So permitting your police department to exercise a minimal amount of initiative in an attempt to keep the public safe is now referred to "pick(ing) up the slack"?

I will not let the Providence Mayor attempt to yet again try to shift the blame onto the rank and file members of the Providence Police Department, when it is Cicilline and his hired underling who are the ones to blame. He uses that tactic repeated, because he simply refuses to accept any personal responsibility for the poor decisions he makes -- and he makes a lot of them. The Governor has only laid blame at the doorsteps of Tweedledee and Tweedledum, not anyone else in the Providence PD.

Monique,

Cicilline is guilty of doing the very thing he accuses the 'Bush administration' (?) of doing as he attempts and fails to divert and distract from his very own culpability in the carjack and rape of a citizen. Providence does everything it can N-O-T to cooperate with anyone the state police the Feds et al on the issue of illegals. Cicillline's own state party is guilty of doing the very thing he accuses the 'Bush administration' (?) of doing as he attempts and fails to divert and distract from his own culpability when for 2 years running they've killed a bill mandating e-verify be used by all employers. Willie Horton ..er Marco Riz would not have been hired/fired and walking up the street in Warwick to carjack and a rape a woman at knifepoint had Cicilline's party passed that law last year.
The Bush administration? lol
Monique you do a great disservice to this very important issue when you cite anything David Cicilline has to say on the issue of illegal aliens. He's in typical Cicilline cya and blame everyone in the world except me mode.
You can do better!

Since Providence is a sanctuary city, can we call in the Minutemen to patrol the streets looking for scum like Riz?

Cicilline is such a little weasal....such a liar!! I am tired of hearing from the pro-illegal side how this is a Federal issue. It's in our backyards!! It's a local and Fed issue, and if we can do something at the loacal level, we should!! Blaming it on the Feds is just a cop out, and Cicilline is blaming everyone else but himself...even the good folks on the PPD. He throws them under the bus, because he knows HIS incompetence lead to the abduction and rape of an innocent victim.

Great post Monique!!
Cicilline is a lying weasel.
The faxes the PPD sent to ICE are marked with case dispositions,which means ICE didn't get them until the arrestees were in many cases(like Riz)already released from court and not amenable to ICE detention orders.
The '20 year protocol"he refers to is a LIE.I was there(INS) from 1984-1996 in Rhode Island and the protocol he refers to never existed while I worked there.There was a direct check of the PPD cellblock detainess prior to court apprearance on a daily basis by an INS officer,alleviating the burden on the police to check for themselves.
Cicilline and Esserman are ruining Providence for their own ends of power and personal enrichment.I hope they both burn in Hell along with Steven Brown.

David really needs to be careful about doing things that arouse the ire of fellow Italian-American politicians who have ready access to the airwaves (Cianci on his show, Carcieri any time he wants a mike).
Plus, Carcieri just won the budget battle. The Don is really cock of the walk these days. You don't cross him anymore.

The real problem here is violent crime, not paperwork lapses.

As a percentage of the population, I'd be willing to bet that "legal", native born citizens commit the same level of violent crime, possibly more crime, than so called "illegal aliens".

So let's cut the bs... the real problem in this state is violent crime, likely due to lack of economic opportunity, and our rapidly crumbling economy and infrastructure.

Scapegoating poor people without papers is a joke. It does nothing to address the real, serious problems we face here.

So, let's leave the landscapers, ditch diggers, janitors, factory workers and bed pan cleaners alone, and start addressing the real, serious problems we've got in this country and state, by holding the politicians and corporations accountable for the problems they've created and foisted upon the rest of us.

For example, this idiotic Iraq war, which has killed thousands of US soldiers, half a million Iraqi civilians, and maimed, blinded and crippled hundreds of thousands, maybe millions more, and cost this country trillions of dollars in direct and indirect costs.

Now THATS a problem worth bitching about... not some janitor somewhere without the proper ID.

Erik, first of all, there are tons of blogs who would be glad to discuss the adviseability of the Iraq war. Feel free to check them out. This conversation thread happens to be about illegal immigration and the fact that our state and local law enforcement officers can no longer leave the job to federal officials. In fact, it really needs to be a team effort.

See, it's not "just one" janitor (cook, in this case) without papers. It's 12-20 million. And that number would quickly grow by millions every year if we just started disregarding everyone's "papers".

Further, while certainly Americans commit crimes (and possibly at the same rate as illegal aliens), the point in this case is that this terrible crime would not have been committed if the Providence police had taken five minutes either time this man had been in their custody to check his standing with ICE.

That they did not do so is not their fault. They were simply following a badly misguided policy of the mayor of Providence.

If it makes you feel better, by the way, a lot of us would prefer that the limited resources of ICE be directed not at individuals but at businesses which employ illegal aliens. An individual who is taken into police custody, however, is a different matter. At that point, immigration status must be one of the several background checks carried out by the police.