EDITORIALS

Cloud over Cranston

Staff Writer
The Providence Journal

The Rhode Island State Police are anything but bomb-throwers. So a letter by the agency’s superintendent, Col. Steven O’Donnell, blasting Cranston Mayor Allan Fung for his political “secretive interference” in the city’s police department should be taken with the utmost seriousness. Clearly, some grave problems with police misconduct have been festering under Mayor Fung in the state’s third largest city.

Colonel O’Donnell submitted his four-page letter, later made public, with a so-far secret 200-page report on the department by State Police investigators.

In early 2014, Mr. Fung, while ramping up his campaign for governor, called in the well-respected State Police to run his department and look into its activities after the “Ticketgate” scandal erupted. Cranston police had issued scores of tickets in the districts of City Council members who had declined to support a union contract deal -- something that still looks like a clear abuse of police power, though the participants ultimately escaped criminal charges.

Obviously, Mr. Fung wished at the time to cloak himself in the sterling reputation of the State Police. But while bringing them in, and promising to let them run the department independently on the basis of serving the public interest, Mr. Fung worked behind the scenes with the chief figure in the ticket scandal, Capt. Stephen Antonucci, making a deal with him to return to the department with minor punishment. It was only two months later that Mayor Fung revealed his efforts to Colonel O’Donnell and his new chief of police, State Police veteran Michael Winquist, informing them the deal was irreversible.

“This behavior illustrates one of the core problems which came to light during the assessment, the secretive interference by you and your staff in the operations of the police department,” Mr. O’Donnell wrote in his letter to Mr. Fung.

Mayor Fung subsequently backed down on reinstating Mr. Antonucci, and instead gave him a sweetheart deal to retire with a pension, in return for the former captain’s dropping his lawsuits against the city.

But Ticketgate was only part of a culture of wrongdoing the State Police evidently discovered in Cranston. According to Colonel O’Donnell, the agency also looked at the department’s division into political cliques; the “overall mistreatment” of those who refused to play along with those in power; the hiring of private investigators by some police officers to gather dirt on others; the controversial suspension of Todd Patalano, an excellent officer who has since been promoted to major; and alleged “illegal audio recordings” officers had made of each other.

Not surprisingly, Mayor Fung does not want the public to linger over this, or look too closely. “We’ve closed the chapter of that [Antonucci] matter and we’re going to move forward,” he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Mr. Fung has refused to release the report, contending it is loaded with confidential information. The mayor turned it over to state Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, a former police officer, to determine what portions may be shared with the masses.

In truth, there is no doubt the report is a public document, and we hope Rhode Islanders join us in insisting on its release. The public paid for the State Police investigation, pays for the Cranston Police Department, and pays Mr. Fung’s salary. It suffers from abuses of police power. It has every right -- and, indeed, a compelling need -- to know just what the Cranston Police Department has been up to, and to be fully informed about Mayor Fung’s role in that.

Rhode Island leaders must not conspire to keep it secret.