09:19 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 20, 2005

BY ELIZABETH GUDRAIS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The city's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will meet tomorrow at Beneficent Congregational Church, 300 Weybosset St., to decide how to proceed with questions about police treatment of Esteban Carpio.

"I just want people to know that we're not sleeping, and we're not insensitive to the public's requests to investigate what happened with the suspect," Clifford Montiero, president of the NAACP's Providence chapter, said yesterday.

Montiero said he had received "dozens" of phone calls from all over the United States since Carpio's arrest early Sunday. The police say Carpio, 26, fatally shot Providence police Detective James L. Allen with the officer's gun at police headquarters. When Carpio appeared in District Court Monday, a plastic mask covered the lower half of his face. His eyes were swollen to slits and stitched cuts on his face appeared to ooze.

Montiero said he received phone calls from Rhode Island and Massachusetts, but also from as far away as Atlanta and Baltimore. He said some callers compared Carpio's case to that of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago who went to visit his grandparents in Mississippi in 1955 and was murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman.

Montiero urged NAACP members around the country to contact their branch presidents if they're concerned about the Providence branch's reaction. "I'll talk to their branch presidents," he said. "I will not talk to them as individuals."

Tomorrow's meeting, which starts at 6 p.m., will not be open to the general public, although Montiero said he would allow reporters inside with the chapter members' consent. He would not say how many members the chapter has.

Montiero declined to say what options the members might consider. "We're just going to ask them what they want to do," he said.

The chapter posted a statement on its Web site yesterday extending sympathy to Allen's family, the Providence Police Department and law-enforcement officers nationwide.

Allen's funeral is tomorrow morning. Until then, Montiero asked NAACP members to focus on honoring Allen's memory.

"We've lost a great person, a great human being who's given 27 years of his life to public service," Montiero said. "We feel it's inappropriate to be worrying about [Carpio's] condition until we bury this police officer."

He cautioned against assigning blame prematurely, noting that five law-enforcement agencies were involved in handling Carpio: the Providence police, the state police, the FBI, the Rhode Island Sheriffs' Department and the state Department of Corrections. "How do you evaluate where the damage occurred?" Montiero asked.

Providence Police Chief Dean M. Esserman, when asked Monday about Carpio's condition, said: "He jumped out of a third-story window and he struggled, in a tough struggle, to be apprehended on the ground. . . The only information I have is that it was a tough fight. It was not easy. . . to actually get the handcuffs on this fellow." At that news conference, Montiero stood at the front of the room with Esserman and other officials.