When Jorge Elorza ran against Buddy Cianci for Mayor of Providence he highlighted the message that we cannot return to a culture of corruption. In the swirl of issues that surrounded Cianci’s campaign  were allegations of rape as well as convictions for crimes committed while in office.

Today, the Providence Board of Canvassers, a body whose members are appointed by Elorza, will decide the fate of Representative John Carnevale, a man who has a similar history of alleged sexual violence against women, and a man who could be said to represent the very culture of corruption that Cianci represented.

Carnevale was one of Buddy Cianci’s principle boosters in 2014. He has faced multiple accusations of physically abusing his ex-wife,  and in 2011 he was indicted for sexually assaulting a Johnston woman. Carnevale pleaded innocent. The charges were dropped after the woman died suddenly.

In June, a WPRI investigation discovered evidence that Carnevale has been lying about living in his district.  The investigation seems to have revealed that Carnevale lives in Johnston, and that told the tenants of the Providence house he is registered at to lie when asked if he resided there.

These allegations should make Carnevale ineligible to run for representative again, but Mayor Elorza has struggled to build support in the General Assembly and, according to sources, has developed an alliance with House Majority Leader John DeSimone, a close friend of Carnevale.

The question is, will Elorza play cynical politics and pressure his Board of Canvassers to give Carnevale a pass? Elorza has had a rocky first two years in office, but from all accounts he is so far un-blighted by the overt corruption of Rhode Island politics. Appeasing John DeSimone and allowing John Carnevale to be allowed to run despite evidence he does not reside in his district would be akin to jumping into the deep end of the dirtiest pool in Rhode Island.

That kind of thing does not wash off.

Although Mayor Elorza is trying to make the case, as was reported by WPRI, that he is not responsible for this decision, the choice is clearly his to make.

Mayor Jorge Elorza has a chance to do the right thing today. After everything he said about Buddy Cianci and the political culture of corruption during his campaign, allowing John Carnevale to run would be a betrayal.

The Board of Canvassers meets at the Providence City Hall at 11am today.

Elorza’s legacy hangs in the balance.

It’s time for Providence City Councillor Kevin Jackson to resign. Jackson represents Ward 3, on the East Side where I live. He has been plagued by scandal and bad choices for years, and barely won his last election against write-in candidate Marcus Mitchell.

I reluctantly voted for Jackson over Mitchell because of Mitchell’s past association with US Senator Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania. Mitchell claimed the mantle of progressive, but I couldn’t trust him, and there was little time to properly vet him. What little I knew about Mitchell didn’t thrill me. In 2005, Mitchell, then a registered Republican, was Senator Rick Santorum’s Director of Community & Economic Development in Pennsylvania. Santorum represents everything I find ugly in a politician.

Santorum once compared Obamacare to apartheid in a tribute speech to Nelson Mandela. Santorum is anti LGBTQ rights at best, a raving homophobe at worst. He’s not only anti-abortion, he’s against your right to use contraception. He supported the privatization of Social Security. He called climate change “junk science.”

Did I allow my completely reasonable disdain for Santorum to cloud my judgement regarding Mitchell? Perhaps. But given what I knew about Santorum and what little I knew about Mitchell, I made the best choice I could.

I voted for Jackson. I don’t regret making what I consider to be the best choice in a bad situation…

…but it’s time for Jackson to resign.

Jackson has done some good things as a city councilor in the last year, including fighting against fiscally irresponsible Tax Stabilization Agreements (TSAs).  Some of the most recent TSAs, supported by Mayor Elorza, would have functioned as little more than cash giveaways to connected realtors.

This is all for the good, but I think voters in Ward 3 could do a lot better than Jackson in an open election.

Buddy Cianci is dead, and the culture of casual corruption he represents should have died with him. Jackson backed Cianci when the former Mayor made his quixotic bid at a return to power. I found Jackson’s support of Cianci embarrassing.

Ward 3 could vote for a candidate that both looks after our interests and doesn’t play fast and loose with his campaign cash. We could vote for a candidate that has not been accused of embezzlement. We could vote for a candidate that does not embarrass us but instead represents us.

It’s time for Jackson to resign.

That historical insight is vital to grasp when one begins a discussion of Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, the longest-serving Mayor of Providence who has just passed away. For the rest of the world, big deal, who cares? But in Rhode Island, this is earth-shattering. I have not seen such an outpouring since the death of Princess Diana. Everyone on Facebook and in the local blog-o-sphere has a Buddy story. Edward Achorn, the ultra-reactionary head editor of the Providence Journal was especially gleeful, but then again Achorn has this habit of showing off his insecurities in odd ways.

The first thing to understand about Cianci is that for the better part of four decades, he was not just part of the news cycle, he was the news cycle in this half-demented, perennially-corrupt backwater imitation of a late Roman Imperial city-state that I call home. The man would go to the opening of an envelope if it got him good press. He popped off memorable one-liners with such ease I would not be surprised if someone puts out a little red book of Quotations According to Mayor Buddy (my personal favorite: “Be careful of the toe that you step on today because it may be connected to an ass that you have to kiss tomorrow.”) There are probably a few die-hard blue hairs up on Federal Hill as I write this lighting candles and praying novenas in Italian for the repose of his immortal soul.

This funeral is going to be a complete and utter shit-show, featuring a whose-who of politicians, judges, municipal employees, and everyone who ever “got a favor” from Buddy. I imagine the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul is going to have everything but the angel Gabriel and his host of seraphim lifting the casket to heaven while Pavarotti belts out Ave Maria and fifteen professional Sicilian mourners drop dead in the aisle from grief.

But aside from trying to guess how a man that my dear mentor Bruce “Rudy Cheeks” McCrae called “Bud-I” is going to exit in one final bout of glory, there is something deeper at play. I would submit that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan may have been the movers and shakers of neoliberalism but that the first politician to test-run the neoliberal ideology on a municipal level was Cianci. A fine book, The Prince of Providence by Mike Stanton, probably the best on corruption since Robert Penn Warren, can be examined for corroboration.

There are a few markers that can point in this direction. One of Buddy’s premiere moments was during the Republican National Convention that nominated Gerald Ford to run against Jimmy Carter. Cianci, then thriving on the cred generated by his days as a mob prosecutor and running as a reform-minded Republican in a historically-blue state, took the podium. Carter had just made a public gaffe and called Cianci’s brethren “Eye-talians” on television. Buddy said with much aplomb at a time when Coppola’s GODFATHER films were stirring up ethnic pride “Mistah Cottah, we ahh not Eye-talian, we are Italo-Americans!” This was a preliminary stab at what we would now call neoliberal identity politics, the assertion by the power structure of the liberationist vocabulary to justify white hegemony. Perhaps some decades earlier there had been lynching of Italians. But by the time Buddy hit the scene, Italians, Irish, and Portuguese were white conservatives who found themselves oftentimes on the other sides of the protest lines from their weirdo hippie kids that liked hanging out with moulignons (the Italian word for eggplant often used in the Ocean State as a slur against people of color), feminists, queers, and other undesirables in the newly-developing post-Woodstock Culture Wars. You cannot call it “white pride”, but when you call it “Italian pride”, it sure seems acceptable even if it is closer to Mussolini than Sacco and Vanzetti. It is worth mentioning that this ethnic pride informed his decision to make every Italian in sight a cop, laying the seeds for the fracas that occurred last fall when Providence Police had a public fit over the words #BlackLivesMatter being written on a beverage container. The force has always, since Buddy’s days, been a majority-white one.

Another point was his support of the LGBTQQI community and the arts. Buddy oversaw a Renaissance in the 1980’s and 1990’s that made the city a haven for orientation difference and the lively arts scene that exists in parallel with we fabulous folk. But there is a dark side to this also, the gentrification aspect. With a good deal of help from the wonderful souls at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design, the historic black neighborhood on the East Side has been almost totally ethnically cleansed, a process now at work in the black neighborhoods on the West End and in the Olneyville area. Scholarship exists that shows how, if queer populations are not mindful of their impact, they can end up being foot-soldiers for gentrification. Class war can be so classy like that.

Another point was his anti-labor stances. He was infamous for his standoffs with unions, hiring scabs and making quips to the people he was screwing. Michael Riley, a sometimes-candidate with a Tea Party bent that has a knack for finance has been circulating a PowerPoint for some time now that some municipal employees think has an air of truth to it. Riley argues that Providence is effectively bankrupt and has been “borrowing” money from the municipal pension fund to cover operational costs. This is a structural problem that dates back decades and could end up leading back to a Cianci administration. Obviously part of this is to be attributed to old-fashion corruption that we have always taken as business as usual. But another element has to do with a fundamental lack of respect for municipal employees. Buddy would get you the job to get him your vote but he certainly was not going to be taking out a subscription to the Daily Worker. It bears mentioning that he helped make Providence one of the first host cities for the neoliberal City Year program.

Finally, consider the fact that there were really three parties in Providence, the Republicans, the Democrats, and Buddy. He quickly was able to shed partisan affiliation and become an independent. But I would argue he was not political, at least not in the sense one uses to describe a Tory or a Socialist. Instead, he was post-partisan, an apolitical chameleon who could operate like the biggest cog in a Democratic machine at one moment and an austerity-minded Republican in the next. This is because the political class had come to a “consensus” that accepted neoliberalism’s coordinates and defined electoral races around Culture War issues instead of class war. It is no accident that he was able to yuck it up with the Clintons when they graced us with their presence.

But between this and his multiple PR fiascoes, including his interview with the New York Times Magazine when he said of his administration “no one ever urinated on anybody”, the operative question is why are people going nuts for this guy?

The answer is quite simple. Just like FDR, he made us feel good about ourselves. After an earth-shattering financial crash in 1929, Americans were doubting that America was worth anything anymore, hence the heydays of the various Leftist movements. FDR came into office and knew how to make people feel proud to be Americans again. He did not need to know how Keynesian economics worked, just how to make people smile. Buddy made us proud to be Rhode Islanders. He made us talk about Providence as a city you go to for cultural events as opposed to a rest stop on the way from New York to Boston or Cape Cod. He brought the most extravagant spectacles to town, re-designed the entire waterfront, built up the arts scene, and made the people brag about things they went to on the weekend. Was he corrupt, venal, vain, a political showboat to make the Metropolitan Opera look like a Quaker sing-a-long? Did he get convicted on two separate occasions for felonies? Did he beat his ex-wife’s alleged paramour with a fireplace log and ash tray while the police looked on? Yes, yes, and yes (the movie version of this final event is a key insight to the Cianci phenomenon).

But in the mainstream, who cares? Is FDR remembered for ignoring the plight of European Jews, vetoing anti-lynching legislation, and interning Japanese Americans? No, in the mainstream he is the Cheshire cat grinning ear to ear as he rescues us from calamity, the messiah of liberalism who dies trying to save his country. And as such it shall be with Buddy as the messiah of neoliberalism. The fact he made one final shot at office last election when he was obviously dying of cancer further cements the Roosevelt parallel.

Before there was Obama, there was Buddy. I will not miss the seamier side of his persona. I will also probably continue to pay for his fiscal foul-ups via my taxes for years to come and see the repercussions of his labor policies negatively impact people I care about for even longer. But like Ernest Thayer understood when he wrote Casey At The Bat, there is something to be said for the self-assured superstar, even if he causes a mess in the end. If I were to write his case for sainthood in the Catholic Church, I would try to get him made the patron saint of patronage.

According to organizers, Noboa and his partner, Jose Bren, employed around 15 workers to help open Café Atlantic, a restaurant located at 1366 Chalkstone Ave. between August and September, 2014. Some employees worked up to 70 hours a week, but, according to organizers, “by September 28th, Noboa and Bren closed the restaurant just months after opening and walked away without paying workers their full wages.”

The workers have organized through Fuerza Laboral (Power of Workers) “a community organization that builds worker leadership to fight workplace exploitation.” They have filed complaints with the Rhode Island Department of Labor and have attempted many times to contact the owners with their concerns, but have received no response.

Juan Noboa was a volunteer for Buddy Cianci during his unsuccessful run for mayor last election. During the election Noboa reported Representative Scott Slater to the state police for possible voter fraud after taking video showing Slater, “leaving Kilmartin Plaza, a Providence high-rise for the elderly, with what looked like a ballot.”  The police investigated and cleared Slater of any wrongdoing. Slater issued a statement saying that he recognized the man filming him “as someone who had threatened him in the past.”

According to the Providence Journal, Noboa “is a convicted felon and has been arrested 10 times dating back to March 2000.”

This morning’s action follows last month’s protest outside Gourmet Heaven on Westminster St. downtown. “We see a pattern of Providence-based food establishments intentionally cheating workers of their wages,” said Phoebe Gardener, Community Organizer with Fuerza Laboral.

“It makes me so angry that I am doing everything I can to provide for my family and do my job the best I can and Noboa doesn’t care about anything but making money for himself,” said Flor Salazar, former employee of Café Atlantic in a written statement, “Some of us are single mothers and are barely getting by.”

After chanting in Noboa’s driveway and pounding on his door for about fifteen minutes, the Providence police arrived and moved the protesters onto the sidewalk and into the street. Protesters handed out fliers to neighbors accusing Noboa of theft.

Noboa never came to the door or showed his face in the window.

The data don’t support this assertion in general or in the particulars. It would be more accurate to say that the two Providences are the northern and western suburban precincts and everywhere else. But even this is too broad truly to capture the results. Like most things in life, it’s complicated.

Who won what by how much?

Alex Krogh-Grabbe, who was an Elorza operative and ran his website, produced this map of precinct level data drawn from the Board of Elections website. This map is different from other maps you might have seen because Mr. Krogh-Grabbe went to the extraordinary effort to hand collate precinct data, which is the only way to render these data into a manipulable format.

(This means he went precinct by precinct, hand copying the results into a spreadsheet or JSON file, then mapping that to precinct boundaries. The heavy lines are not the city’s wards but some sort of neighborhood breakdown. Great will be the day that all these data—precinct results, precinct boundaries, ward boundaries, etc.—are available from the city and state in open data standards. Until then…)

This map shows that there are many cities, or more aptly put, one complicated city. Cianci won most strongly in the most northern and western suburbs; Elorza won most strongly east of the Moshassuck River. In between, there is an interesting and complicated patchwork of support, with more of the city breaking for Elorza than for Cianci.

Look, for example, at the Valley. Two precincts that don’t just abut but seem to over-cross each other, broke more than 20% for each candidate. Likewise, the Jewelry district and Hospital district abut, but broke strongly in opposite directions.

Cianci clearly has support on the South Side, but Elorza countered in Elmwood, the West End and Reservoir. In a shock to many, Elroza took Federal Hill by a narrow margin.

Class warfare? Not so much.

Those crying “class warfare” need to step back and consider that Providence might be more complicated than they’d like it to be. Consider, for example, that Fox Point broke for Elorza by more than 20 percentage points or that Mt. Hope did the same by more than 10. Olneyville, Reservoir, deep in the West End and the brutal section of Smith Hill between Smith and Orms (my first PVD ‘hood) broke for Elorza.  Elorza also won portions of Hartford and Silver Lake. Not one of these neighborhoods fits the profile convenient to the argument that only rich, white people support Elorza.

It could be that the East Side / South Side coalition was a short-lived experiment that won’t be repeated. Or it could be that changing demographics and changing attitudes have produced a new electoral equation in the city. Or it could be that Buddy Cianci made a whole lot of people a whole lot of money during his multiple terms in office, and that money trumps pretty much everything.

Whatever happened in this election, I am certain of one thing: it wasn’t class warfare.

When my father first heard Cianci was running for office again, he was silent. Shaking his head, he sighed. “Well, everything is going back to normal.”

Normal. Normal in Providence doesn’t have to be synonymous with a nod and a wink. It doesn’t have to be synonymous with job trading, cash payments, hurting children and neglecting neighborhoods. It doesn’t have to be connected individuals – some with a history of violence- calling the shots. It doesn’t have to be razzle-dazzle downtown, and “Buckles” Melise on the side streets.

Cicilline worked hard, and then worked easy, cowardly vaulting to Congress to avoid difficult budgets and real choices. Taveras worked hard to clean up the fiscal mess left by Cianci and Cicilline, before he launched a failed run for Governor. Yet even with all the goofy insider behavior of the last 12 years, there were fewer homicides, and an improving graduation rate.

During Cianci’s last four years as Mayor:

• there were more homicides in the city than in the past four years.
• high school graduation rates fluctuated from the low 60s to low 70s.
• a police chief was forced out of office for running a corrupt department
• there was more child poverty than in 1989

During his 1990 race, Cianci manipulated people’s religiosity as a tool to gain votes. As he put it in his book, “I was in a close race, and I knew there were a considerable number of pro-life zealots looking for a candidate. I ended up getting a list of pro-life voters from the diocese.” Throughout the 1990s, Cianci repeatedly said he was against adult entertainment, but from 1991-2000, the number of adult clubs in the city grew by 300 percent – from 4 to over 12. This time around, Cianci is vowing opposition to charter schools. Why trust him? Cianci lies for power.

Charismatic and abusive, Cianci has left his mark on the city. He has attracted his share of idealists, but also plenty of the abusive, violent and manipulative.

It is long past time for a new chapter.

Vote Elorza, tell your friends to vote Elorza – and then work like hell to make Elorza deliver for the people and families across Providence.

• Cianci needs Fecteau, Williams Metts more than they may know – Dan Lawlor
• Coalition of the Terrifying: Cianci’s power players – Dan Lawlor
• Buddy Cianci’s Providence: Better for whom? – Dan Lawlor
• Should Buddy Cianci pick the next police chief – Dan Lawlor
• More murders when Buddy Cianci was mayor – Dan Lawlor
• Why one rape victim won’t support Cianci – Emma Sloan

Cianci has left a confusing, tattered, disjointed legacy – cheerleading the city, heralding public works projects, while at the same time undermining Providence’s long-term success through failures in policing and schools. Cianci’s administrations have long balanced the idealists, the power-hungry, and the marginalized. He can’t return to power if one of those groups backs out.

Among the anecdotes I came across in Mike Stanton’s book, one activist from the 1970s was particularly astute, noting Cianci’s outreach to community leaders was based on a simple calculation: “At this point, he needs us.”

And just as in the early 2000s Cianci needed a decent officer like Richard Sullivan to be police chief after the chaos of Prignano, in this decade Cianci needs community populists like Leah Williams Metts and Matt Fecteau to give legitimacy to his return campaign. Cianci needs Alan Shawn Feinstein and Yvonne Schilling to support him.

• Coalition of the Terrifying: Cianci’s power players – Dan Lawlor
• Buddy Cianci’s Providence: Better for whom? – Dan Lawlor
• Should Buddy Cianci pick the next police chief – Dan Lawlor
• More murders when Buddy Cianci was mayor – Dan Lawlor
• Why one rape victim won’t support Cianci – Emma Sloan

Cianci worked with many housing activists in the 1970s – and betrayed them once in power. As Michael Stanton wrote, “the director of the office’s Homestead Board…was arrested for defrauding homesteaders seeking to move into abandoned houses that had been acquired by the city. When the police did a routine background check, they discovered that the director had been on parole for kidnapping and rape, and had been when he was hired in 1975. Besides shaking down homesteaders, he had another sideline- running a string of prostitutes who worked the streets of downtown Providence, in sight of City Hall.” (p76)

Same song in the 1980s. By 84, “the Providence Chief of Police, Anthony Mancuso, had held an extraordinary meeting in his office…Council members came away shocked. Mancuso displayed two lists – one of Public Works employees with criminal records, another of Public Works employees with ties to organized crime.” (p187) Though truth be told, it’s hard to imagine how many councilors were really “shocked” by these revelations.

In the 1990s, Cianci promised he never stopped caring. In 1991, Cianci signed agreements with a supporter leasing an old, side street autobody garage shop as a registration building for schoolchildren, for at least $750,000. The lease was up for renewal in 1994. Stanton noted, “When Julia Steiny, a maverick School Board member and East Side playwright, fought the lease, hoping to steer more dollars to impoverished educational programs, she was warned by a school official not to buck City Hall. After the lease was renewed, Cianci dumped her from the school board.” (p258)

These anecdotes are a few of many. There are real splits and divisions in Providence- splits Cianci has used for his own success. Good people have had their hearts broken so many times. Cianci’s charisma hides the truth – he loves power, needs it. And his administration’s record  – inconsistent graduation rates, rising crime, uneven job opportunities, inconsistent policing, blatant corruption -shows he doesn’t deserve another go in office.

More on Cianci:

I invite you to vote for these people, not against others. That said, I’ll also give a few anti-hits because it seems necessary.

FOR Mayor: Jorge Elorza
I first saw Mr. Elorza months ago at the Institute For the Study and Practice of Nonviolence‘s Martin Luther King event. He spoke softly and eloquently. Mr. Elorza is not a blowhard candidate. He doesn’t know how to play the media circus the way a former felon turned talkshow host does. He offers himself, honestly.

AGAINST: Felons who have been convicted of betraying the public trust
The big signs are illegal. The former mayor doesn’t care. It’s a small thing, but it says so much. He’s paid off a rape victim. He’s been convicted of assault. He’s been convicted of running a criminal conspiracy in City Hall. I have a friend who’s been through the penal system, and he’s spent the past few years doing amazing work to redeem himself. This “independent” candidate’s been on a talk show and hasn’t taken responsibility. He laughed at us in his autobiography. Yes, like every other citizen of Providence who lived here during his long tenure, I have some examples of good things that he’s done. But let me ask you this: If you hired a guy as a babysitter to watch your daughter and he invited a bunch of his friends over to your house for a party, and they raided the liquor cabinets, robbed your coin collection and got arrested would you ever hire that guy to watch your daughter? Hello, Providence. It’s one thing to fantasize about good times. It’s another to put a bag over your head and hope that you’re not being led over a cliff.

FOR Governor: Robert Healey
Yes, I completely disagree with some of his ideas. But the same is true for both of his opponents. What I like about Healey is his honesty and intelligence. He has run his (admittedly brief) campaign with integrity. He will be a complete counterbalance to the anointed dictatorship that exists in the General Assembly. Neither of the other two candidates impress me. Healey answers questions on his website with honesty and without the political trick of saying nothing that will lose you a vote. Is Healey a longshot? Probably. When people talk about wasting a vote, they’re really trying to “game” the system. How about casting a vote that might really game the system?

FOR Lt. Governor: Cathrine Taylor
I’ve known Ms. Taylor since her son was at school with my children. She is hardworking, honest, and nice. She will do an excellent job with the non-position that is the Lt. Governor, and if something should happen to the governor, I would gladly support her.

FOR: Attorney General: Dawson Hodgson
Everything Mr. Hodgson has said impresses me. I’m tired of the 38 Studios crowd lingering in government. And having an attorney general who is in direct opposition to the “leadership” in the legislature strikes me as a great option.

FOR City Council, Ward 3: Write in Marcus Mitchell
This is another personal contact. I met Marcus Mitchell when he joined the board of the Friends of Rochambeau. Mr. Mitchell worked hard to bring the Providence Community Library system into existence. No, I don’t know enough about his policies, but I know he’s an earnest man. He’s running against Kevin Jackson, who would otherwise be unopposed. Mr. Jackson hasn’t filed his campaign finance reports, and he has signed onto the Circus Parade to elect a felon. I can’t support that.

FOR City Council, Ward 2: Sam Zurier
If they hadn’t moved the line, I’d still be voting for Sam Zurier. He works hard. If you don’t subscribe to his email newsletter about what’s going on in City Council, you should.

AGAINST Bond Issues
Yes, I want all the good things. But the sitting politicians running for reelection won’t raise taxes to pay for things. Instead, citizens are asked to vote on bonds. Nobody ever publicizes the true cost of these bonds, which adds about $5 million per $10 million to the cost of everything borrowed. There’s $243 million on the table, which will cost us at least $340 million over time. Do the math.

AGAINST Gambling in Newport (and Providence)
Just No.

CONFLICTED on the Constitutional Convention
The fear campaign by the ACLU has worked. I’m frightened of outside interests. I’d like to think that Rhode Island would be immune from their PAC dollars. I want to see stuff change now, rather than at the convenience of the legislature. If there is a convention, I’m running.

The questionnaires the candidates filled out for the People’s Forum are essentially promises to the community, and as such offer interesting insights into the future of Providence in terms of community safety, violence and economic well being.

• Jorge Elorza People’s Forum Questionnaire Answers
• Buddy Cianci People’s Forum Questionnaire Answers

One item that frontrunners Jorge Elorza and Buddy Cianci both agreed to concerned the idea of outfitting police officers with video cameras, to be operated under the following guidelines:

The Providence Police Department shall adopt written procedures regarding the use of video and/or audio recording devices such as, but not limited to: dashboard cameras, body cameras, and digital audio recorders. These policies shall be public records and shall include, but not be limited to, the following standards:

a) All stops conducted by police officials with such equipment shall be recorded. The recording shall begin no later than when an officer first signals the vehicle or individual to stop or arrives at the scene of an ongoing stop begun by another law enforcement officer, and the recording shall continue until the stop is completed and the subject departs, or until the officer’s participation in the stop ends.
b) The subject of a stop shall be advised by the officer that the encounter is being recorded.
c) A chain-of-custody record of the recordings shall be maintained.
d) A subject of a stop that was recorded by a video/audio surveillance camera, and/or his or her legal counsel, shall have the right to view and listen to the recording at the police station and to obtain a  copy of the recording involving him or her within ten (10) business days of the request;
e) The policy shall establish a minimum period of retention for such recordings of no less than sixty (60) days, and procedures to ensure that the recording equipment is in proper working order, and shall bar the destruction of any recording related to an incident that is the subject of a pending complaint, misconduct investigation or civil or criminal proceeding. Such recordings shall be retained for a minimum of ten (10) days after the final resolution of such investigation or proceeding, including the time for any appeal;
f) The policy shall explicitly prohibit any violation of these requirements, including any attempts to disengage or tamper with the video/audio surveillance equipment or to otherwise fail to record stops as specified herein;

While on duty and in interaction with the public, police shall be prohibited from using personal audio or video recording devices. Only devices subject to the policy outlined above shall be permitted.

The guidelines above are a good start on the kind of safeguards Providence would have to adopt along with police body cameras. The ACLU has a great breakdown of the various privacy and rights concerns such cameras will inevitably raise, as well as suggestions to help mitigate negative effects.  There is a fair bit of overlap between the ideas suggested by the People’s Forum and the ACLU’s analysis, so developing a smart policy should not be a problem.

Elorza agreed with the need for police to wear cameras, as did Cianci, though Cianci wrote that he sees the cost of buying and maintaining such equipment as requiring “a long term budget that includes projections for buying this type of equipment.” However, given the potential savings in terms of lawsuits and court costs that police body cameras have shown in areas that have tested the concept, there is no question of affordability.

According to German Lopez at Vox:

In New York City, a report from the city’s public advocate found that outfitting the entire police department with body cameras would cost around $33 million. But in 2013, the city paid $152 million as a result of claims of police misconduct. If body cameras could reduce those claims by just one-fifth, the devices would pay for themselves.

Early studies of the effects of police body cameras have been encouraging. In Rialto CA, complaints against officers fell 88% and officer’s use of force dropped 60%.

So it seems that whoever wins the election to become mayor of Providence, police body cameras will become a reality in the next few years.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

The three parts of the questionnaire were:

1. Providence Community Safety Act, an ordinance submitted to the City Council on June 19 that makes our communities safer by protecting civil and human rights and addressing the tension between police and community.

2. Public Money for the Public Good, a policy proposal from community groups and labor unions to make sure that when corporations get tax breaks, workers and the community get concrete benefits like living wage jobs and apprenticeships, money for affordable housing, and accountability.

3. Community Agenda to Address Violence, a comprehensive set of principles and action steps by Concerned Citizens of Providence to address the root causes of violence in our communities by strengthening youth recreation, targeting workforce development initiatives, and improving police-community relations.

The candidates, Democrat Jorge Elorza, Republican Dan Harrop and Independent Buddy Cianci, gave remarkably similar answers to all the questions and largely supported all the suggestions the community groups proposed. Even when the candidates disagreed with the ideas presented by the community, they mostly agreed with each other.

When talking about a living wage, for instance, all three candidates initially opposed the idea, with Elorza saying that raising the minimum wage citywide is impossible under state law, but he would be willing to partner with community leaders to pressure the state to change the statute.

Cianci said that he agrees with Elorza, and thinks a $15 minimum wage is fine, at least for companies that employ more than 3 or 4 people. Harrop rejected the idea of a living wage outright, focusing instead on job creation and tax breaks. This represented the only real policy difference among the three candidates.

Despite being the most controversial figure running for any office in New England, Buddy Cianci got the biggest applause and cheers of the night, just for walking up to the microphone. From my vantage point in the balcony of the theater, it seemed that Cianci supporters were scattered throughout the crowd and ready to rise in applause at a moment’s notice. Whether they were planted there or sincere followers was impossible to tell.

Dan Harrop made the biggest impressions of the night, making the crowd furious by attacking Cianci. “If you want to decrease violence in this city, you cannot have a mayor at City Hall who has a continuous history of violence…” was all Harrop could get out before he was booed and drowned out by the crowd.

Harrop, who is a distant third in the race, has nothing to lose by speaking the truth, and he lately seems to be not so much running for mayor himself as he is working against Cianci. Harrop went so far as to practically endorse Elorza outright, offering to give up 30 seconds of his speaking time so that Elorza might discuss details of his housing plan. When told he could not give up his time, Harrop said that Elorza has a great plan for reclaiming abandoned houses in Providence, one Harrop will steal if elected mayor.

In a race in which the Republican candidate stumps for his Democratic opponent during a campaign event, we’re no longer talking about about issues and ideas. Instead, we’re talking about personalities and public perception, and that gives an advantage to Cianci.

*Groups such as: DARE- Direct Action for Rights and Equality, Providence Youth Student Movement Prysm Fam, RI JobswithJustice, Mt. Hope Neighborhood Association (MHNA), Ona Vecinos de Olneyville/Olneyville Neighborhood Association, AFSC Sene American Friends Service Committee, Unite Here Local 217, Comité de Inmigrantes en Acción, Black PAC, and the National Lawyers Guild RI Chapter