former administration. The recruits sued and won in federal court. They joined the force in November.
AFTER A YEAR, Cicilline still calls Esserman “the best police chief in America.”
“I hired him to be a leader, to bring professionalism and national attention, and to restore integrity to the department,” the mayor said.
Some don’t think he’s been worth the price. City Councilmen Terrence Hassett and John Igliozzi call Esserman’s contract outrageous. “His job performance doesn’t merit the lucrative, I’d go as far as to say obscene, benefit package the chief is receiving from the taxpayers,” Igliozzi said.
They insist the full council needed to ratify the contract. Cicilline said it didn’t, and pointed out the council approved the money in a compensation ordinance last year.
Igliozzi demanded Esserman reimburse the city for dinners at high-end restaurants. The year’s totals came to about $1,334, according to copies of receipts that Esserman provided to The Journal. (The chief was also reimbursed $1,027 for attendance at state and national police conferences.)
City Finance Director Alex Prignano found meals were eaten during business meetings with consultants providing pro-bono work for the department. He didn’t ask the chief to repay the money.
Igliozzi complained on talk radio. The mayor got on TV and asked where the city councilman was when the department was infested with corruption.
Esserman heard about the fight. He sighed. This isn’t petty politics, he said. It’s about power.
“A lot of people miss the past. Patronage dies hard,” Esserman said. “My sense would be that’s what’s celebrated the most in the Police Department. The most cynical officers are happy to be free of that.”
LAST WEEK, the chief and the mayor announced that the crime rate had dropped overall by 10 percent. Rapes and aggravated assaults are higher, but murders dropped and reports of burglaries, robberies, and larcenies are down.
Esserman credits the police districts, community partnerships, and the work of the officers.
Morale is mixed. Some officers hate the changes. They call the substations “smoke and mirrors.” They miss Buddy. They want a Providence cop as chief.
Others, some who begin by saying, “I’m probably in the minority . . .” say they admire Esserman. They like the department’s new direction. They feel like they’re making a difference. And City Hall is off their backs.
"[Esserman] finds things in you that you didn’t know exist,” said Sgt. William Merandi, head of the domestic violence unit. “Is it his Ivy League background? Who knows? Is it his intelligence? Who knows? But he is able to motivate people to do their best.”
Esserman still works long hours and misses family dinners, but makes it home each night to read to his two youngest children. They’re now in the middle of a Nancy Drew mystery. They are the reason, he says, he intends to stay in Providence for the next several years. Besides, he says, reform is going to take time.
Nearly all of the commanders who sneered on Esserman’s first day have left. The last, Capt. Martin F. Hames, is suspended with pay for his alleged involvement in the testing scandal.
The sour looks of the old staff were captured in a photo at his swearing-in ceremony. Esserman doesn’t say much about them.
He just framed the photo and hung it on his office wall.