'Too much violence last year'

from the Providence Journal:
Sunday, March 5, 2006

BY GREGORY SMITH
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- City police react to spike in killings

Emanuel J. Fermin, 27, of Cranston, bent over to lift a chain and medallion from the neck of a stuffed animal.

The toy was part of a street corner shrine, one of the hasty memorials that people set up these days when a friend or relative dies tragically.

It is not clear whether Fermin meant to take the medallion or merely look at it. Regardless, the police believe that the act cost him his life.

Friends of the traffic accident victim honored by the shrine, in the Chad Brown housing project, spotted Fermin. Angered by his "desecration," they chased him down the street and shot him dead, according to Major Stephen Campbell, commander of the police Investigative Division.

Fermin was just the first of 22 murder victims in Providence in 2005, when violent crime spiked by 5.6 percent after a year of decline. The 22 murders more than doubled the number of murders, 10, in the rest of Rhode Island.

The number of violent crimes -- murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault -- went from 1,084 to 1,145 in Providence.

But the number of what police call Part I crimes overall declined from 11,485 to 11,190, or by 2.6 percent, according to the police. Part I is FBI terminology for seven major categories of violent and property crimes, and it does not include all crimes.

"We've all had many a sleepless night," trying to figure out the reasons for the violence and new ways to prevent it, said Police Chief Dean M. Esserman.

Murders in Providence, the second most-populous city in New England, peaked at 30 in 2000, then declined to 23 in 2001 and 2002, to 20 in 2003, and then to 18 before last year's spike to 22.

In 2005, on a per capita basis, the number of Providence murders slightly exceeded that in New England's most-populous city, Boston, which surged to a 10-year high of 75 murders.

Fermin was shot in the early morning hours of Jan. 9, 2005. He collapsed on June Street and lay there for several hours until a passerby saw the body and called the police. Although the case has cooled off, Campbell said the police continue to investigate.

The reasons for murder can be serious or trivial, he said, and they remain what they have always been: money or street disputes; relationships that go bad, including domestic situations; and drugs.

Esserman said the Police Department leadership asks itself, " . . . What could we have done better, what do we need to do better, because there was too much violence last year."

Esserman is out of work now, recuperating from surgery. Deputy Chief Paul J. Kennedy said last week that the department plans no immediate changes in its strategies or tactics due to the violence.

"When people ask what are you going to do differently, we're just going to work harder. We've had success," Kennedy said.

Part I crime in Providence has been on a three-year downward trend since Esserman became chief in January of 2003. Comparing Esserman's cumulative three years to the prior three years, the number of crimes took a dive, from 41,064 to 35,297, or 14 percent, according to department figures made public last week.

Violent crimes declined, too, from 3,894 to 3,555, or 8.7 percent.

During that six-year time span, the department has changed its information-management system and modified the way it categorizes crimes. Nevertheless, Kennedy insisted the figures are comparable.

Of the 22 murder victims in 2005, 16 were shot, 2 were stabbed, 2 were beaten, 1 was strangled and 1 was run down by a car. Six of the victims were 18 years old or younger. Except for 2-year-old Marquel Davis, who was beaten to death, allegedly by two baby sitters, all of the young victims were shot to death.

That continues a phenomenon that has been apparent since at least 2000, in which all the murdered teens in Providence have been shooting victims.

"What this department is focused on is the violence. And we have been working hard for three years," Esserman said. "Even though there is significantly less violence in this city than there was three years ago, and significantly less crime in this city than there was three years ago, that is little solace for those who have lost a young person to violence. And it is little solace to this police chief."

Although the police are unable to explain the spike in violent crime, they have demonstrated progress in preventing shootings. The number of people shot, according to Campbell, has decreased from 105 in 2002, to 92 in 2003, to 73 in 2004, to 65 in 2005.

They point to the work of a four-member gun task force, which concentrates on separating criminals from their guns. The Narcotics and Organized Crime Division is having plenty of success in that area, too. In 2005, Campbell disclosed, the gun task force confiscated 47 firearms and the narcotics division, 50.

The anti-gun campaign is meant to prevent shootings and teen murders by creating "a cool down period" to head off impulsive acts. If a gun is not at hand, Campbell explained, lethal violence becomes less likely.

As for motive, Campbell said, eight of the murders in 2005 were drug-related. He declined to specify a motive for each murder in particular, especially those in which an arrest has not been made. But he noted that none of the murders was gang-related, and he suggested that was the result of the department having a four-member gang unit supplemented by an FBI special agent and an FBI analyst assigned to the department full time.

"I would like to believe that a real proactive unit . . . has resulted in less violence," Campbell said.
Twelve of the 22 murders, or 55 percent, have been "cleared," he said, meaning that someone has been charged with the crime. That matches the performance in comparable cities with populations of at least 100,000, which he said also average a 55-percent clearance rate.

Esserman's administration has taken a variety of steps to improve crime-fighting, including the institutionalization of comprehensive neighborhood-based "community policing"; the introduction of the gun task force; the expansion of the gang unit; the establishment of much closer working relationships with law enforcement and social-service agencies, among other groups; and the use of data-driven crime analysis to better deploy officers.

A closer working relationship with the state police, for example, resulted in the launch of what the department dubbed Neighborhood Response Teams, which concentrated on high-crime and violent-crime areas. For the first time ever, uniformed troopers and city police officers patrolled together in a cruiser.

During last summer, until Labor Day, six city officers were paired with six troopers on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

"The community responded very well" to the initiative, Esserman said. "And the officers responded very well. And for us it was a force multiplier."

Esserman persuaded the state police to reassemble the teams for the holiday season, and they returned to the street from around Thanksgiving to around New Year's Day.

Robberies also get special attention because the department considers them an especially sensitive indicator.

Robberies are "a bellwether of disorder" in the community, said James Lucht, director of information and technology for the Providence Plan, a nonprofit organization that works on data analysis under contract to the department.

"The things that we fight here are fear, crime and disorder," Campbell said.

A supervisor and at least one detective are expected to go to every robbery scene, and if there is a chance that trace evidence is available, another detective is dispatched from the department's Bureau of Criminal Identification to dust for fingerprints and gather other evidence. Every robbery victim is interviewed in as much detail as possible.

The number of robberies nevertheless increased by 5 percent in 2005, but Campbell drew attention to the department's achievements on bank heists. Of the 15 bank robberies, all but one were cleared with an arrest, he said.

With the uptick in robberies, the police have resorted to an old trick: decoys. Officers go out in plainclothes, hoping that they look like easy targets so that robbers are tempted to strike. After a man was robbed at knifepoint in Waterplace Park, decoys went out in the park in the last week of January -- to no avail, as it turned out.

"They [decoys] will be moving through the neighborhoods at different hot spots," Campbell said.
While the 2005 figures are not what the police had hoped for, Kennedy said there are other considerations.

"Numbers, statistics aren't the only measure of success in a police organization," he said.
Because of community policing and department reforms, the citizenry and the business, social service, religious and law-enforcement communities are more confident in the police, and the police rank-and-file is more confident in its leaders, Kennedy asserted.

"People who may have been hesitant to work with the Providence Police Department before are now banging down the doors," seeking collaboration, the deputy chief said. Among them, according to police leaders, are members of ethnic and racial minority groups.

"What matters really is the results," Esserman said. "We're doing a lot of things right. There's got to be something that we can do better."

MAP: See where the homicides took place and how, at:
http://www.projo.com/news/pdf/2006/20060305-prov-homicides.pdf

Comments

["Kari"]

I remember "Emo" (this was his nick name)always cracking jokes all the time.He was very funny. We loved having him around. He didn't deserve what happened to him. He was too young to die. He is very much missed by all of us, his family, friends and most of all his son. He had a personal nick name for me too. He used to call me "K-dog"

[kb]

R.I.P. emo Love your cousin kelby