By Richard C. Lewis, The Associated Press
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Ten months ago, officials proclaimed a new dawn for the Providence Police Department. A new mayor bent on ousting corruption from city government took office and hired a squeaky clean police chief. Police officials promised changes, and assured the public the department’s misdeeds would be forgotten.
Yet the trial into the shooting death of Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. is expected to lay bare much of the department’s past sins - in some instances in greater detail than ever.
Young, who was black, was off-duty and in plain clothes when he was shot by two white patrolmen after he emerged from a diner with his gun drawn to break up a fight on Jan. 28, 2000. A year and a half later, Young’s mother, Leisa, sued the city, police department, two former chiefs and a pair of ranking officers for $20 million. Her chief charge, made in an opening statement last week by her lawyer, is that haphazard training by the department caused her son’s death.
James Fyfe, deputy commissioner of training at the New York City Police Department and a national police practices expert who Young hired as a consultant, is expected to supply much of the criticism. He may testify this week.
Fyfe analyzed the circumstances behind Young’s death. His report, obtained through court documents, lays the blame for the sergeant’s death squarely on the department.
“At bottom, this is a case in which two poorly trained officers and supervised officers shot and killed another poorly trained officer ...” Fyfe wrote. He says he has reviewed at least 10,000 police shootings.
Lawyers for both sides say they’ve been barred from discussing the case. Police Chief Dean Esserman would not comment on any issues involving his department.
In his report, Fyfe criticized the department for having an unclear policy for off-duty officers. Until Young’s death, off-duty officers were required to carry weapons, and to respond to any incidents. The policy was set by former Chief Urbano Prignano Jr., a defendant in the lawsuit.
“Chief Prignano stubbornly held onto a long-discredited policy of requiring officers to intervene in police actions while off-duty, and to do so on the basis of their ‘common sense’ rather than upon any systematically developed training,” Fyfe’s report stated.
“This was a recipe for disaster,” the commissioner wrote.
A message seeking comment from Prignano was left with his attorney Monday. Prignano’s home telephone number was not listed and he could not be reached for comment.
A state grand jury cleared Officers Carlos Saraiva and Michael Solitro of criminal wrongdoing. The U.S. attorney’s office decided not to prosecute after a preliminary federal civil rights inquiry. The police department never conducted its own investigation, nor did it ask Solitro, in his eighth day on the job at the time of the shooting, to surrender his weapon, even though the patrolman has said he had two nervous breakdowns after Young’s death, according to Fyfe’s report.
“The (department’s) failure to investigate the matter, and its failure to disarm Solitro ... are clear evidence of its administrators’ recklessness regarding the lives of its own officers and of the public,” Fyfe wrote.
One longtime observer of city politics says the trial could reopen tensions between police officers and citizens as the department’s image is sullied anew.
“The trial could be demoralizing for the department just because it’s going to highlight so many problems from the past,” said Darrel West, a political scientist at Brown University. “It’s going to dredge up issues that the public didn’t know about, and that will add to the need to reform that department.”
Clifford Montiero, director of the Providence chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said minorities have long known of the police department’s troubles. He sees the trial as vindicating those beliefs.
“It has taken a long time (for people) to believe that we’re not being crybabies,” Montiero said.
West said public trust in the department could erode, until Mayor David Cicilline and Esserman convince residents the department’s policies have changed. Minority leaders say that will happen only if leaders punish those involved.
“For Leisa, she’s got to feel that somebody’s paid for her son’s death,” said Reverend Marlowe Washington, former pastor of the Allen AME Church, who’s attending the trial.