To the Editor:
I am pleased to see that The Herald is covering the crucial mayoral election in Providence. However, “Cianci touts past as he aims for comeback” repeats Vincent “Buddy” Cianci’s talking points largely unchallenged, leaving it to readers to cast their votes based on what they “choose to remember or forget” about Buddy’s past terms.
Maybe The Herald wouldn’t leave readers so blind to the facts if there were an extensive public record documenting Cianci’s actual behavior and that of his administration. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were a 2004 investigative report by six Providence detectives, incorporating FBI interviews and grand jury testimony, documenting the “pay-to-play” culture of the police department under Cianci? Fifty-nine pages, say, bursting with evidence that less-qualified officers were promoted over top-performing officers — based on their contributions to Friends of Cianci? And that entrance to the police academy was for sale for $5,000?
And what a shame there isn’t a long court record packed with testimony about the entrenched corruption in the Cianci administration. What if we could find examples of the bribes given to Cianci for tax breaks, city jobs and city land sales with a simple records request or Google search? Bribes and extortion that were so rampant a U.S. district court judge declared that Cianci operated “the city (he) was supposed to serve as a criminal enterprise to line his own pockets”?
And why didn’t a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist think to publish an in-depth biography of this man in 2003, including interesting details such as Cianci keeping a clown on his payroll to entertain his grandchildren at their birthday parties, or, less comically, his use of a police security detail to help restrain a rival so that he could threaten the man’s life and torture him with a lit cigarette?
Even more telling might be an autobiography in which Cianci himself states, “I rewarded my friends and supporters and punished my political enemies,” and “I used my public power for personal reasons. … It certainly felt good.”
With sources like these, The Herald might have been in a position to write a hard-hitting, substantive piece providing a counterpoint to Cianci’s self-promotion, rather than leave it to voters’ “memory (to affect) their decision at the polls.” I hope you will follow up your piece with a meaningful look at the facts.
Lucia Gill Case ’85
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