Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline and Chief Dean Esserman prepare for a news conference to launch the National Network of Safe Communities along with Jeremy Travis, of John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

It was a typical union meeting, second Tuesday of the month, shots and beers in the old hall in a rundown Providence neighborhood.

There was the usual shop talk, and more grumbling about the boss. Then a retired cop with a bullet lodged against his spine stood up and called for a no-confidence vote in the Providence police chief, Dean M. Esserman.

In the yelling and shouting by agitated members of Lodge 3 of the Fraternal Order of Police that followed, nobody in the crowd of 70 people objected.

Not the retired FOP members, upset by Esserman’s frequent references to the corruption he had inherited from former Mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr., a dark time when the department had been under the microscope of an FBI probe.

Not the Buddy guys, who listened in their cruisers to the felonious ex-mayor ripping Esserman on his radio talk show, and fed Cianci tips to discredit the chief.

Not the active officers who had felt the combustible Esserman’s wrath, and thought he went too far in dressing down officers in front of others.

And not the surprised union leaders, who were caught off guard but angry with Esserman over a range of issues, from contract matters, to beefs with his Internal Affairs unit, to what some see as the chief’s abrasive personality and imperial style.

The April meeting ended with a plan for a no-confidence vote, which was held June 14 when the U.S. Conference of Mayors was in Providence for the organization’s annual meeting. Esserman addressed America’s mayors about community policing, drawing on the positive changes in his six years at the helm of Rhode Island’s largest police department.

In 2003, the Ivy League-educated, New York-born Esserman took control of an insular department unaccustomed to outsiders, a department divided from within by the scandals of the Cianci years and besieged from without by mistrustful citizens and community groups. The U.S. Department of Justice had threatened a federal takeover, based on civil-rights violations, the poor handling of police-brutality complaints and misuse of federal funds.

Esserman shook things up. Some Cianci favorites retired. Others were demoted. The chief expanded community policing, increased the anti-gang initiative and built strong relationships with citizens and neighborhood groups.

But while the nation’s mayors gathered downtown to hear about the successes, a few miles away, in the grimy cinderblock FOP lodge where drunken officers once fired gunshots at then-Mayor Cianci’s picture on the wall, union members voted no confidence in Esserman, 303 to 134.

Take away the votes of the 77 retirees, including former chief Urbano Prignano Jr. and retired Capt. John Ryan, both of whom were implicated in the scandals of the Cianci years, and that left nearly half of the department’s active force of 500 saying that they had lost confidence in their chief. It was a striking rebuke for the man whom Mayor David N. Cicilline had dubbed “the best police chief in America.”

Afterward, Cicilline reiterated his support for Esserman. The chief, who declined to be interviewed for this story, vowed to listen. He has been meeting with union leaders in an attempt to move forward, meetings that both sides call positive. Even his critics acknowledge that he isn’t going anywhere.

Question is: Can they all work together?

AN INCIDENT INVOLVING Francisco Furtado, a veteran patrolman, helped light the fuse for the no-confidence vote.

Discontent with Esserman had been brewing among some officers for months and even years, union leaders say. But it was an Internal Affairs investigation of Furtado, an officer popular in the Patrol Division who helped assign lucrative detail jobs for off-duty cops, which provided the spark.

The week before the April union meeting, Furtado, a vocal Esserman critic, obtained a copy of a March police report involving a fight among several young women at a downtown nightclub. One of the women said that her cell phone had been stolen during the scuffle, but detectives later downgraded the alleged crime because the victim couldn’t say whether the phone had been lost or stolen.

The report wound up on Cianci’s Web site at WPRO, where the ex-mayor has aired accusations by some cops and union leaders that Esserman manipulates the crime statistics. Some of the robbery detectives took offense at the insinuation. Internal Affairs launched an investigation. According to the union, Furtado admitted that he got the report, but denied giving it to Cianci.

Investigators also looked at Furtado’s intra-departmental e-mails. Several were critical of Esserman and talked gleefully of Cianci’s radio attacks. Facing an 86-day suspension for 43 e-mails that violated departmental policy, Furtado accepted a 12-day suspension, without pay, according to the union. Furtado declined comment for this story.

The Furtado frittata, says Taft A. Manzotti, the union secretary, “clearly caused the uprising.” Union Vice President Clarence W. Gough says that many officers were “outraged” because they also use the department e-mail for personal messages, such as selling Red Sox tickets.

But when union leaders met with Esserman and Deputy Chief Paul Kennedy in the wake of the no-confidence vote, they say, Kennedy challenged them for not getting their facts straight. Furtado’s critical e-mails violated department policy, and he had been warned several times in the past, the leaders were told.

In his e-mails, which the union showed The Journal, Furtado mocked Esserman’s bald spot and called him a “mall cop,” a “NON-COP” and the “Wizard of Providence.”

Last summer, Esserman’s visit to a South Providence crime scene, where he comforted three children whose father had been shot by a policeman while attacking their mother, drew scornful commentary from Furtado.

“It took him 20 minutes to get to Broad and Penn with lights and siren,” Furtado wrote. “What a cop. I want to be just like him when I grow up.” Furtado joked that he was taking up a collection to get Esserman a GPS system: “Then he will have a clue . . . He is such a fraud.”

And, finally: “I can’t take him. Just when I’m ready to finish throwing up. He brings out blankets for the kids from Penn Ave, while the cameras are rolling.”

Furtado also wrote that “Dean’s days are numbered” and “Buddy is his worst nightmare.”

KERRY O’MARA made the first motion for the no-confidence vote.

A retired detective active in union affairs, O’Mara worked most of his career with a bullet lodged painfully between his lower vertebrae, the result of a shooting in South Providence. Although he acknowledges problems at the department under Cianci, O’Mara became agitated at Esserman’s incessant references to the corruption.

“That had nothing to do with me,” says O’Mara, who retired in 2006. “A lot of retired guys said their families were asking them if they were corrupt.” Then, last year, O’Mara was angered by Esserman’s public refusal to enforce Governor Carcieri’s controversial crackdown on illegal immigrants. At a union meeting, O’Mara made a motion supporting Carcieri. Shortly thereafter, O’Mara says, Esserman confronted him while O’Mara was performing downtown with the firefighters’ bagpipe band.

“He started laying into me, saying, ‘I know you made that motion. Who the hell do you think you are?’ ” recalls O’Mara. “I followed him and tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Who the hell do you think you are? I showed you respect. I saluted you. You don’t talk to me like that.’ ”

O’Mara complained to Kennedy, who told him that the chief had been cautioned several times that his corruption comments were upsetting people. Kennedy arranged for Esserman and O’Mara to meet for coffee. O’Mara says he told Esserman: “I don’t like your attitude. You’re condescending. You have no people skills.”

Esserman listened that day, says O’Mara. But then, when O’Mara attended a promotion ceremony, “sure enough, Esserman gets up and says how he cleaned up this corrupt police department. I pulled Kennedy aside and said, ‘This guy does not get it.’ ”

AFTER O’MARA called for the no-confidence vote at the April meeting, union leaders discussed whether a retired officer could make the motion.

Union bylaws say that retirees cannot vote on “contract issues.” While the union ultimately allowed retired officers to vote on Esserman, they decided as a precaution that the motion should come from an active officer.

Patrolman Ed Leste, a 20-year veteran, stepped up and made the motion. As a member of the elite Narcotics Squad during the later Cianci years, Leste had seen scandal up close. His unit had been investigated by the state police after disclosures of missing evidence, including cocaine. “He says we were corrupted,” says Leste. “Did anybody go to jail? Cocaine? I found that cocaine. It wasn’t missing. It was in the wrong locker in the evidence room.”

Still, Leste says, he thought Esserman was good, at first.

“We definitely needed somebody from outside, because there were all kinds of allegations,” he says.

Operation Plunder Dome, the federal corruption probe that toppled Cianci, had exposed a nasty cheating scandal, in which several officers received advance information for promotional exams. Embattled ex-chief Urbano Prignano Jr., driven out after losing his own no-confidence vote, testified that he gave testing materials to at least two officers.

But once Esserman settled in, says Leste, he replaced Cianci’s A team with his own. Echoing a complaint from union leaders, Leste says that the Internal Affairs unit became overly aggressive, taking the word of citizen complainants over cops. If Esserman scored points in the community for making the department friendlier, he also suffered a backlash from some in his department.

One case that rankled involved a woman with a criminal record who accused two officers of smoking marijuana on the bike path behind the FOP lodge. The officers were ultimately cleared.

In Esserman’s six years, 118 police officers have been disciplined for a range of infractions. One of those officers, a former driver for Cianci, was so enraged after being disciplined for associating with organized-crime figures that he started making harassing phone calls to Esserman’s home and ordering pizzas, a Dumpster and a cord of firewood delivered there. The officer subsequently agreed to resign last year to avoid criminal charges.

ANOTHER FRIEND of Cianci, Sgt. Steven E. Courville, seconded Leste’s motion for the no-confidence vote.

Courville is another Esserman critic who is also close to Artin H. Coloian, Cianci’s former chief-of-staff who was acquitted of taking a bribe on Cianci’s behalf. A lawyer, Coloian also operates the downtown Sidebar Bistro, a popular haunt among cops like Courville, as well as Cianci and mobster Bobby DeLuca, who had a work-release job there before getting out of prison.

At the time of the vote, Courville had an Internal Affairs case pending against him. The complaint stemmed from an incident last summer, when Courville arrested a man who lives in his neighborhood on charges of disorderly conduct. The man, who had dated Courville’s cousin, filed a complaint with Internal Affairs accusing Courville of using profanity and threatening him. According to an Internal Affairs report shown to The Journal by the union, three other witnesses said that Courville conducted himself inappropriately and threatened to assault them. Courville told Internal Affairs that he had sworn at the man he arrested and had been “emotional.”

Union leaders accuse Esserman and Internal Affairs of singling out Courville because he is close to Cianci, a relationship that has drawn the ire of some cops who suspect Courville of being one of “Buddy’s birdies,” as union Vice President Gough refers to suspected Cianci tipsters within the department.

Courville, who was with Cianci at the WPRO tent for the last weekend’s Rhode Island National Guard Air Show, declined comment.

Some union members, like O’Mara, believe that the department’s treatment of officers like Furtado and Courville shows that Cianci’s criticisms “are getting to Esserman.” Others, like Lt. David Schiavulli, who is critical of Esserman’s temper but also credits the chief with making many positive changes, blames Cianci — “a convicted felon who presided over a corrupt administration” — for twisting the facts and helping “sway officers who have a negative attitude.”

Still, many officers listen. When Cianci is railing against Esserman, the word will go out through department e-mails, alerting patrol cars to tune their radio to WPRO, where Cianci has the ultimate bully pulpit. He calls Esserman “Chief Shiny Badge,” and has accused him of ordering two detectives to guard his house to prevent Halloween mischief makers from stealing the chief’s pumpkin, which Esserman denies.

The day after the no-confidence vote, Cianci suggested that Esserman check into Butler Hospital for psychiatric help. Then Cianci read the medical definition of “narcissistic personality disorder.”

DEPUTY CHIEF Kennedy said that he was disappointed by the vote of no confidence.

“I believe if the union and the administration had been communicating on a more regular basis, this never would have happened,” said Kennedy. “The colonel inherited a tough job six years ago and he’s a tough guy. He’s not always the easiest person to deal with, but in the end he’s done a great job here.”

Unlike police chiefs in Cranston and East Providence, who retired after no-confidence votes under different circumstances this year, Esserman vows to remain and finish the job. O’Mara says he isn’t surprised, though he is satisfied with the results of the vote.

“Maybe it’s a wake-up call,” he says. “Do I think he’ll change? No. But I was glad that he got the message — that he’s not the greatest chief in America.”Dean Esserman

Age: 51

Professional background: A New York City native, Esserman began his career as special assistant U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn where he worked from 1983-87. He then became general counsel to the New York Transit Police. Esserman graduated from the New Haven, Conn., police academy in 1991 and moved directly into administration as assistant police chief. He left in 1993 to become chief of the Metro-North Railroad Police Department in New York. In 1998, he became police chief in Stamford, Conn. In 2001, he left to be executive managing director with Thacher Associates, a corporate investigations company in New York City. He was appointed Providence police chief in January 2003.

Education: Dartmouth College and New York University School of Law.

Professional Associations: Senior law enforcement officer in residence at Roger Williams University. Justice System Training & Research Institute.

Base salary as chief: $168,000.

Family: Esserman and his wife, Gilda, have three children.

mstanton@projo.com