Did Cornel Young Jr. die in vain? (continued)

NOTABLY, by the Providence police’s own account, the public pressure for reform following the Young shooting had little to do with any of this.

Spurred by the tragedy, then-Governor Lincoln Almond appointed a 15-member panel, the Select Commission on Race and Police-Community Relations, which worked for more than a year to produce 76 recommendations on everything from off-duty police procedures to community policing. Most have gone nowhere.

Separately, the Providence City Council set up a 12-member Blue Ribbon Commission that went deeper into local neighborhoods, and after nearly three years, issued a whole other set of recommendations — including the creation of a civilian-review board for alleged police misconduct. The board, named the Providence External Review Authority, was established last year, but has yet to hear a case.

Police leaders have sought counsel from individual members of both commissions, and when Esserman set up a formal community advisory group for the Police Department last year, some of those same people were invited to join.

And some measures have become department policy, from training enhancements to the recent adoption of the community-policing approach throughout the Patrol Division.

But asked whether the Providence police had taken cues, specifically, from either group’s report, Captain Oates says it has not. Instead, the department reviewed best practices nationwide, and sought expert police advice. There has been some community input, but on a smaller scale; for example, when the use-of-force policy was revised, a member of the governor’s commission was asked to review it.

It’s not a small distinction.

Ask police leaders what changes resulted from Cornel Young’s death, and they talk about off-duty conduct, and training that seeks to avoid future tragedies by changing how the officer in Young’s position would behave.

Talk to Leisa Young, Major Young, or anyone who saw Young as a martyr, and their priority is changing what officers in Saraiva and Solitro’s shoes would do. To them, the problem was that Young, as a black man, was automatically perceived as a threat — that it didn’t even occur to the officers that he could be a colleague.

Many people of color could relate all too well. Black mothers thought of the times their sons had been stopped, frisked, or forced to disperse because a gathering of young black men couldn’t possibly be a good thing. Complaints of racial profiling are longstanding in Providence, and continue today.

Leisa Young says her son had experienced it himself, and that’s part of why he became a police officer — to "build bridges." Both parents say they had talked with Young about how he could still be mistaken for a criminal, and how it could be dangerous if he had to take action while off-duty.

In fact, Leisa Young is convinced that her son didn’t do what police leaders say he did, because, "He knew he was black — he knew he was in this community." To come out pointing a gun toward police officers, and keep advancing while being told to drop it, would have "meant my son had to be either stupid or suicidal," she says. What she believes, based on the information her lawyers have gathered, is that he had been pointing his gun at a suspect to his side, and he was shot as he was turning around to face the Fidas parking lot, where his colleagues were.

EVEN IF you don’t believe race was a factor in Young’s death, the outpouring of protests and complaints after the shooting make it clear in the city’s neighborhoods that a large number of people perceived the Providence police as racist, and many saw a connection between that alleged bigotry and officers’ use of force.

That’s why so much of both the state and city commissions’ reports focused on racial sensitivity and improving the officers’ relationships with the people they serve.

Asked how the Young shooting has changed the Police Department’s policies and training with regard to race, Major Rosenzweig first acknowledges that clearly, the incident had triggered discussions about race. "It’s a question that arises in these situations," he says, "and if it’s not handled directly and affirmatively, then it’s going to raise more questions and problems."

But what did the department do about the allegations of racism? Did it change its training? Has Chief Esserman, in fact, confronted the problem with his strong statements opposing racial profiling? "If your intention is to cause controversy, I object to that," Rosenzweig replies. "That’s playing into something that’s a myth. Good, effective police work profiles behavior and not race. The vast majority of police officers understand that."

The police department, in fact, has also changed its approach toward diversity training. Starting the year Young was slain, the Police Academy replaced its own 100-hour curriculum with a 40-hour formal certificate program taught by Arthur Jones, a professor of criminal justice at Johnson & Wales University and expert diversity trainer.

In an interview, Jones says most police recruits come from sheltered, mostly-white backgrounds, and have not been exposed to many people of other races and ethnicities. What they know about, say, African-Americans may come from the media and be grossly inaccurate. That doesn’t make them bigots, but it can make them misunderstand people. "I try to focus on communication," Jones says. "A lot of police officers have not learned how to communicate with people in the community." They may not know what street slang means — like that "bad" means cool, or "get down" means party. They may misread body language and feel threatened when they shouldn’t be.

Along with role-playing and extensive discussions, Jones’s program includes spending time with people of another race who invite recruits into their homes, take them to church, to dinner, or to a social club. "They get a chance to see a black kid or a Hispanic kid in a different light," he says, "rather than just when they’re putting the cuffs on them."

Jones says graduates of the last three Police Academy classes are well equipped to avoid racial prejudice, but the rest of the force could use some retraining. "Every officer needs to go through cultural diversity training," he says, adding that even the chief should do it. The department’s biggest problem is "officers not understanding the neighborhoods and the people in the neighborhoods; you can come in being a really good person, but if you don’t get the training, you end up doing a bad job."

MARY KAY HARRIS, a member of Direct Action for Rights & Equality (DARE), a community group and police watchdog, says a lack of diversity training has kept Esserman’s community policing initiative from working as well as it could. "I can say as of today, I see absolutely no changes whatsoever" in officers’ attitudes, Harris says. "I still take complaints, and they still come as often as before."

Eva Ann Geoppo, a longtime advocate of community policing in the Manton neighborhood, also says she sees little progress. If anything, the police are taking longer to respond to calls for service, she says. And while officers seem to be changing their demeanor, acting more like community police, the change is coming slowly: "They have to relearn skills that they haven’t used in ages."

Others see greater improvements, however.

"I’m out in the community, and people talk to me, and I hear nothing but good things," says Inspector Colon, the department disciplinarian. "I think they particularly like the walking beats. One of the comments I hear is, ‘You guys are everywhere now.’ . . . You’re always going to find people who have bad things to say about us, but I can tell you, the reality is, we’re trying really hard to build relationships with the community."

Colon says he goes on the road as much as possible to see officers in action, and most are doing a good job. And the complaints he does get are overwhelmingly about rudeness, not brutality, he says. He couldn’t recall a single case involving racist language.

Jose Brito, president of Merchant Association of Providence, and the owner of two businesses in South Providence, says he sees a "100 percent" change in the Providence police. "We’re not afraid to talk to the police now," he says. "We don’t feel like the police are monsters anymore; we don’t feel they’re the kind of people we have to hate anymore — and believe me, we used to hate them."

What has made the difference?

"Now when we see the police on the street, we feel like they’re working for our safety," Brito says. "Now they talk to us as humans, even they have coffee with us, and they’re willing to sit down and spend time talking, and we can tell them complaints that we have. That’s important. Things change when you listen to somebody." Brito credits Esserman, the lieutenants in charge of the South Providence districts, and especially Colon, who gets problems "solved right away." There is still room for improvement, Brito says, but it’s a start.

Major Young, who retired in December, says he is heartened by the improvements made by Esserman: the community policing initiative; the talk of seeking national accreditation; the updated policies; the field-training officers program. Like his former wife, however, Young believes the department needs to do more to teach officers to deal with people from diverse backgrounds. Some of that comes with community police work, he says, but it also takes formal training.

And Major Young wants the Providence police to address his son’s death directly in training, and to acknowledge, as they’re talking about off-duty situations, that the danger of being mistaken for a suspect is particularly grave for officers of color.

"It’s something that should be talked to them about," he says. "It’s close to home, and they should know it could happen to them . . . . We never thought anything like that could happen here — we didn’t even think about it. They better talk about it [now], because if it happens again, this community is going to go crazy."

Marion Davis can be reached at marionsd @cox.net.