Let me begin by stating that I am neither a democrat nor a republican. I am not a union member nor have I ever been affiliated with one. I am an independent voter, property owner and seriously concerned citizen. The Mayor's proposed staffing cuts at our Fire Department will jeopardize the public safety of everyone who lives, works or plays in this City (Providence).
Mayor David Cicilline has done some great things for our City. I, for one, am happy with my shiny new garbage can and the recycling bins (especially the recycling bins). Also, the lead water pipes on my street have been replaced.
However, Handling the contract negotiations with the Firefighters Union (Local 799) is not one of his crowning achievements.
Now we understand the Mayor has been able to cut down the number of employees on the City Payroll. But making those same cuts in the Fire Dept is not something we're interested in supporting because it endangers the public safety. In reality, he should actually be boosting the number of firefighters.
Why?
The cuts will most likely effect the number of firefighters responding to an emergency. Currently nearly 1/2 of our Engines are staffed below the minimum standard set by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). The NFPA is widely recognized as the authoratative source on public safety. The NFPA standard is 4. Half of our Engines are at 3. Additionally, the 4th man reduces the number of firefighter injuries.
The Mayor has not released the the basis for his intended cuts. I understand there is a report out there. We paid for it. We want to see it. NOW.
There is a lot of new construction out there that has been completed or is in the process of being completed (Providence Place Mall, Luxury Condos, Hotels). We want 4 firefighters on those trucks (all of them!) when they arrive should any of this be threatened.
Our property taxes are high and they are going up this year. Shouldn't we expect a fully staffed Fire Dept to respond if any of our lives or property are threatened?
Campaign Promises and Wasted Tax Dollars
In closing, when he was running for office, David Cicilline made a campaign promise to the members of this union (Local 799) to end this contract dispute within 30 days of taking office in exchange for their support. In my opinion, this is a little bit like having a contractor come over to your house, do an estimate, take a deposit, and then never return to start the work. Wouldn't you be angry? We are.
Further, the Mayor has spent 1 million dollars fighting this arbritration ruling. Just because he has a personal beef with the Union, doesn't mean he should be spending our tax dollars in this way. This is poor financial management.
Join our group by sending an email to provpublicsafety@gmail.com
Citizens for Providence Public Safety.
Joe Ouellette
223 Indiana Ave
Providence, RI 02905
401-419-6630
It seems that embracing diversity in Mt. Hope means that you must kowtow to the African-American political establishment of entitilment, acceptance of the embedded drug trade, junkies walking the street, an open air drug market, filth and litter on the streets, graffiti on your property, and a District 8 Police Unit, afraid to offend the Mt. Hope Neighborhood Association (a neighborhood association in name only) and pressured by Councilman Kevin Jackson to go easy on the African-American drug dealers who ply their trade on Mt. Hope streets.
This is especially true, very sadly so, on Grandview, Peach,and Tecumsech, where a number of new residents invested their life savings to buy homes. Liberal, well educated, and indoctrinated into the straightjacket of political correct thinking, these residents made a token jab at community activism but quickly gave up when faced with forces that they just didn't understand.
For instance a police force that told them one thing then did another.
These liberals still think that the police will solve their problems, will stop the graffiti, will stop the drug dealing on their streets, will stop the filth and the litter and the vandalism.
What they fail to understand is that in order to do so the police would have to enforce the law among the African-American community in Mt. Hope, and in doing so they would be labed racist and accused of racial profiling. They'd rather go along to get along, with the MHNA and with Councilman Jackson.
The tactic used against liberals has always been to divide and conquer. This is evident in the Democratic Party's nomination process this year and is also evident in what has transpired in Mt. Hope.
Call a spade a spade, call crime, crime: crime is color blind, politics is not.
It just so happens that crime in Mt. Hope is generated by the African-American community and white liberals are afraid to confront that fact. They could be Irish, they could be Asian, but in Mt. Hope they are African-American.
Liberals are crippled in Mt. Hope, they don't know what to do.
They want to live in peace, free of crime, but they have been labled "lily white asses", by the African-American community, and I think that is a fitting name for those who are crippled.
The Mt. Hope community is already polarized between those who wish to maintain the status quo, filth, drugs, noise, vandalism, and those who want to live in a clean, safe, quiet neighborhood.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of the bad news, the truth.
But 99 percent of Mt. Hope residents, Africian-Americans, whites, or hispanics, the groups that make up most of Mt. Hope, want the same thing: a neighborhood free of crime, filth, and vandalism, a neighborhood that we can be proud to call home.
It is the established political forces in Mt. Hope that keep the community from achieving that dream. These forces include the Mt. Hope Neighborhod Association and Councilman Kevin Jackson, and every resident who becomes an enabler by default, by projecting the delusional,so-called politiclly correct thinking of entitilment and victimization onto the African-American community in Mt.Hope: thinking that passes for progressive or liberal politics but is nothing more than age old, despised, knee-jerk liberlism.
There is no excuse for what is going on in Mt. Hope.
]]>It's easy.
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once again, homes on Grand View Street are starting to be defaced with inane, juvenile graffiti messages. the last rash of this happened last fall through Dec 2007, and affected pretty much every home on the block. the same message throughout: DTS. these letters were scrawled across my home last night, and this hasn't been the first time this has happened.
now, I'm pretty sure this is the work of stupid kids who have nothing better to do other than to prove their "worth" by defacing private property. somehow it makes them feel tough and strong. psychological profiles aside, this has to be stopped. several reports have been filed late last year requesting increased patrol, or some sort of action taken by the police in the district, and even the police had claimed they knew who it was. if this isn't enough to stop the defacing of property in our otherwise peaceful and beautiful neighborhood, then what's next to feel more secure in our homes? should we form neighborhood watches and posses? rope up the bad guys like an old western? i mean, c'mon, this is getting ridiculous.
something needs to be done. I feel like all the immediate attention is given to neighborhoods like those right off Brown University and in Wayland Square. I never really see the same level of attention given to our community. what gives?
Justin Chua
How disgraceful that the residents of Providence can not even trust the Chief of Police!
Crime stats are an important indicator of how the police are doing in their job to serve and protect.
If the rank and file of the police department do not trust the police command how can the citizens trust the police?
Do our District 8 Police worry about how to report criminal incidents?
Do our District 8 Police feel pressure from the brass to "fudge" the reports?
I remember reading somewhere in reference to the Police Department that "A fish rots from the head down" is that still the problem with our police department?
Thank you,
Dennis Cregg
]]>An investigative report last month by ABC6 News, citing dozens of unnamed police officers as sources, alleged that police administrators and subordinates classified and reclassified crimes in such a way as to understate the crime rate.
In a post of July 21, 2005, The Big Lie of Crime Stats I called into question the Crime Stats of the Providence Police Department under Col. Esserman.
Now it seems that the chickens have come how to roost. Even the FOB, The Fraternal Order of Police, the police union, is calling into question Col Esserman's handling of the crime stats for the City of Providence. Claims have been made that the Chief has ordered the stats fudged in order to make them look better than they are, because he is a political animal and he is in cahoots with the mayor, a politically ambitious animal, who will never get another vote from me, btw.
Read the Projo article for more info:
Providence police union seeks probe of crime data
01:00 AM EDT on Friday, April 4, 2008
By Gregory Smith
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Mayor David N. Cicilline and Police Chief Dean M. Esserman have been boasting for years of a dramatic decline in the crime rate. Crime is at a 30-year low, they claim.
But are the figures trustworthy? For quite a while members of the Police Department have been tussling privately over that issue, disagreeing whether some crime reports are unjustifiably dismissed or reclassified to make the crime rate look better.
Two years ago some members of the City Council said they were concerned that the crime decline was exaggerated, but an investigation never materialized.
Now the police labor union, the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge No. 3, is calling for an independent inquiry to settle the matter.
Esserman, who champions the use of data to improve police performance and accountability, publicly said yesterday that he supports the call. He has insisted that the department’s published crime statistics are reliable.
The FOP two weeks ago sent a letter to Tammie M. Gregg, deputy chief of the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, asking what her department knows about Providence police crime statistics.
The FOP also asked, as an extension of the Justice Department’s recently closed civil-rights review of the police force, to look into the integrity of Providence’s statistical reporting of crime.
A recent televised investigative report by ABC6 News prompted FOP members to ask for an independent inquiry and for the FOP executive board, in turn, to ask the Justice Department for help, according to the letter. ABC6 News, citing dozens of unnamed police officers as sources, alleged that police administrators and subordinates reclassified crimes as lesser crimes, allowing the department to report an artificially rosy picture of crime in Providence.
Lt. Kenneth M. Cohen, FOP president, yesterday acknowledged that the letter was sent. He said he would not mind if the Justice Department delegates to the Federal Bureau of Investigation the task of auditing the crime statistics. Police departments by law are required to report their crime experience to the FBI in an FBI-mandated format.
Cohen said the FOP’s action was prompted by a member who brought it up at a membership meeting.
“It was one of the members who was indirectly accused of, for lack of a better term, fudging the numbers,” Cohen said. “[He] felt that his reputation and his integrity was being impugned by [the ABC6 report], and that the only way to get out from under it” would be an independent inquiry.
gsmith@projo.com
We pay substancial property tax in Mt. Hope, and on the property I live in on Locust Street I pay around 5K in property tax. For that money I get my street cleaned around 3 times a year.
By comparison, in Pawtucket, they've already cleaned each street 5 times already. In Pawtucket, where property taxes are much lower, they clean the streets once a week from April to November.
What's wrong with this picture?
]]>In a great example of how the news gets spun, that is, interpreted in a way that suits a political objective, read the ProJo article below, but know that what really happened was a personal beef between individuals (someone pissed someone else off and they retaliated against them with a harsh warning) that got blown out of proportion, and you know what, the police don't have a clue as to who did what, but I'd bet all my money that the people involved know exactley what it was all about and who did what, but they ain't talking to the police.
Hate crime, not even!
Reward announced in attack
01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, March 18, 2008
By Gregory Smith
Journal Staff Writer
Herbert B. Stern, right, president of the Rhode Island Jewish Federation, announced the reward yesterday. Providence Deputy Police Chief Paul J. Kennedy is at left.
The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer
PROVIDENCE — Three Jewish organizations, in cooperation with the Police Department, yesterday announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for the attempted firebombing of an apartment where an Israeli activist lived.
Herbert B. Stern, president of the Jewish Federation of Rhode Island, denounced the attack as “a despicable act of violence” in a news conference at the Public Safety Complex. Besides the Jewish Federation, the sponsors of the reward are the Anti-Defamation League and Brown University/Rhode Island School of Design Hillel House.
Although the incident has inflamed the Jewish community, according to Deputy Police Chief Paul J. Kennedy, he said the police have nothing to indicate that “this was a terrorism-related incident or a hate crime” directed at a Jew.
In recognition of the fact that it has put the Jewish community on edge, Kennedy said, uniformed and plainclothes police have set up a special watch on Jewish institutions such as synagogues as a precaution.
A Molotov cocktail was thrown into the second-floor apartment of Josef Knafo, 25, a citizen of Israel, on Camp St., at 1:15 a.m., Saturday, according to the police, but it failed to ignite. A second Molotov cocktail struck the front of the triple-decker house, left a scorch mark and fell, flaming harmlessly, on a sidewalk. Nobody was injured.
Knafo, who lived in the apartment with two roommates, is a representative of the Jewish Agency for Israel, an organization that sends young people around the world to conduct education, religious and cultural programs. He is a graduate fellow at Brown University and an employee of Brown University/RISD Hillel House, a Jewish religious center on Brown’s East Side campus, according to the police.
While Jewish organizations alerted their constituencies on the premise that Knafo was the target of an anti-Semitic attack, the police advised rabbis and other Jewish community leaders to tell their followers to be aware but not to be alarmed.
Brown officials said they would make arrangements to have Knafo live elsewhere for the time being. But the police said the four other people living in the three apartments in the triple-decker, including his two roommates, will stay put.
The police disclosed virtually nothing about the investigation except to say that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is analyzing the two firebombs, including the nature of the fuel, and that Maj. Monty J. Monteiro, commander of the police Homeland Security Division, is leading the investigation.
The investigation is a combined effort that, according to Mayor David N. Cicilline, includes the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s office and the city/state/federal Joint Terrorism Task Force, in addition to the ATF.
“We will give this top priority” at the Police Department, Kennedy vowed.
Copies of a personal-safety advice sheet published by the U.S. Attorney’s Anti-terrorism Advisory Council were distributed after the news conference, which was attended by rabbis and other Jewish community leaders as well as police officers and members of the news media. The crowd of 45 people in attendance in the auditorium at the complex was unusually large for a news conference.
Maj. Paul C. Fitzgerald, commander of the police uniformed division, recommended that Jewish leaders tell their followers to maintain a heightened awareness of their surroundings but not to alter their lifestyles.
“You don’t want to succumb to this” and live in fear of a perceived threat, he said.
But he also offered advice for action.
“If it doesn’t feel right. If it doesn’t look right. If the hair on the back of your neck stands up as a result of something you see, based on what’s transpired over the last 72 hours, then you need to call the police,” Fitzgerald said.
“Don’t take any actions on your own,” the major advised.
The police urged that anyone with information about the incident to call the police emergency telephone line at (401) 272-1111 or the police Investigative Division at (401) 243-6406 or send a text message to Citizen Observer, the police Internet-based alert system. Anonymous messages are accepted, but Kennedy pointed out that a tipster who does not identify himself would not be able to collect the reward.
To send information to Citizen Observer, text TIP651 followed by your tip to CRIMES (274637).
If someone claims the reward, the police will be involved in the decision whether to pay it, Kennedy said.
gsmith@projo.com
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And the boyz are taking a nap.
Last night I heard a gravel truck on my hilly street spreading sand for the expected storm. I guess our Mayor Ciciline doesn't want to be caught with his pants down again like the last snow debacle he mis-managed where our garbage wasn't even picked up that week. I heard the garbage trucks early in the morning so I guess that tactic worked for him: He dodged one bullet by making sure the garbage trucks could get around. I guess so did Nickerson of the DPW who is supposed to oversee snow removal and garbage pick-up.
This small storm is of no magnitude compared to the earlier storm where the city and State fell flat on their faces and made another fiasco of their response to their failure. Finger pointing was rampant and the blame was laid at the feet of sacrificial victims. The City Council made a show of trying to fire the School Superintendent only to back off a few days later practically admitting that it was all for show.
Well, it seems that they learned a lesson but as usual with this City administration, too little too late.
Still it's fun to watch the snow come down, and I only had to step out on my rear deck in my robe to shoot a couple of pictures with my trusty little point & shoot.
Just shooting across the street.
I like how the white snow covering everything gives the world a bit of a monochromatic look where any little bit of color seems to be magnified in intensity
The Muted Monochrome of Winter
]]>
Tom Brady set a NFL record for touchdown passes in a season.
As a team, the Patriots set numerous NFL and team records and to peruse these records click on the following link, an awesome graphic from the Boston Globe:
The Patriots Record Book
Randy Moss led a new, improved receiving core, that included Wes Welker, Jabar Gaffney, Dante Stallworth, and standbys Kevin Faulk and Ben Watson.
Randy Moss set a NFL record for touchdown receptions in a season.
The Patriots set 15 NFL records this season. They had 9 players named to the All Pro team, 5 on the first team and 4 on the second team. They are also sending 7 or 8 players to the Pro Bowl All Star game.
Wes Welker set a team record for most receptions in a season.
But football is a team game and the patriots are the best football team I have ever seen: many experts analysts agree.
Strong at every position, it may very well be the unheralded big men who play in the trenches that are most responsible for the team's success. The offensive line protects Tom Brady better than any Quarterback has ever been protected and the defensive line consistently pressures the opposing QB while the rest of the defense exerts expert coverage on receivers and running backs.
The Special Teams players are also the best in the league and consistently contribute.
And then there is the coaching staff lead by Bill Belichick about whom I heard one TV analyst say they should throw a hoody over the Lombardi Trophy and call it the Belichick Trophy from now on.
From YouTube: Belichick for President: Strong on Defense, not afraid to use surveillance.
YouTube Campaign ad: Belichick for President
]]>Peter Cassels
Read the ProJo story here: Click the underlined link below for ProJo story with pictures, interactive features, and related story links.
Calm comes to Lockwood neighborhood
The police help transform Providence’s Lockwood neighborhood, once known for drug-dealing.
10:30 AM EST on Monday, January 7, 2008
By Amanda Milkovits
Journal Staff Writer
Ken Cabral, who has lived in the Providence neighborhood for more than three decades, says the streets are now safer for the families who live there. “What the police have done is create a safe and happy community,” he says. The Providence Journal / Kris Craig
PROVIDENCE — In the 34 years he’s lived in this Upper South Providence neighborhood, Ken Cabral has put up with the drug dealers, prostitutes and pimps who hung around the streets as if they owned them.
Now, he and other residents are becoming accustomed to something they never knew here before — peace and quiet.
Route 95 whisked drug customers easily on and off Pine Street, known locally as “crack highway.” With Crossroads at one end and Amos House at the other, dealers had walk-in customers looking for their daily fix. Children were recruited as lookouts and drug runners. Gunfire in the streets drove people indoors.
Then, about a year ago, the Providence police launched a crime-fighting initiative that combined an intense drug sting with community policing. The police arrested 104 drug dealers — about a third from the Lockwood neighborhood — and toppled a drug-dealing hierarchy. After the arrests, the police stepped up patrols in the neighborhood and worked with the residents to keep crime down. And, with the hope of winning the trust of the community, the police agreed to give a handful of nonviolent drug dealers a second chance, by promising not to charge them with the felony drug crimes if they stayed away from the streets and went back to school or found jobs.
A year later, the street-level drug dealing hasn’t returned. The steps outside the small markets, where dealers used to hang around four and five deep, are vacant of trouble. The street corners where drug dealers ran to stopping cars are clear. Children, instead of drug dealers, are using the playground.
“I see more people walking, more children in my neighborhood, and that’s good,” said Joe Vileno Jr., chairman of the Ward 11 Democratic Committee, who’s lived on Pine Street for 27 years.
“The drug activity is virtually nil around here,” he said.
Cabral calls the changes “extraordinary,” and he credits Police Chief Dean M. Esserman and his department for making a difference. “What the police have done is create a safe and happy community,” Cabral said.
Meanwhile, many of the drug dealers who were arrested in the 2006 sting are either convicted or being prosecuted in the federal court system and facing prison, the police say. What surprises the police is that no street dealers have moved into the neighborhood to take the places of those who’ve been arrested. Drug dealing continues in other neighborhoods, even just a few blocks south of Lockwood, but the problems haven’t increased elsewhere, the police say.
In Lockwood, the number of drug-related crimes dropped from 88 in 2006 to 26 crimes last year; residents’ calls about drug crimes also dropped, from 111 in 2006 to 21 calls last year, according to statistics provided by the Providence Plan.
“Lockwood is a very different place,” said police Lt. Thomas Verdi, who heads the department’s narcotics unit. “The goal is to maintain it without experiencing an increase in other areas, and we haven’t seen [the increase].”
While the street-level dealers have disappeared, there is still crime in Lockwood. There’ve been several shootings, including the murder of a man from Fall River, who was fatally shot in August when he drove to the neighborhood to buy drugs. Two men have been charged with his murder.
At the end of the summer, the police scaled back their extra patrols in the neighborhood, said Lt. George Stamatakos, the commander for the neighborhood. “If there’s anything suspicious, people are calling and we’re responding immediately,” he said.
The number of calls has dropped 58 percent since the initiative began. The most dramatic change was the decrease in calls to disperse people hanging around, from 339 calls in 2005 to just 46 last year. The reason, residents say, is that the drug dealers aren’t hanging around anymore.
The police are still cautious about calling the initiative a success. “A year is not long enough,” Verdi said. “If we’re sitting here next year and we haven’t seen an increase in crime as a whole, then we can say it’s a success.”
There are other reasons for changes in the neighborhood.
A nearby nightclub with a reputation for attracting violence closed early last year after a triple shooting and murder in December 2006. Dozens of attractive new houses, built through nonprofit organizations, are attracting families to the neighborhood.
George Lindsey, director at the Davey Lopes Center in the neighborhood, and street workers under Teny Gross at the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, have mediated in feuds and disturbances to prevent more violence.
Last week, one street worker told Gross that residents told him about a person in the neighborhood looking for drugs. “They said he looked so funny and out of place,” Gross said. “It’s an area that was constantly busy [with drug dealing] and now it’s had the air sucked out of it.”
Esserman is talking about attempting the same initiative in another neighborhood. Providence is one of a few cities in the nation to try the initiative, which was developed by a college professor who’d helped produce Boston’s anti-gang project in the mid-1990s. David Kennedy, now the head of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, believed that having the police and community work together to rid their neighborhood of open drug dealing could have lasting effects in reducing violence and crime.
Lockwood residents say the program has had lasting effects — a renewed trust in the police and a growing sense of community.
“One of the things that’s so important is the relationship the police have created with the neighbors,” said Cabral, a former North Providence police officer. “They’re recognizing the difference between the kids that are doing bad and those kids just trying to have fun in their neighborhood. I’ve never seen this in any community in the city of Providence.”
In the summer of 2006, it was business as usual, with dealers selling crack on every corner. One night, the police and local politicians staged a community rally to demand safer streets. The anti-crime placards left behind were defaced by the roaming bands of drug dealers, Vileno said.
This summer was different. Neighbors were outside. The dealers were gone.
“I think the people have become comfortable. They’re getting to know their own neighbors,” said Cabral. “Kids get to play outside their homes, and if the kids do something wrong, the neighbors will say, ‘I’m telling your parents.’
“Right now, I hope it’ll continue,” he said. “It’s up to all of us.”
amilkovi@projo.com
The corner of Jenkins and Knowles, where the victim was found, lies only a stone's throw from my residence, so in answer to the poll question about whether one feels safe in Mt. Hope the only logical answer is "No".
Young man shot to death in Providence
11:35 AM EST on Saturday, December 22, 2007
PROVIDENCE -- The police are investigating the 14th homicide in the city today after responding last night to a shooting in the Mount Hope neighborhood on the East Side of the city.
Providence police arrived at 9:46 p.m. and found the man lying in the road at Knowles and Jenkins streets, suffering from gunshot wounds, a police news release said. He was taken by rescue to Rhode Island Hospital, but died a short time later.
The name of the victim is being withheld pending notification of his family.
-- Journal staff
Adam
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