Police "walk a tightrope" when questioning a suspect, says one national expert.

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

BY MICHAEL CORKERY
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The shooting of Detective James L. Allen has focused attention on the Providence Police Department's procedures concerning the safety of officers who are questioning suspects.

Journal photo / Glenn Osmundson

A wreath at the entrance of the Providence Public Safety Complex serves as a memorial to Detective James L. Allen. Officials are providing additional details about tomorrow's funeral for the slain officer.

Police Chief Dean M. Esserman said he would begin reviewing these issues after tomorrow's funeral for Allen, who was allegedly killed with his own gun by a suspect he was interviewing at the Providence Public Safety Complex.

The police said Allen was alone in a conference room when Esteban Carpio, who was not handcuffed or restrained, got control of the detective's gun and shot him.

Law-enforcement experts say there's a great deal of gray area surrounding the questioning of someone like Carpio, who was not under arrest at the time.

"You walk a tightrope," said Peter Van Dyke, director of police training at Northwestern University's Center for Public Safety, which instructs police from around the world.

On one hand, a detective needs to protect himself, but he also wants to extract information from the suspect about the crime, Van Dyke said.

"It tends to get people not to want to cooperate, if they are handcuffed," said Van Dyke.

Col. Stephen McCartney, the Warwick police chief, who once worked with Allen in the Providence detective division, said good detectives are careful about how they elicit information from a suspect.

"You have to be aware that everything you do may be called into question by a sharp defense attorney," said McCartney.

"All these little details -- an interview room versus an interrogation room. Was the individual free to go?"

Carpio's girlfriend, Samein Phin, said that when Carpio agreed to be transported from her house to the police station for questioning, the police handcuffed him. Esserman has not said when or why the handcuffs were removed.

At one point during the interview, a Providence police detective left the conference room to fetch water for the suspect, leaving Allen alone with Carpio.

Van Dyke said detectives often try to make a suspect comfortable by offering him something to drink or eat.

The decision to be alone with a suspect is also often up to an individual officer, said Michael Brady, an assistant professor in the Department of Administration of Justice at Salve Regina University in Newport and a former Charlestown police chief.

"This is a man who knew his job, he was exercising his discretion," Brady said of Allen. "Clearly he didn't feel threatened."

Carpio had a criminal record in Massachusetts and his girlfriend said he suffered from mental problems.

The Providence police will not discuss what they knew about Carpio's background when he was brought in for questioning.

"It's not uncommon to deal with violent people," said Brady. "We will never know what set this guy off. We will never know the mindset that triggered this."

Experts say the procedures governing the presence of a firearm during an interview vary widely by department, and are left, in some cases, to the discretion of an individual officer.

In many police departments, experts say, weapons are banned from certain areas, such as an interrogation room and in the cellblocks, to prevent them from being taken by a suspect.

The former vice chairman of the Rhode Island Police Officers Commission on Standards and Training, Brady said "it's not practical to have no firearms in the whole police department."

Brady believes the question of whether to ban firearms from the conference room should be left up to the Providence police chief.

Another variable is the type of holster that officers use to carry their firearms. Experts say holsters have different security features to prevent someone from wresting the gun away.

Brady said uniformed officers, who are out in the streets, mingling with the public, tend to wear the most secure holsters. Those models, he said, typically require the gun to be pushed down into the holster and rocked back and forth, before it can be pulled out.

Brady said those type of holsters are not suited to plainclothes detectives, who want their guns to be better concealed.

No matter what level of protection a holster might provide, "when it comes to a scuffle, that weapon is always very vulnerable. That is the scariest thing," said Van Dyke.

Brady said when it comes to making the decision to use the weapons, a police officer often "has milliseconds."

Brady said many officers carry their guns with a round in the chamber.

Detective Allen was carrying a .40-caliber Beretta. Brady said several models of the Beretta have external safety devices, which he said are not hard to disengage.

Experts say the number of cases where a police officer is killed by his or her own weapon is relatively low. According to the Internet site Officer Down Memorial Page, which tallies the deaths and injuries of law-enforcement officers in the line of duty nationally, Allen was the second officer this year to be killed with his own weapon.

Rhode Island police officers must check their weapons when they enter state court buildings, Brady said.

In general, Brady said police departments devise procedures to deal with what normally occurs during the course of everyday police work, not with the extremes.

Police work, by its very nature, is dangerous. That is not something that a departmental procedure can necessarily change.

"This detective was not doing anything that police officers in every department have not done every single day," said Brady.

Added Van Dyke, "I really wish that the public had an idea of the risk that today's law-enforcement officers face. Every traffic stop, there could be a gun pointed at them. Every time there is a traffic stop, a drunk driver could clip them.

"There is nothing in the world more tragic than hearing another officer has lost his or her life. We do as much as we can to protect ourselves."

With reports from Journal staff writer Amanda Milkovits.

Digital Extra: Get the latest on the shooting of Providence Detective James Allen, look back at this week's coverage, and post messages to an online sympathy guestbook, at:

http://projo.com