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The FANG Collective staged a demonstration outside TD Bank Wednesday to protest the company’s support of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which is even now being blocked by First Nation protesters from many different tribes. TD Bank is one of many lending institutions financing the pipeline.
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.
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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.
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Christopher Johnson, performing at AS220’s Empire Review. (Photo Steve Ahlquist)
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.
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):
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Providence police are reviewing a video that shows an officer punching a woman in the face several times and dragging her down a flight of stairs by either her hair or the nape of her neck. The incident was first reported by NBC10.
“We are reviewing it,” said Providence Police Commissioner Steven Pare. Police believe the incident in question occurred on May 23, 2016.
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.”
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In an incident captured by onlookers and spread on social media, Providence police officer Frank Moody pulled his gun on a man near Burnside Park in downtown Providence Sunday.
Photo by Artemis Manie Butti Moonhawk.
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.”
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Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza said the uproar among Providence police officers who took issue with a teenager Dunkin Donuts employee who wrote “#blacklivesmatter” on a cop’s coffee cup is a “very important issue” and pointed out that the community and the officers that serve and protect it are closer than this issue would make it seem.
“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.”
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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.
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.
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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.
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In reviewing the basic facts of the case at hand, the behavior of a Providence Police officer and his union in reaction to a Dunkin’ Donuts worker writing #BlackLivesMatter on his coffee cup, it seems useless to level mature critiques against a group behaving so immaturely. The statements of the two, as well as Dunkin’ Donuts, can only be called childish, hammy, paranoid, reactionary and blatantly racist. This is not the first or last time that the Providence Police and their Latino mayor have carried on in such a fashion and the fact they continue to do so unchecked by the people who pay their salaries indicates that it will continue.
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.
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Taft Mazotti, president of the Providence police union, and Jim Vincent, executive director of the Providence chapter of the NAACP, have very different opinions on the actions of a 17-year-old black employee of an Atwells Avenue Dunkin Donuts who wrote “#Blacklivesmatter” on a cop’s coffee cup.
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.”
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Richard Cosentino died in the custody of Providence police on Sunday. The way the police describe his death leaves a lot of doubt. Even from the police’s story, which is pretty much the only version we have, it appears they treated him too harshly, and he didn’t need to die.
Like many of those who have died unnecessarily at the hands of police, he suffered from mental illness. But when he came to the police’s attention on Sunday morning, he had committed no crime, nor was he acting strangely. He was just dealing with a problem that plagued all the residents of his apartment building: an elevator in the building that kept breaking down. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, the elevator in his building had gotten stuck between floors again, with him inside it. He tried to attract attention the same way a lot of people would, loudly requesting help. Another resident heard him and called 911. That brought in firefighters and police. Soon after the firefighters got him out of the elevator, Richard Cosentino was arrested and put in a police car where he died.
As often happens in these dubious deaths in police custody, police are putting out negative information about the dead person. They say that Richard Cosentino had a criminal record, having been arrested in 2011 for larceny and tampering with a vehicle. He pleaded no contest to the tampering charge, and we don’t have more details about what exactly he was accused of doing in that case. Was he a danger to others? Was he another of the mentally ill people, like Darius McCollum and others, who are tagged with criminal records even though they didn’t mean any harm? It’s significant that his neighbors use the word “nice” repeatedly in speaking of him. One neighbor described Richard Cosentino as “A nice guy. He didn’t bother nobody. He’d sit out and talk to himself sometimes.”
I know the police see him as a criminal. And I can understand how it might have attracted a suspicious police response in the past when he’d go outside at night, talk to himself, and so on. But even if his relationship with the police in the past wasn’t the best, that doesn’t mean we should dismiss him as a wrongdoer. Let’s look at why he was arrested.
Police say that they responded to Carroll Towers apartment complex at 243 Smith St., following a 911 call at 4am Sunday from a resident there about another resident who was “causing a commotion in an elevator”. I wish Cosentino’s calls for help hadn’t been interpreted that way: “causing a commotion in an elevator.” In any case, firefighters and police went to the building after Cosentino’s neighbor called 911. The firefighters got him out of the elevator after turning off the electric power. His interaction with the authorities didn’t go well afterwards. According to Providence Police’s Major Thomas Verdi and Colonel Hugh Clements, Cosentino appeared “agitated” and was “highly intoxicated” as soon as the elevator doors were opened. That’s how they perceived this person who had just been through the traumatic experience of being stuck in an elevator in the middle of the night. Look, I know he had some mental illness, and I’m sure he did appear agitated after being stuck in the elevator, but none of that is his fault. With better training, the authorities might not have jumped to perceiving him in that way when they found him inside the elevator.
The police also say that Cosentino refused to comply with them and with firefighters. If that’s what happened, I don’t think he’s really to blame for that given what had just happened to him. I don’t believe they should have arrested him over that. The compassionate thing would have been just to let him go, since he had clearly just been the victim and wasn’t doing any harm. Too often that’s not how police treat the mentally ill or others.
The other side of this is how Cosentino perceived the authorities. To judge by the police’s description, he wasn’t quick to see them as friendly — in fact the police hadn’t been friendly to him in the past, and the police’s story of his death makes it sound as if they didn’t even start out friendly to him this time. It’s quite possible that, as police said, he refused to comply with something they told him to do. And even if he was correct in deciding that the authorities on the scene weren’t friendly to him, his mental illness may have led him to misinterpret things in a worse light. For instance, given the negative interactions he’d had with authorities in the past, he may not have seen them as his rescuers. After the traumatic experience of being stuck in the elevator in the wee hours, and then realizing that he would soon be dealing with police who had treated him negatively before and who weren’t particularly friendly to him now, I even wonder if he mistakenly perceived the authorities as being more the cause of the elevator problem than the solution.
Fear is important here. Even those who don’t particularly suffer from mental illness often feel fearful when police approach and don’t feel that their own innocence will necessarily protect them from police. The situation where firefighters are rescuing you from a stuck elevator, with police waiting among them, is one which many people would find challenging and scary to deal with, whether one has a mental illness or not. Since this is something that plenty of innocent people would feel, it’s worth thinking about how typical police attitudes and behaviors contribute to it. Is it a good thing when we have a police force behaving in ways that inspire so much fear in the innocent? I can certainly believe that Richard Cosentino was “agitated” as the police say, like many people with or without mental illness would be in those circumstances. And maybe he did fail to comply with the police in that kind of situation that isn’t easy to deal with. But that still doesn’t mean he should end up arrested. And in particular, he didn’t have to die.
We don’t have an official cause of death for Cosentino yet. According to police, Cosentino went into cardiac arrest soon after police took him into custody. Cardiac arrest isn’t a heart attack — instead it just means that his heart stopped beating, and it can be caused by a number of things, including the violence of an arrest. People have gone into cardiac arrest after being Tased by police, or after being hit in the chest. Eric Garner died when he went into cardiac arrest after New York police placed him in a kind of neck hold. So it’s worth considering very seriously the possiblity that Richard Cosentino may have died as a result of whatever kinds of physical force were used in arresting him.
Was Cosentino violent with police or firefighters? The police haven’t been too clear about that. They say he was “combative.” But the way police use the word “combative”, it doesn’t necessarily show there was any violence (for example, here, here, here and here). We’ve already heard that Cosentino wasn’t complying, and it’s not clear whether the description of him as “combative” amounted to any more than that. There is also a claim that Cosentino “assaulted” the fire chief who was on the scene, but that claim hasn’t been substantiated; WPRI News says that their sources say they’re not sure the firefighter was ever actually hit. So I don’t know what to think when the police say that Cosentino “began fighting.” I’ve seen many cases in Rhode Island and elsewhere where officers use force against someone who wasn’t violent, and then the police turn around and say that the victim began fighting. This has even happened to innocent people who are just trying to walk away from police, like Kollin Truss in Baltimore who was beaten and wrongly accused of being violent after trying to walk away from an officer. Sometimes you just have to let the innocent person go.
Richard Cosentino was forcibly taken into custody inside his own Providence apartment complex. The police claim that they didn’t hit him. They do, however, admit using physical force against him: they say they decided they had to “physically place him into handcuffs”. But although they occasionally claim that Cosentino was the one who began fighting, I don’t know if that’s really true. I take very seriously the possibility that he wasn’t violent, but police perceived him as “combative”, “agitated” and noncompliant, and decided to forcibly arrest him. There is some video of what happened, but — significantly — the video hasn’t been made public.
Once he was arrested and taken into a police car, Cosentino asked for medical treatment. Police admit this, and again it shows that they used some force on him. It might have been better if the police made his medical treatment more of a priority. Like Eric Garner in Brooklyn, who said “I can’t breathe” and went into cardiac arrest after being placed in a neck hold, Richard Cosentino in Providence went silent and went into cardiac arrest after asking for medical treatment. He might have lived if he had been taken to a hospital immediately. Police say that firefighters gave Cosentino at least a little medical treatment on the scene. But he really needed to be in the hospital.
After he asked for medical help — his last words, perhaps — he seems to have remained in the police car for some time. It’s worth looking at the timeline. This situation started with Cosentino noisily calling help from inside the elevator, followed by a 911 call which according to most news stories occurred at 4am Sunday. A few of the media stories on Cosentino’s death say that the “rescue call” was at 4:30am Sunday, not 4am; maybe 4am was when the 911 call was placed and the big incident with police and firefighters on scene happened around 4:30. In any case, Cosentino and the authorities got into their confrontation, and he was arrested and placed in the police car. He asked for medical help, and it’s clear it didn’t take long for him to ask, because the police say that he went silent shortly after being arrested. So very soon after being arrested, he said he needed medical help. A little after 5am, he was pronounced dead at Rhode Island Hospital. The death itself occurred in police custody, so it seems he died in the police car before he even got to the hospital. Would he still be alive if he had gotten to the hospital at 4:45 or earlier, instead of staying in the police car after “he went silent”?
As one of his neighbors said, “Cosentino had mental health issues but wouldn’t hurt anyone” and “was probably distraught from being stuck in the elevator. The neighbor said it may have helped if Cosentino was put into an ambulance instead of a police car.” There is no reason to think Cosentino was armed or dangerous.
Media coverage has emphasized that Richard Cosentino’s death is under investigation by the Providence police department itself, as well as by the state police and Attorney General Peter Kilmartin (a former police officer who is police-friendly and has not been good at supporting police accountability). So there are several different investigations, all with police in charge. But investigations alone are not enough. The neighbors who knew Cosentino are shocked. If officers used unnecessary force here, they need to face consequences that are more serious than a full-pay retirement.
The public needs to see the video. And it’s long past time for better laws. Police need better training, not just in dealing with the mentally ill, but in dealing with all who are vulnerable and all who are likely to be mistakenly perceived as dangerous. There should be mental health workers on every police shift. Especially when dealing with elderly, mentally ill, or disabled people, police should try to de-escalate and avoid arrest, seeking peace instead. Handcuffing people in these groups should be a last resort (and should often be done with handcuffs in front of the body, not behind). The Providence Community Safety Act needs to be passed, and the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights needs to be repealed. Accepting a tiny bit more risk to law enforcement is worth it if it prevents unnecessary deaths like Richard Cosentino’s.
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Over 500 people joined the Black Lives Matter march in Providence on Saturday. The event, organized by End Police Brutality PVD, was held in solidarity with Baltimore, which has become the new epicenter for change in the ongoing tragedy of police violence against blacks and other people of color. The march began in the parking lot of Central High School and took a long twisting route through downtown Providence before looping back and filling the parking lot behind DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equality).
Well over 60 Providence police officers and a fair number of State police flanked the peaceful protest. There were no arrests made. The police were also recording the march, and spent a long time videotaping the marchers through the fence at the press conference held in the DARE parking lot at the end of the march. When the march briefly paused at the Providence Public Safety building, participants were startled to see police officers in full riot gear watching them from the windows.
In my years of recording and reporting on protests and marches of all kinds, I’ve never seen such a large police presence.
Contributing to the photos below is the talented Rachel Simon.
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John Prince was not the only person to successfully file a complaint against the Providence Police Department in recent months.
At a press conference held outside Mayor Jorge Elorza‘s offices in the Providence City Hall, Morgan Victor told the story of her and her friend’s verbal harassment by Providence police officers in November 2014. With the help of Shannah Kurland, the lawyer representing John Prince in his complaint, Victor endured the long complaint and hearing process to a successful conclusion. “Ultimately they were found guilty for what they did to us,” said Victor.
Monica Huertas took the microphone to tell the emotional story of her complaint against the Providence Police, still in process. When her brother, a veteran suffering from PTSD, was in need of medical help, she called 911. When the police arrived, instead of attempting to deescalate the situation, they tased him.
The event was emceed by a sword wielding Victoria Ruiz, dressed as Justice. Steven Dy, lead organizer at PrYSM, spoke about the Community Safety Act, which Mayor Elorza promised to support when he was a candidate, but has not moved on since taking office.
The only elected official in attendance was Providence City Councillor Mary Kay Harris. At least five Providence Police Officers kept a watchful eye on the proceedings from a respectful distance.
The press conference ended with a plea to those who have endured abuse at the hands of the police to come forward and lodge formal complaints. Community groups such as DARE and PrYSM will be happy to help you through the process. A hashtag, #AllEyesonProPo, has been created to publicize the effort.
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An internal affairs investigation found two of three Providence police officers guilty of violating department rules and regulations when they took John Prince‘s camera phone from him, according to Police chief Hugh Clements.
In September, 2014, Prince observed three police officers outside his home and used his phone to video the officers. They had detained two women and were asking “intimidating” questions while going through their handbags. The officers objected to being recorded, chased Prince inside his home, took his cellphone, deleted the video and threw the phone into the bushes, an egregious violation of Prince’s constitutionally guaranteed rights.
After San Lucas issued his finding, Colonel Hugh Clements, chief of the Providence Police, concurred and issued appropriate sanctions, he said in this letter. The supervising officer, Sgt. Roger Aspinal, was suspended for one day without pay, and must attend retraining. Officer Louis Gianfrancesco was not suspended but must attend retraining.
Prince and his lawyer, Shannah Kurland, will be holding a press conference Thursday at Providence City Hall to talk about the case. You can hear Prince tell his story in the video below.
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Saying a “deficiency in agency diversity” exists in police departments across Rhode Island, the NAACP Providence Branch has asked the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers to review the racial diversity and hiring practices of every police department in Rhode Island.
“It’s part of making sure police departments are reflective of the communities they serve,” said Jim Vincent, president of the NAACP Providence Chapter. “We’re going to learn the diversity make-up for every police department in Rhode Island, and where that diversity is in terms of hierarchy.”
The study will look at every municipal police department an the state police, said Vincent. It will be ready soon, said Charles P. Wilson of NABLEO.
“After a 3-month process of gathering and analyzing data, we anticipate releasing the formal study sometime next week.” he said in an email. “The training program, entitled ‘Identifying Barriers To Diversity in Law Enforcement-A Community Affair’ will be presented Friday, April 17, 2015 and will be sponsored by NABLEO, the Providence Branch NAACP, and the Roger Williams University School of Continuing Studies.”
A press release from the NAACP Providence Chapter said, “NABLEO will conduct both a survey of all law enforcement agencies to determine the number of minority officers employed, how recruiting information is published and disseminated, and the strength of outreach measures used to notify possible candidates, as well as a training program to be offered to both law enforcement and community members on enhanced methods for recruiting qualified candidates of color.”
In a subsequent interview, Vincent added, “We really don’t have a good feel for the number of African American and Latino and Asian police officers in Rhode Island.” Though, we already know Providence police doesn’t look like the Providence community.
Alex Krogh-Grabbe created this chart in December for a study of Providence police racial representation. Click on the image for his post.
In December, Alex Krogh-Grabbe reported that Providence police is among the least racially representative police department in the nation. He wrote, “the 444-officer Providence Police Department is 76.3 percent White, 11.7 percent Hispanic, 9.0 percent Black, 2.7 percent Asian or Pacific Islander, and 0.2 percent American Indian. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city as a whole is 37.8 percent White, 38.3 percent Hispanic, 16.1 percent Black, 6.5 percent Asian or Pacific Islander, and 1.4 percent American Indian.”
In a statement, Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steven Paré told him at the time, “Recruiting a diverse workforce is always a priority. We hired two recruit classes for the PFD and one recruit class for the PPD. It was one of the most diverse classes we’ve had in our history. Our goal is to mirror the community we serve. The challenge is to reach out to the available workforce in the region and recruit the best candidates.”
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Officer Ron Pino videotapes protesters rallying at the Central High School parking lot.
The RI ACLU is asking the Providence Police Department to stop videotaping protests until it develops public policies and procedures for this increasingly controversial police tactic.
Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steven Pare said he does not think the police department needs a policy on recording protests. “I think we have adequate procedures in place,” he said. He also said the ACLU letter cites an incident that Providence police did not record.
Providence police have been videotaping large protests since at least Occupy Providence, Pare said, and noted that Rhode Island State Police did, too. The video is used in case police need to identify someone who commits a crime, he said.
“If you’re interest is to protest lawfully, it shouldn’t have a chilling effect,” Pare said.
Pare said the video is not used for homeland security purposes and is not shared with any other governmental agency.
The ACLU letter says police videotaped a hotel workers protest at the Renaissance Hotel in June 26, 2014 as well as a State House press conference on the Comprehensive Racial Profiling Prevention Act in February, 2013, among others. Pare said it is not true that police videotaped the State House press event.
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CBattle, as he has asked to be called for this interview, is originally from Florida, but currently resides near the Providence area. He works with youth in Providence, and on November 25th was one of seven people arrested for allegedly engaging in disorderly conduct on the highway during a Ferguson protest.
CBattle was kind enough to answer some questions for RI Future, the second in a series of interviews I’m working on with the PVD7. You can read the first interview with Tess Brown-Lavoie here.
RI Future: Why were you at the protest?
CBattle: My purpose for protesting is doing my civic duty to address the adversities and oppressions in society. In this particular instance justice has not been served, rather, unlawfulness is being justified, and its implications have a direct effect in the living of my people, all people. We are taught to police ourselves, because of the fear their actions have instilled into our conscious. These actions stem from a profile that is based on us, a target that has been placed on us and a stigma that has been cultivated since the time of America’s forefathers. The time has come for that conditioning to end.
RI Future: What motivates you?
CBattle: My motivation is the vision of a more progressive, productive, and self sustaining society. Too much we depend on the vehicles around us, waiting for the arbitrary to come and deliver us from our doom. Our deliverance starts with us. In my opinion we must refine ourselves first, in order that we may prepare for a society without chaos, one that is not reactionary but stationary.
RI Future: What kind of history/education/experiences have you had that brought you out to the march/rally?
CBattle: I was raised in the deep south, where such issues are about as frequent as the newspaper delivery. That alone has served as a constant reminder that oppression is relevant no matter how far north you travel. Of the murders that do get reported, there are still countless others that go unrecognized. I have two nephews aged 17, and they could easily be victims we are discussing, but before it hits home, before it hits me, I am doing my due diligence to see this come to an end.
RI Future: Where do you see this issue going? Do you hope for any political solutions to this?
CBattle: I would like to see this issue continue to resonate with the people, so that we may all collectively wake up and see what’s happening to us. Some Americans have highlighted some of the criminal action that victims of police brutality have engaged in, and to that point I would say what is the driving force for such actions? Why do young black and brown males turn to drugs or crime as a means of survival? Why is poverty only relegated to one section of our cities? Why does legal segregation still exist through zoning laws? These cycles have been perpetuated for far too long and who’s answering for the epidemic of drugs? Gun usage? The answer is not another dead piece of evidence. I am faithful the people will continue to provide the fire for these hot water topics, invigorate the call for social change. Our government can invoke any law or statute, but it is our responsibility to demonstrate humanity.We too, require a stable and equal plain to do so.
Steve Alquist is profiling people arrested at the November 25 BlackLivesMatter march that temporarily closed down Interstate 95 in Providence. Read the other interviews here:
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Last night’s “New Beginnings Community Outreach Forum: A Follow-Up to the Ferguson Decision” at the South Providence Recreation Center was an attempt by the RI State Police and the Providence Police Department to reach out and establish a dialog with community groups in the wake of protests held here in response to racial profiling and the events in Ferguson and Long Island.
The last time I covered an event like this, in October, the Providence Police Department was introducing 53 new police officers to the public, and about 60 members of the community attended. That event was pointed at times, but cordial. This time, at least four times as many community members were in attendance, with representatives from at least 15 community organizations, and the “dialog” was heated, exposing not only the rift between community and police, but the fractures in the community itself.
The younger attendees not only had words for the police, but seemed dissatisfied with their community leadership. There is a call for new solutions: some radical, like the abolition of police departments all together, and some moderate, like the abolition of the police officer’s bill of rights in concert with an empowered citizens review board. One idea not discussed was the use of police body cameras, an issue that seemed so hot a month ago, but since the non-indictment of the police officers who killed Eric Garner, whose death was caught on video, police body cameras seem kind of pointless.
For the most part, rather than a dialog, those in attendance were treated to a series of monologs. Community members and police seemed to be speaking at each other, declaring grievances or defending policies. During the program, and for a short time afterward, I saw actual conversations occurring between the community and the police, but these were smaller one-on-one interactions.
Providence Police Chief, Colonel Hugh Clements, while defending his police force overall, acknowledged that things sometimes go wrong, and several times used the phrase, “Can we do better? Yes we can.” Colonel Steven G. O’Donnel represented the RI State Police.
In selecting the videos below, I tried to highlight voices I hadn’t heard before.
“I don’t see it as policing, I see it as the criminalization of communities… It’s not you personally, you guys as human beings, it’s the racist institution of the police that’s built upon this racist state, the United States of America. Built upon genocide, built upon slavery of all our ancestors, black and brown people here in this room, and so you guys are just a manifestation of that racism…”
“My question is about community policing. My understanding is that we do not currently have a model of community policing…”
“When I asked all the officers, and this was about 67 new recruits, about seven of them were from Providence. The rest are from other parts of the [state]. And I said, ‘Why do you guys all want to come work for Providence?’ and all their [answers] was, “Because that’s where all the action is.'”
“What do I tell my black students, my Latino students… when they get to class late… not just driving, but walking…” because the police have pulled them over for no reason.
“I think just today I was reading an article about people of color being pulled over much more frequently than people who are not of color, people who are white…”
“Of the 52 new recruits, how many were Southeast Asians?”
“I believe there were two.”
“Are you sure they were Southeast Asians?”
“I’m not positive. I’m not prepared to answer that.”
“I get stopped all the time by the troopers… More than three times they’ve tried to open the car and get into the car without a warrant..”
“Most media here is white. There’s no media representing us. No media. And I’m going to say that because watch when people report out, it is not going to come out like it’s supposed to come out…”
“They put me on the ground, in my driveway, with my children looking out of the window, this was in 2010, telling me that I did not live here, ‘you cannot afford to live here’…”
“I remember when I was about 5,6,7,8 years old and the Providence Police Department, you guys used to do that Bike Safety Drive… and I remember thinking that the police officers were on our side, and that you guys cared for us… so, at what age does a young person of color have to be for you guys to stop caring about us?”
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Molly Kitiyakara, 19, Tess Brown-Lavoie, 25, Steven Roberts, 23, Larry Miller, 29 and Cameron Battle, 28 arrived in the courtroom at 9am and sat quietly as the court systematically processed other cases before finally calling each defendant separately before the judge.
The defendants and the state have not made any progress in resolving the case, Kurland told Judge Jabour. She requested all state police call recordings made before and during the arrests as part of the discovery.
The sixth person arrested the night of the protests. Servio Gomez, 23, faces more serious charges of assault, resisting arrest and the malicious damage of property. He is being tried separately.
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Friday night’s #ThisStopsToday march through downtown Providence was filled with excitement. There was an abortive and tense attempt to block the highway, at least two “die-ins” and an attempt to enter the Providence Place Mall that was literally prevented by police physically strong arming the protesters out the doors.
I have footage of all that in another post, but for now, let’s hear from the two speakers who opened the march.
“To say that ‘black lives matter’ seems to be a revolutionary belief in a nation where the possibility that a young black man may have stolen some cigarettes or that some self-appointed watchman was scared enough is enough to justify the murders of black bodies…”
“Why is success being quantified as a simple linear equation, hard work plus motivation equals success? Why do we not consider the other factors like race, gender, class that affect this so-called path? Michael Brown’s mother did everything she could for her son. Together they worked hard tirelessly so that he could have the opportunity to attend college where previously there was none. But in the matter of a few minutes, that did not matter. It didn’t matter that he studied. It didn’t matter that he applied. It didn’t matter that he did the work. In a matter of seconds he was nothing more than a black body…”
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The FANG Collective staged a demonstration outside TD Bank Wednesday to protest the company’s support of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which is even now being blocked by First Nation protesters from many different tribes. TD Bank is one of many lending institutions financing the pipeline.
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.
Over 500 people joined the Black Lives Matter march in Providence on Saturday. The event, organized by 
Well over 60 Providence police officers and a fair number of State police flanked the peaceful protest. There were no arrests made. The police were also recording the march, and spent a long time videotaping the marchers through the fence at the press conference held in the DARE parking lot at the end of the march. When the march briefly paused at the Providence Public Safety building, participants were startled to see police officers in full riot gear watching them from the windows.
Last night’s “
Friday night’s