This protest follows an action last week in which two protesters locked themselves down in the bank’s lobby and had to be removed by police. Wednesday’s action, which was publicly announced on Facebook, drew a Providence Police detail, but the entire affair was very low key, and no arrests were made.

Protesters handed out flyers and held signs. One woman, Amy, after hearing from protester Sally Mendzela about the bank’s involvement with DAPL, told me that though she had come to open an account with the bank, she was not. Mendzela said that the woman was the second person to be dissuaded from doing business with TD Bank since she arrived.

Meanwhile, tensions remain high between the “water protecters” and DAPL developer Energy Transfer Partners. Tribes are invoking their treaty rights even as the developer threatens arrests and even violence. As reported by Mary Annette Pember, “the Morton County Sheriff’s Department backed by North Dakota Governor Jack Dalyrmple continued to ratchet up displays of military-style police force.”

The video below, published by Jennifer Minor on October 25, shows police using pepper spray before arresting protesters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=066h12rmcDQ

Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza attended an East Side forum on the Community Safety Act (CSA), saying that despite some differences, he doesn’t “think it will be a problem getting this done before the end of the year.”

East Side City Councillors Kevin Jackson and Sam Zurier were in attendance. Councillor Seth Yurdin was out of town. While Jackson is fully in support of the CSA, Zurier and Yurdin have both publicly registered doubts.

After Elorza heard the speakers below, he spoke about his own encounters with the police, due to racial profiling. Though in broad agreement with the CSA, Elorza did outline some points of disagreement, including issues around the use of canines in policing, requesting proof of ID from juveniles, a prohibition against photographing juveniles, the eradication of the gang identification database and concerns that a “community safety review board” clashes with the police officers bill of rights.

On the gang database, Elorza believes that there will be a way to make the process more open, so that people will be able to have some measure of oversight. He also feels that there may be ways to craft policies that will satisfy both sides of the issue.

“There are many more places where there is agreement than disagreement,” said Elorza, “and on the areas where there are disagreements, I still remain very hopeful.”

There was little doubt that the community members in attendance were squarely behind the CSA. Nine residents spoke passionately about the need for expanded oversight of the police. Resident Don Baier told a very personal story of when he called the police to help find his sister, who was roaming the streets, delusional. Because of the excellent work of the police, his sister was recovered unharmed and received treatment. Not everybody has such positive interactions with the police, said Baier. He wishes that “every neighborhood could get the same kind of swift, thoughtful action” from the police.

Resident Maureen Reddy is a white East Side resident with a black husband and children, and she is afraid to call the police, for fear that her family might be imperiled. “Both of my children have been hassled by police, repeatedly,” said Reddy. Her son simply assumed that when he left the house, he would be stopped by the police and asked to explain himself. Her daughter was stopped on Benefit St by officers with guns drawn. Had it been her son in that position, she fears he would be dead.

Once a man pulled into Reddy’s driveway and asked her to call the police. Before she did so, she made sure to tell her husband to wait inside the house, so he wouldn’t be a target when the police arrived. Another time, when a woman was yelling in the middle of the night, Reddy did not call the police. Her husband and other neighbors went outside to assist the woman, but before the police arrived, her husband went back into the house. Again, he did not want to be a target of police suspicion, simply because he was black.

Julia Carson is the Principal of Central High School in Providence and an East Side resident. “I am heartbroken when I am ordered, by police officers, to clear the plaza [at Central High school], ‘get the trouble out.’ I don’t know about any of you, but high school was my safe haven growing up. We used to hang out every day after school and I don’t understand why my kids can’t do the same thing.”

Criminal Justice Attorney Annie Voss-Altman cited research that shows that non-whites are more likely to experience the use of non-deadly force in their encounters with police. “Subject compliance didn’t matter,” said Voss-Altman, “across the board, you’re fifty percent more likely to experience the use of force in your encounter with the police is you are black or Hispanic than if you are white or Asian.”

East Side resident Doug Best made the financial case for the CSA. “…the cost of paying settlements for police misconduct,” said Best, is “our major contributor to poor ROI [return on investment].” In other words, when the police mess up, it costs the city money to settle cases.

East Side resident Mark Santow is an American historian provided a historical context for the CSA. Present policing policies in communities of color drive resentment towards the police, said Santow, “and resentment can prevent the type of effective policing needed to keep communities safe and officers safe.”

Libby Edgerly highlighted the positive efforts the Providence Police department has made in addressing some of the concerns presented this evening. Including Mayor Elorza’s recent announcements regarding plans to address concerns about homelessness downtown. “Other notable recent police department initiatives,” said Edgerly, “include requiring police to use department phones, not personal phones, when videoing non-violent demonstrators. Also, supporting a youth basketball group. Also, instituting additional police training on how to work with people suffering mental health disturbances and, finally, choosing not to purchase military equipment offered by the federal government to police departments nationwide.”

The last item generated appreciative applause.

Ondine Sniffin is a resident of the East Side, a Latina, “and I’ve been arrested at a traffic stop… I learned that even though I’m an educated, English speaking U.S. citizen, I can still be mistreated, solely on account of my gender and/or ethnicity.”

East Side resident Sarah Morenon said that having theses practices established as policies is not enough. Policies change and are enforced at the whims of whoever is in charge. “My concern,” said Morenon, “is codifying the desired practices, to put into writing the police behavior guidelines, and get them into law… where subjectivity will not play such a major part.”

“I would like to see the city policy about non-compliance with ICE holds codified,” said Morenon, right ow the policy is “an informal directive.”

Councillor Sam Zurier expressed some doubts about the CSA, and talked about legislation he plans to introduce as a kind of a “stop-gap” measure.

Councillor Kevin Jackson has black sons, and he’s been a stalwart supporter of the CSA.

Moderator Wendy Becker

Martha Yager of the AFSC helped organize the event.

Vanessa Flores-Maldonado is the CSA coordinator.

Elorza’s support for the CSA was clear. Zurier may need more convincing, and Seth Yurdin’s present opinion is unknown.

Providence poet Christopher Johnson was on the verge of a career capstone this May when he was interviewed by Governor Gina Raimondo’s office for the position of state poet laureate. But that same month he was also arrested by Providence police and charged with assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. He’s concerned the arrest will hurt his chances of being named Rhode Island’s state poet. But the 45-year-old African American artist is even more concerned that his arrest was unlawful and racially motivated.

“I was definitely profiled,” Johnson said. “They had no reason to stop me except because I’m black.”

On May 18, Johnson went out with friends to listen to music in Providence. He was on hiatus from a nationwide spoken word tour about mass incarceration with the Everett Project. He’s recently performed at Trinity Repertory Theater as well as in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sedona, Arizona, Amherst, Massachusetts, among other locales. At about midnight, after what he called a “great evening with friends,” Johnson took the RIPTA bus back to his home in South Providence. That’s when he encountered Providence police officer Matthew Sheridan, whom Johnson said roughed him up – pushing him into a police car hard enough to dent it.

Johnson and a police report agree that he declined to give a police officer his name when asked. They disagree who first became combative.

“He grossly lied,” said Johnson of Sheridan. “That thing is filled with lies,” he said of the police report.

According to Johnson, “Because of the peculiar u-turn the officer made and the present climate of police/citizen relations across the country, I was on guard. I asked the officer why he wanted my name and he firmly made his request again. I told him if he does not give me a reason for the stop I do not have to give him my name. He exited his vehicle and blocked my path to my house. I tried to get around him and he grabbed me. I asked him if he was a public servant and if I was being detained. His reply was, ‘Why you got to go and do that?’ He grabbed me and threw me against the car.”

According to the police report, “in an attempt to check the well-being of the suspect [Sheridan] asked the subject who he was and where he was going. The suspect replied with ‘I don’t gotta tell you shit!’ It was at this time police stepped out of the vehicle and again asked the suspect where he was going the suspect this time pointed over Patrolman Sheridan’s shoulder and stated ‘over there’ Police asked what the exact address was to to which the unidentified male again stated “I don’t gotta tell you shit!” Police then asked the unidentified male to have a seat in the marked cruiser while police figured out where he lived. It was at this time the unidentified male pushed Patrolman Sheridan’s arm away and attempted to overpower Patrolman Sheridan. It was at this point Patrolman Sheridan took hold of the suspects arm and wrist and detained the suspect in the back of the marked cruiser.”

Johnson says he neither swore nor raised a hand to the officer. According to the police report, while being subdued by the officer, Johnson screamed “‘please don’t shoot me GOD don’t shoot me. the white cop is going to shoot me.'”

Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steven Pare said it can be difficult to ascertain exactly what happened after the fact, noting that body cams are ideal for such situations.

“The officer is going to have to articulate to the court why he asked this man his name and where he was going,” he said. “I don’t know what was in the officer’s mind when he asked.”

A person doesn’t necessarily have to give a police officer their name just because asked, according to Pare. But that doesn’t mean the officer can’t ask, even more than once. “A police officer can ask a thousand times,” he said. “You don’t necessarily have to answer. If you don’t answer, fine. But the officer can press. It’s subjective.”

Pare hasn’t discussed the incident with Sheridan because no complaint has been filed. Based on his reading of the incident report, Johnson “certainly had a right to continue on his way,” Pare said.

Johnson said Sheridan denied him that right. “I kept trying to walk past him,” he said.

PrYSM, the Providence Youth Student Movement, a local group that is organizing for Black Lives Matter efforts locally such as passing the Community Safety Act, said Officer Sheridan should be fired because this is the third controversial arrest he’s been involved with. Sheridan has been a Providence police officer since 2014.

“For over a year, we have been getting complaints about the violent behavior of this city employee,” said Steven Dy, organizing director of PrYSM’s Community Defense Project.

Sheridan has been involved in two previous violent and high profile arrests.

Earlier this year, Sheridan was caught on a security camera in a violent melee at a Providence nightclub for which he was disciplined. In that incident, reported by WPRI, discrepancies between Sheridan’s police report and security camera footage presented in court caused the judge to dismiss the charges, pending good behavior.

“He was formally disciplined and he was given retraining,” Pare said.

Sheridan was also on the scene when a woman was repeatedly punched by a Providence police officer recently. Pare said, Sheridan “was a responding officer and his role was minimal and he had no physical interaction with any of the defendants.”

Dy, of PrYSM, said Sheridan has a reputation “for terrorizing people, especially on Broad Street” and said the incident with Johnson was clearly racially-motivated, aggressive policing.

‘The moment they saw him they assumed he was a criminal,” he said. “If it was handled differently, the outcome would have been completely different.

Johnson is eager to put the incident behind him. He said he’s hopeful some good can come out of it. As state poet laureate, he said, he’d like to organize poetry slams with Black Lives Matter activists and police officers. “I’d like to get the police involved in the community,” he said.

Marie Aberger, a spokeswoman for Governor Raimondo, said the governor’s office doesn’t comment on nominees for poet laureate. But she did say an arrest wouldn’t prevent an appointment. “An arrest would not preclude someone from being named to the position,” she said. “We’d look at all the other experiences and qualifications for the position, along with the seriousness of the alleged offense, the circumstances surrounding it, and the outcome.”

Christopher Johnson performing at AS220’s Empire Review (video Steve Ahlquist):

“We are reviewing it,” said Providence Police Commissioner Steven Pare. Police believe the incident in question occurred on May 23, 2016.

Click here to read a redacted copy of a police report pertaining to an incident from that date that appears to coincide with the events seen in the video.

He said the police department will comment further on the incident after the officers involved are consulted.

Because only a “snippet” of the incident is depicted on video, he cautioned the public not to rush to judgment. “When anyone looks at police use of force it can appear somewhat shocking,” Pare said. “You don’t see what led up to that kind of interaction.”

He said punching a suspect, even repeatedly as is shown in the video, can be appropriate use of force for a police officer. “We suspect the officer was being assaulted in that video,” he said. In the video and the police report, the officer claims he was bitten. “If she is in fact biting him, then that could give justification.”

GoLocalProv, a tabloid-esque local news website, erroneously claims the video is an exclusive. “GoLocal came to us after channel 10,” Pare said. “Channel 10 first gave the video to us at about 2pm.”

A group of 10 men were approached by police near the park on Sunday, according to a police report. One of the men, Kenneth L. Newman “approached Ptlm. Moody from his blind side and Newman made several movements toward his hip area, then Newman came within the reactionary gap of Ptlm. Moody made several loud verbal commands for Newman to sit down but [Newman] continued forward in a threatening, offensive posture toward Ptlm. Moody,” according to the police report. “At this time Ptlm. Moody drew his department issued firearm, and using loud verbal commands ordered Newman into a prone position.”

Providence Police Chief Hugh Clements said the reactionary gap is the area of personal space at which a person can come into contact with an officer. He said the suspect had a knife on his person and Officer Moody thought Newman was reaching for it.

“It appears the officer was very justified in pulling his firearm in this instance,” Clements said. “Based on what I know, I think he reacted properly to the threat to him.”

Clements said Providence police investigate every use of force by an officer – and use of force includes brandishing a gun. “If there is more to investigate, they will,” he said. “It doesn’t appear to me this will rise to that level. Only [Moody] and the officers on the scene know the exact totality of the threat to him.”

Clements said it is not uncommon for a Providence police officer to wield their guns. It happened more than 500 times last year, he said. “It happens at every single drug raid, every single gun arrest, every time there is a perceived threat to an officer,” he said. “Because it gets captured by someone on social media doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

Providence police try to document every incident when an officer pulls their gun on a suspect, but Clements said some officers don’t. “It’s an area that we constantly struggle with making sure that we document,” he said, noting that it happened at least 500 times in 2015.

Clements declined to disclose how many times Officer Moody has pulled out his gun. He said Moody trains other officers in safe use of firearms and is a member of a police department SWAT team, known as the “tactical team” or “special response unit.”

Newman was not charged with a crime.

“I’m really proud we haven’t had the outbursts and the violence that we’ve seen in other communities,” Elorza told RI Future after an appearance on NBC10 News Conference Friday morning. “And it’s not a coincidence. We’ve spent a lot of time building relationships between the police department and the community and it always can be better but I also think we have a lot to be proud of.”

He made certain to draw a distinction between the police union and the police department and said, “If we continue to focus on what brings us together as a community we can make sure that here in Providence we avoid some of the issues we’ve seen in other cities.”

Too many communities only debate this very critical issue after a white cop kills a black civilian. To that end, and maybe to that end only, it is to Rhode Island’s credit that we are having this debate prior to violence.

But Rhode Island needs our leaders to step up and moderate this moment. Mayor Jorge Elorza, Public Safety Commissioner Steve Pare, Governor Gina Raimondo – as well as Jim Vincent of the NAACP and Taft Manzotti of the Fraternal Order of Police – must seize this opportunity. This is either a teachable moment or it will breed more animosity between young, urban people of color and the police officers who are supposed to serve and protect them.

In the meantime, the cops plan a protest at the coffee shop on Saturday morning with signs that will say “Police Lives Do Matter” and progressive activists plan to patronize the Dunkin Donuts on Indigenous Peoples Day (aka Columbus Day, Monday).

While the whole thing seems silly on its face (some within the police department say it was mostly driven by an upcoming union election, though current union president Manzotti, who isn’t running for reelection, dismissed that theory) this incident has brought much valuable information to light. Providence police officers, it seems, resent the Black Lives Matter movement. We can reasonably assume the Black Lives Matter movement similarly resents the Providence police, and that it probably resents them at least a little bit more now, we need to bring these two communities together. This all matters.

None of this resentment is in anyone’s interest. It needs to be addressed before it festers into something worse. Rhode Island can’t have members of the police community calling for people to be fired. Law enforcement should never be politicized in this way. And to have white police officers publicly indicating they would fire a teenager of color for writing #blacklivesmatter is to sow the seeds of racial strife.

A Providence police officer was arrested this week for texting death threats to a doctor. Last week, the same officer was arrested for threatening his police department bosses. In August, he was charged with possessing a gun with a scratched off serial number. In April, he was disciplined when a picture of him sleeping in a police cruiser while on duty was posted to Twitter.

He’s being held without bail at the ACI. But he’s still a Providence police officer.

That’s because Rhode Island police officers are protected by what’s known as the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights, a state law that dictates a special process for disciplining cops. Anything more severe than a two day suspension requires a hearing by a three-board panel – one of whom the accused gets to select.

While a felony conviction would trump this law, there are untold examples of officer misconduct that go unpunished because of, according to Providence Public Safety Commission Steve Pare who says it’s time to make a change.

“It’s antiquated and doesn’t serve the purpose it was intended to,” he told RI Future. “It goes against the ethical standards and values of police departments.”

Rhode Island is one of just of 14 states to have a LEOBoR law, The others are: California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin, according to a report by the Marshall Project., which says Rhode Island’s law is the most “officer-friendly version” in the nation.

Pare concurred. “No other state in the country has these kinds of protections,” said. “They may have varying protections but no where else in the country is both protection and process spelled out in state law.”

LEOBoR laws became a flash point earlier this year when the law shielded Baltimore police officers who killed Frieddie Gray from discipline, as well as other officers involved in high profile instances of violent police misconduct.

“The Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights has the same relationship to a real bill of rights that the Patriot Act has to a real patriot,” wrote Georgetown law professor Paul Butler in the New York Times this June. “The real Bill of Rights — the one enshrined in the United States Constitution — actually limits the power of government, including the police.”

And Radley Belko, a criminal justice/mass incarceration blogger for the Washington Post, wrote that LEOBoR “can essentially become a how-to guide for cops to get their colleagues out of trouble.”

Rhode Island’s LEOBoR law cost “$1.5 million in legal fees and officer pay while suspended” during the previous 5 years, reported WPRI’s Tim White in 2014.

The Ocean State has long been the poster child of right wing criticism LEOBoR laws. An oft-cited 2012 Reason article starts with several Ocean State anecdotes. “All of these Rhode Island cops, and many more like them across the county, were able to keep their jobs and benefits—sometimes only temporarily, but always longer than they should have—thanks to model legislation written and lobbied for by well-funded police unions,” writes Mike Riggs. “That piece of legislation is called the ‘law enforcement bill of rights,’ and its sole purpose is to shield cops from the laws they’re paid to enforce.”

Pare said the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association tried to have the law amended in recent years, to no avail. “The unions were adamantly opposed to any changes,” he said, noting that 25 city and town councils endorsed amending the LEOBoR law.

With a renewed emphasis on police officer conduct across the nation and in Rhode Island, Pare said the time may finally be right to move the issue forward.

“Let’s come up with some recommendations that the General Assembly can consider,” he said.

The first place to begin the discussion is with a mature analysis of the #BlackLivesMatter movement in Rhode Island. It is clear from the reaction and statements of the police that they see the movement as a threat to their self-designated right to antagonize people of color. One must only say the name of Cornell Young, Jr., the black police officer who was accidentally gunned down by white colleagues during a late-night robbery, to remind folks that even a badge does not protect black people in Providence. Consider the statements of the police union regarding the agitation of Kobi Dennis, who reported the racial profiling and harassment of his son by the so-called ‘jump out boys’ to police leadership:

The consequences of the combined actions of the police administration, City Hall leadership and these activists has been to decrease the safety of the citizens in the city of Providence due to the disruption of police activities, to increase the dangers posed to our police officers and to lower morale among the ranks.

The idea that a man who works out of the South Providence Salvation Army building on Broad Street poses a public safety threat and might be some kind of Ocean State Che Guevara is indicative of a mentality that hates when black and brown people dare speak aloud against their victimization. It is no accident that the international community cited America for 25 different types of human rights abuses through a UN Human Rights Committee report in April 2014, including several instances that involved the police. In March of this year, Cuba called America to account for racism in the prison and death penalty sentence applications.

This all provides fertile ground for the #BlackLivesMatter folks to plants roots in.

It is no mistake that Michelle Alexander’s book about the police-prison industry was called THE NEW JIM CROW. Police forces say they exist so to protect and serve, but they also produce a genuine product, incarcerated black and brown men who become cheap labor for work-release programs. They create a new class of low-cost laborers who operate in workplaces that should be staffed with honest, unionized American workers. The fact the Providence police union is involved in this just shows how anti-worker and anti-American they are.

Providence was founded on two things, religious freedom and slavery. One of the first acts of Roger Williams was to sell Pequots into slavery in the Caribbean. Years later, the Brown family, the same one who endowed the University that bears their name, made their fortune selling Africans in slavery, as well as the ships, chains, and clothing that were used to transport Africans from the continent. When a slave escaped from his captors, a notice such as this one would be distributed to the newspapers and authorities.

In reacting as they have and treating those who dare say that #BlackLivesMatter in such a fashion, the Providence Police have shown their true colors as not those who are interested in protecting poor people of color. They are rather the direct descendants of the Fugitive Slave Patrols who used to prowl the land looking for black and brown people who dare say their lives mattered and were worthy of emancipation. Their foolish response that ‘All Lives Matter’ is petty.

Are police officers the overwhelming majority of the prison population? Were their forebears brought to America in chains and raped, whipped, and worked for no pay upon arrival? Is there a cataclysmic level of poverty, disenfranchisement, and gun death fatalities among police in Providence that I missed? Are police being gentrified out of their historic neighborhoods in Providence to make way for recent college grads who serve as the shock troops of so-called ‘urban renewal’? Are the children of police officers forced to see a majority of their fathers behind bars? Are their wives and partners routinely called ‘welfare queens’ and members of the ‘moocher class’ by austerity-minded politicians? Were the majority of the failed mortgages that crashed the economy in 2008 originally executed by predatory lenders who targeted Providence gumshoes? Is there an overwhelming level of fatalities related to asthma, diabetes, and under-treated cancers in the ranks that we at RIFuture are not reporting?

It is hard to judge which is more galling, the narcissism or the intellectual hollowness of these counter-slogans. For such a bunch of tough civil servants (who are also noticeably well-armed and equipped with military-grade body armor), they seem like a bunch of toddlers in dire need of a nap. We might be at risk for a flood in Providence due to their crying over nothing.

Someone wrote a slogan that affirms the value of human lives on a beverage container. When the anti-choice crowd, who do have a history of bombing health centers and shooting doctors, carry on as they do, we never see the boys in blue on the look-out for potential terrorism. Yet when black and brown people say they matter, it warrants a cacophony of self-important nonsense. None of the #BlackLivesMatter folks in RI have been involved in domestic terrorism, yet they are treated like it while the odious Bishop Tobin, the bin Laden of anti-choice hysteria, gets kid gloves. The hypocrisy is blatant.

That Dunkin’ Donuts apologized because someone said #BlackLivesMatter shows that they do not actually care about black lives. One could speak volumes before this instance of how awful their corn syrup-based confections and watery coffee was, but now they have gone one step further and hung a shingle in the window that says ‘WHITES ONLY’.

The #BlackLivesMatter folks have some steps to take in their efforts to mature as a movement and not get caught in the ‘anti-politics’ ennui that collapsed the Occupy Wall Street movement. When I spoke with Glen Ford recently, he emphasized the two most pertinent demands were ending mass-incarceration and gentrification. It may take a little while for the #BlackLivesMatter folks to articulate those demands properly, but in the meantime, a Martin Luther King, Jr.-style boycott of Dunkin’ Donuts might suffice, demanding that black and brown people be made managers of stores in black and brown neighborhoods and that every one of them feature windows that say #BlackLivesMatter.

As for the black and brown police officers in Providence, I am sorry that they must work in such racist conditions. Providence has 37 out of 425 sworn officers on the force, which makes plain how serious they are about minority hiring. When I spoke with Kobi Dennis this summer, he said that he felt their minority hiring effort so far has been problematic.

The message is clear, Providence police, its union, and their mayor have allowed Taft Mazotti, head of the Fraternal Order of Police, to tar them all as people who do not think black lives matter. It is time for them to stop pretending otherwise.

The police union issued a press release chiding the teenage girl and the Black Lives Matter movement, while Vincent defended the young woman and the catch phrase that has unified people who feel that black people continue to be marginalized in America.

“The negativity by the #Blacklivesmatter organization towards Police across this nation is creating a hostile environment that is not resolving any problems or issues, but making it worse for our communities,” according to the press release. “They are doing this by increasing tensions amongst police and the people they serve.”

But Vincent thought it was the police who are increasing community tensions with its handling of the incident.

“I just think it makes the union look bad,” he told RI Future. “It gives people the impression that black lives don’t matter to them.”

Manzotti told RI Future this morning that the issue raised concern for the union because they believe that someone who would write black lives matter on a coffee cup may also try to poison a police officers’ coffee. “There’s been a concern that police officers have to be weary about where we can get something to eat or drink,” Manzotti said.

Vincent scoffed at the assumption that asserting that black lives matter indicates a direct threat to a police officer, noting that the movement is not even against police officers. “You cannot imply that because someone says black lives matter that they are against the police,” he said. “I think she probably just wanted to communicate that black lives matter and the officer took it the wrong way.”

I asked both Manzotti and Vincent if the officer missed an opportunity to dialogue with the woman about what the Black Lives Matter movement means to her.

“I think they missed an awesome opportunity to do some real community policing,” Vincent said. “Instead of bringing the community together they further fractured it. They may not have meant to do this but that’s what happened.”

Manzotti said the officer did not notice the message on his coffee cup until he arrived at work. “We’re a very busy department,” he said. “For an officer to take time to sit down with someone…”

Manzotti stopped mid sentence to tack away from officer time management to put the onus on the employee. “Let’s turn this around,” he said. “Could the employee have reached out and started a conversation?” When reminded he was tasking an urban teenager of color, rather than a law enforcement officer, with taking the lead in starting this conversation, he said, “Every single person knows right from wrong.”

Manzotti said he thought the young woman should be fired, but was careful to explain that the union did not ask the owner to fire her when they spoke earlier this week.

“We asked that he do whatever he feels is necessary to rectify the situation,” Manzotti told RI Future. “I can’t tell him what to do but I know if I had an employee working at my small business who did that, that person would not be working for me.”

Vincent acknowledged the teenager “maybe used poor judgment” but agreed with a reporter who said the employer would likely lose a wrongful termination lawsuit, as well as risk national backlash. “If there was no clear policy in place,” Vincent said, “…it’s hard to fire someone for something like this.”

Perhaps their biggest difference concerned the phrase black lives matter.

“I’d like to hear the union say black lives matter,” Vincent said. “Why can’t they say that? What is it that’s so difficult for them about acknowledging that black lives matter? It suggests to the community that black lives don’t matter to them.”

Manzotti was careful to avoid acknowledging that black lives matter and, like in the initial press release that kicked off this tempest in a teapot, explained, “because, to us, all lives matter.” He said he has not seen evidence in his life or career that black lives matter less than white lives.

Vincent said supplanting ‘all lives matter’ for ‘black lives matter’ is “almost like a code word for saying you don’t believe black lives matter.” He added, “Either intentionally or unintentionally, it marginalizes and minimizes the value of black lives.”