Decision may prevent internal dissension
By Will Collette
Due to apparent
glitches in the Clerkbase system – mainly failure to send a signal – your intrepid
Progressive Charlestown team had to count on the Sun’s new reporter for
Charlestown, David Pepin, for the news on who our new Chief of Police will be.
David’s article
went live on the Sun’s website this morning and will appear in today’s print
edition. Read his article by clicking
here.
The Town Council
announced its vote to hire Captain Jeffrey Allen of the South Kingstown Police
to replace retired
Chief Jack Shippee.
Captain Allen,
now Chief Allen, is a native of Narragansett and has lived in Carolina village
since 1988.
Allen’s two
in-house competitors, Lt. Patrick McMahon and Mike Paliotta, were positive in
their comments about Allen as their new boss, and expect the members of the
force to rally behind him.
I’ve heard from
South Kingstown residents that our new Chief Allen was very big on “community policing,”
something that former CPD Jack Shippee always tried to instill into the
Charlestown Police force.
Those of us at
the August 20 Town Council meeting saw a good example of community policing in
the responses of Acting Chief Mike Paliotta to a proposal by Councilor Gregg
Avedisian to impose a town-wide curfew on teenagers. Paliotta reported that he
was already aware of the specific incident that sparked Avedisian’s curfew
proposal, and that the trouble was limited to a few individuals.
He said the CPD
had already talked to the youths, their parents, to the schools and social
services, as well as increased patrols, and the problems seemed to have abated.
Paliotta said he felt a curfew that would penalize all youth in town was an
unnecessary infringement on their civil rights when the police could focus on
changing the behavior of the actual troublemakers.
It was an
interesting exchange and one you might want to try to watch
on Clerkbase, if you can get it to work.
As a Captain in
the SK Police, Jeff Allen apparently takes a very similar approach. South Kingstown
Housing Authority Chair Patricia Breslin sent Charlestown a support letter for
Allen, noting that he served as police liaison to the Housing Authority for
seven years.
She said he
always came to meetings and, at the beginning, was often the target for angry
tenants and residents with pent-up resentments toward the police. Even with
people screaming at him, says Breslin, he would answer in a calm and assertive
manner.
According to
Breslin, within a few months, most residents stopped looking at the police as
adversaries. Complaints and accusations against the police plummeted while
cooperation with the police increased.
I know from
direct working experience that folks in subsidized housing developments can be
a tough and skeptical audience, so if Captain Allen, now CPD Chief Allen, was
able to, as Breslin wrote, win the “trust and
respect of the tenants,” he should do
just fine in handling Charlestown’s many neighborhood feuds.
Welcome to
Charlestown, Chief Allen.