Clements Says Providence Police Need “Latitude, Resources, Support” As City Faces Rising Crime
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Providence Police Chief Hugh Clements told members of the City Council Tuesday night that police — who are currently at the lowest staffing levels in the city decades — need “latitude, resources, and support” as the city has seen an increase in shootings — and homicides.
"What we’re seeing is eerily consistent with what’s going on around the country — but crime here is down, believe it or not. We’ve had a horrific four, five, six-week run but the data is the data, and we’ve provided that. But what isn’t down — shootings in the last couple of weeks, and homicides," said Clements. "What we see are crime scenes, that three years ago we’d see a small amount of ballistics, what we’re seeing [now] are crime scenes with 25, 28…61 shell casings on a seen. It’s incredible the amount of firepower that’s out there and incredible what the men and women of the Providence Police Department are exposed to in all honesty."
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST"In our time, this command staff — we’ve had three classes we’ve been very proud of, the 67th, 68th, and 69th — we’ve hired 164 officers, 101 of those were minorities. That’s a huge accomplishment. The 70th police class has 49 recruits and 30 are minorities," he added. "They are due to graduate on November 6."
"Here’s what we’re up against in our time as a command staff — the last three department leaderships going back to 2001 — when I interviewed for the job to be chief (in 2012), I said the bare-bones minimum we would need to run the department would be 448 and I had the number down because we were nine districts — and not once in our command staff time have we had 448," said Clements.
