Crisis and opportunity

Cornel Young Jr.'s death provides a chance to transform relations between Providence police and minority residents

by Ian Donnis

Displaying uncommon composure, Leisa Young sat at a news conference at the Urban League on February 7, solidly focused on making the bewildering loss of her only child into something positive. Rather than ignoring the reality of racism in our society, she said, "Let's find solutions." The discussion continued as Sgt. Tanya King, president of the Rhode Island Minority Police Officers Association, fielded an array of questions from the assembled throng of reporters. The questions led back to Leisa Young and, inevitably, Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. was foremost in her thoughts. "He was a peaceful person," she said. "He wanted to enact change in a way that would last. I'm about, what can we do to make things better?"

The passing of Cornel Young Jr., who was fatally shot January 28 by two white fellow officers in what police have described as a terrible mistake, was followed first by reverence, then anger and lingering doubt about the integrity of the investigation that will follow. But As Leisa Young recognizes, the most important part comes now, as activists, clergy, political leaders, police and everyday people face a complex challenge: turning a tragedy into a pivotal event for the people of Rhode Island.

Although it shouldn't take such a situation to bring it about, the atmosphere for meaningful change is encouraging. Across racial lines, people have been moved by Young's death, and the interest of Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. and other political leaders in coming to terms with issues of racial division appears to be at a level unprecedented in recent history. In one sign of how things have changed, Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse this week announced his support for efforts to document racial profiling. After previously believing that such an effort would be divisive, Whitehouse said a racial profiling bill could "lessen the current air of discord," and he called on Governor Lincoln Almond to build a consensus on the issue between legislative leaders and state police. And after initially dismissing the possibility that the shooting outside the Fidas restaurant was racially motivated, Cianci acknowledged that such a conclusion was premature. "We all have to learn from this death," the mayor told the Phoenix. "No matter what the criminal investigation shows, we have to get into these areas of looking at whether there is racism."

But meaningful change will require nothing less than consistent, sustained efforts, as much or more so from the streets of South Providence and the West End than the State House and South Main Street. The keen level of interest exhibited by a broad group of clergy, including the Ministers' Alliance of Rhode Island, and community members raises the chances of success. Under the best of circumstances, however, bureaucracies resist changes to the status quo. And Providence police have remained unwilling to make a strong commitment to the widely accepted mode of community policing ("Whose force is it, anyway?," News, September 17, 1999), let alone something as progressive as a civilian review board.

The difficulty of bringing about small improvements can be seen in the case of Paul L. Lewis, a well-regarded former running back for the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, who for several years has been seen as the ideal person to become a liaison between the community and the police. But despite support for the concept by Cianci and Public Safety Commissioner John J. Partington Jr., the liaison post has remained vacant, as the Phoenix reported in September. Five months later, nothing has changed.

"I think there are people within the department who don't want it," Lewis, coordinator and staff director of special youth services at the John Hope Settlement House, said earlier this week. "This is just another incident where, if you had some kind of structure in place, it would really help with the divisions."

Instead, as things stand, the lack of progress in creating the liaison position epitomizes those divisions between police and many members of Providence's minority communities. In a similar way, feelings of being subjected to unfair treatment and harassment by police are nothing new for many of the city's black and Hispanic residents. And in a city where blacks, Hispanics and other minorities make up more than 30 percent of the population, only about 80 officers in Providence -- roughly 15 percent of the department -- are minorities, according to state Representative Joseph S. Almeida (D-Providence), a former Providence police officer. Although such grievances have remained largely unaddressed, Young's death has sparked a groundswell of support for holding police and city officials more accountable.

In defending the police department, Cianci cited sensitivity training for officers and classes on the non-violence philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr. "There's more we can do, and that's what I want to listen to,'' he added. Col. Urbano Prignano Jr., the chief of police, and Capt. John J. Ryan, department spokesman, didn't return calls seeking comment.

Given recent history, it's not surprising that many observers are skeptical. Cianci is doing the right thing by taking part in an ongoing dialogue with black leaders, but it remains to be seen whether good intentions will be matched by meaningful changes. And although calls for an independent investigation into Young's death are getting the most attention, efforts to bring about systemic change are likely to be more important in the long run. As Dennis B. Langley, executive director of the Urban League, put it, "We need to see not only lip service, but we need to see more majors of color and bilingual majors within the police department. Then and only then will the community really take them [the police] seriously."

George L. Kelling, a Rutgers University professor who co-created the influential "Broken Windows" theory of policing, says increased tension between police and minority residents is a typical byproduct of situations comparable to Sgt. Young's death. "Part of the cause of this is the fear that a lot of officers have in dealing with African-American communities," Kelling said. "It continues to interfere with the development of quality policing in African-American communities, where many communities are desperately in need of policing. Officers wind up being more fearful -- that's the worst situation of all. As officers become more isolated from the neighborhoods they serve, that compounds what's already a serious problem."

Continued tension and polarization, however, doesn't have to be the long-term result of this kind of conflict. Kelling said a number of US communities, from Columbia, South Carolina, to Worcester, Massachusetts, have demonstrated how better relations can be built between police and minority residents. In fact, the best example may be 50 miles up I-95 in Boston, which has an ugly past when it comes to racism. Boston's status as a civic role model is even more improbable when one considers the low point in racial tensions reached in 1989, after a white suburbanite named Charles Stuart falsely blamed a black gunman for fatally shooting his pregnant wife. Police responded by shaking down scores of black kids in the predominantly minority Mission Hill neighborhood before Stuart's tale was revealed as a lie. As his fabrication came to light, Stuart killed himself.

But just as a tragedy has prompted a search for answers in Providence, a disturbing event precipitated changes in Boston. During a 1992 service for a young murder victim, a gang member chased another kid into the Morning Star Baptist Church, beating and stabbing him before a group of mourners. The attack led a group of ministers, who banded together as the Ten Point Coalition, to realize, "We had abandoned the street and we allowed the youths to create their own world," in the words of the Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown, co-founder of the group and pastor of Union Baptist Church in Cambridge.

Working closely with police, the Ten Point Coalition has won national attention for Boston's success in dramatically reducing juvenile violence. And in relations between the community and police, "there's an atmosphere of collaboration and cooperation that hadn't been there before," Brown says. "It's really at an unprecedented level."

Brown says Ten Point's effectiveness is based on mutual responsibility: while it's important for police to realize that grievances from minority communities come from a basis in experience, the community must also take responsibility for internal community problems. In practice, this meant that Ten Point's ministers identified for police the relatively small number of hardcore offenders and took responsibility for getting the mass of other borderline youths into recreational programs or other diversions.

To be successful, Brown says, such efforts must be built from the ground-up in the most needy neighborhoods, rather than merely advertised through splashy news events and the formation of commissions. "For me, the important work happens," he said, "after the camera leaves and the good people like you stop writing the stories."

A similar effort is in the works Rhode Island. A local manifestation of the Ten Point Coalition was unveiled here last May as part of an effort to reduce youth violence. But in many ways, the challenge in Providence is more daunting. While the ministers of Boston's Ten Point Coalition built initial success by policing their own communities, the death of Sgt. Young raises more complicated issues of institutional power, racism in the criminal justice system and how, Leisa Young says, Providence's black and white residents "live in the same world, but our realities are very different."

"If you haven't experienced racism, thank God," she said at the Urban League news conference earlier this week. While minorities usually try to understand the majority white population, whites now find themselves forced to understand the anxieties of black Rhode Islanders. "That, to me," says Leisa Young, "is a good thing."

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com.