Under former chief Urbano Prignano Jr., the felon, who was also a bailbondsman, seemed to have free reign at the Providence Police Department.

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, May 29, 2005

BY MIKE STANTON and W. ZACHARY MALINOWSKI
Journal Staff Writers

Once upon a time in Providence, a bail bondsman with a criminal past had such easy access to police headquarters that he could receive visitors in the chief's office, and put his foot up on the chief's desk.

Wayne David Collins Jr., a close friend of then Chief Urbano Prignano Jr., also knew the keypad code for the door to the Intelligence Bureau, home to some of the department's most sensitive secrets.

After two felony convictions, Collins said he had gone straight.

He built a successful bail-bond business, earning commissions by posting bail for accused criminals, mostly drug dealers. He drove a Mercedes, owned a house with a swimming pool near Narragansett Bay and procured Super Bowl tickets for his police pals.

Collins also provided something else, according to court records: help with the answers to the Providence Police Department's sergeant's exam.

Lewis Perrotti Jr., a suspended police sergeant, has told a grand jury that Collins gave him the source sheet for the exam.

According to Perrotti's testimony, Collins told him, "I have the [source sheet] here. But before you look at it, you have to promise not to harm myself or the chief."

Chief Prignano, who retired in 2001, denies giving Collins any test information, and says he doesn't know how Collins might have gotten it.

Collins, now a bail bondsman in Florida, declined comment. He referred questions to his lawyer, Stephen R. Famiglietti, who did not return several calls seeking comment.

Perrotti, who had finished 13th on his previous try, testified that he finished first with Collins' help, and was promoted. He and his lawyer, Joseph Penza, declined comment for this story.

Perrotti's admissions reveal a corrupt promotion system, marred by favoritism, cynicism and campaign contributions, during the reign of former Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. The former mayor was convicted of racketeering conspiracy in 2002.

New details of the scandal, which has cast a pall over the police force for years, emerge in records recently filed in Providence Superior Court.

The records, part of the city's efforts to punish the cheaters, tell a story of another time -- a story that honest officers say must be told before a crippled department can move forward.

One of those stories involves Dave Collins.

DAVE COLLINS was a man of secrets.

He moved in the netherworld between crooks and cops, arranging bail for drug dealers and feeding information about illegal activity to the police.

He worked closely with officers in the Providence police drug unit. When the police returned from a drug raid, Collins would sometimes be waiting at the station, with pizza.

"It is my understanding that Mr. Collins is a well-protected government witness," a Providence police inspector wrote in an internal memo two years ago.

According to another department report, "Collins has a long-standing relationship with ranking members of the Rhode Island State Police, as well [as] with the FBI."

In Providence, the report said, Collins "acted as a source of information for Prignano and often gave Prignano information relating to criminal activity."

The Collins-Prignano friendship dated back to the 1980s, when Prignano was in charge of narcotics and vice. Collins, who once worked as a runner for lawyer Joseph A. Bevilacqua Jr., would frequently visit Prignano at police headquarters to pick up paperwork on suspects represented by Bevilacqua.

Collins was such a familiar figure around the department that he would mimic Prignano's voice in prank calls to officers.

The two men dined together and even visited one another on vacation in Aruba. Prignano called Collins a "kid" with a "big heart . . . always willing to help people."

"He had to prove himself to me, that he's a legitimate man, before I would have lunch with him," said Prignano in 1997.

Prignano was aware of Collins' criminal past, and said he urged him to stay straight. He teased Collins about having arrested his father, Wayne David Collins Sr. He recalled Collins' father as a "wise-guy wannabe," with a string of arrests over two decades -- shoplifting, possession of cocaine, larceny, possession of a stolen credit card.

With his father largely absent, Dave Collins told the Journal in 1997, he had to fend for his mother and his three siblings in Providence's blue-collar Silver Lake section. He ran with a tough crowd.

"I started doing what I did for my family," he said, without elaborating. "That doesn't make it right, but that's what I did."

As a young man, Collins twice pleaded no contest to shoplifting charges. He was arrested for arson, a case that was later dismissed, and also recorded a felony conviction for leaving the scene of an accident, in which he drove over a man's leg.

In 1989, Collins pleaded no contest in the armed robbery of Abraham's Fur Salon in Cranston. According to police reports, Collins and another man walked into the salon and one of them -- the reports don't say which one -- pointed a gun at the owner. The two robbers hustled the owner into the back, bound and gagged him with duct tape, and fled with some 60 furs worth $100,000.

Collins escaped jail time for the crime, receiving a one-year suspended sentence and two years' probation. By then, he had gone to work for Bevilacqua, who stood up as best man at his wedding, and discovered the benefits of working with the police.

Collins developed friendships not only with the Providence police, but with state troopers. Sometimes he would show up at State Police headquarters in Scituate in his Mercedes and play basketball with detectives.

After the robbery, Francisco Pinales, the owner of Abraham's Fur Salon, was at the attorney general's office meeting with prosecutor Michael Burns. In a recent interview, Pinales recalled looking up and seeing Collins.

"I got scared. I said, 'That's him! That's the guy who robbed me!' And Mr. Burns said, 'This guy's OK. He works for us now.' "

"I said, 'This guy works for you -- and he held me up?' Mr. Burns didn't say anything."

WITH THE HELP of Burns, then chief of the criminal division, and a high-ranking Rhode Island state police official, Anthony M. Pesare, Collins was able to get his criminal record erased in 1995 and obtain a bail bondsman's license and a gun permit. (Burns is deceased; Pesare is the police chief in Middletown.)

In 1997, a Journal story revealed the erasure, or expungement, of Collins' record. As a twice-convicted felon and four-time convicted criminal, Collins wasn't entitled to have his record expunged under the law, which is intended for first-time offenders, and then only for nonviolent crimes.

In the face of a judicial inquiry, Collins surrendered his Rhode Island bail bondsman's license and moved to Florida, where he became a bail bondsman. But he didn't lose touch with home -- or Chief Prignano.

On June 14, 2000, Prignano summoned the Journal's police reporter to the chief's office to meet Collins. Prignano said that Collins could help the reporter develop a story about the alleged mob ties and drug habits of a local politician.

Collins said that he was in Rhode Island for a vacation. Prignano said that Collins was working with federal agents in an investigation involving Rhode Island drug dealers and corrupt cops in Southeastern Massachusetts.

Prignano then left Collins and the reporter alone in his office.

"I didn't want to be privy to the conversation," he said in a recent interview.

Collins, who wore blue jeans, a green polo shirt and a diamond-studded Rolex watch, rested one foot on the chief's desk as he spoke. Prignano's secretary paged Collins to alert him to an incoming call, which Collins took on the chief's phone.

At one point, Collins asked if the reporter's sources were saying that he, Collins, was running the Police Department.

A FEW MONTHS before the 1997 stories about the expungement of Collins' record, Lewis Perrotti was studying for the Providence sergeant's exam.

Perrotti, a police officer since 1987, had taken the sergeant's test twice before, finishing 16th and 13th.

He planned to take the test again on Jan. 11, 1997, at the Community College of Rhode Island in Lincoln. A few days before the test, Perrotti testified, he received a telephone call from Collins.

Perrotti knew Collins from the courthouse. Since 1995, Perrotti had worked in the department's prosecution bureau at the Garrahy Judicial Complex, in Providence.

"I would set bails," said Perrotti, "and he would bail people out."

One day, Perrotti said that Collins approached him and said he had heard that Perotti was studying for the sergeant's exam. "I don't know how he found out," he said.

Perrotti told Collins that this was his third try, adding, "I hope to make it this time."

Collins said that "if he could help me out he would," Perrotti testified.

A few days before the exam, Perrotti said, he talked to Collins on the phone. Collins told Perrotti to come to his house in Warwick that night.

Collins lived in a large house near Narragansett Bay. He was alone when Perrotti arrived. Collins showed him into the kitchen, pointing out the in-ground swimming pool in the backyard.

"I wasn't sure what he wanted to talk to me about," Perrotti testified. "I assume it was work related . . . someone could be coming in for bail, we might be turning someone in the following morning."

But that wasn't why Collins wanted to see him, he said.

"He has a piece of paper in his hand and he says that before he shows it to me, I have to promise not to harm him or the chief," Perrotti testified.

He said that Collins told him the paper listed the statutes and other source material on which exam questions would be based. Having the source sheet, Perrotti said, would help "dramatically."

"I was shocked because I didn't know the truthfulness of what he was saying to me, and I was also shocked because I was in a position where I was currently working for the chief's administrative staff and I didn't know what to do at that point, whether to accept it or not," said Perrotti.

Perrotti said that he replied, "OK," and Collins handed it over.

"He wouldn't allow me to take it [home]," testified Perrotti. "He would only allow me to copy from it."

Perrotti said that he stood in Collins' kitchen and copied lists of statutes from the sheet onto a piece of paper that Collins gave him.

Perrotti told the grand jury he was confused about what was happening.

"I didn't know what to do," he said. "I didn't know if it came from the chief, and if it did come from the chief, I was currently working on his administrative staff. If I walked away, I feared that I would lose my particular position."

The state prosecutor, Peter Neronha, asked what happened next.

"A couple days later, I took the exam."

"You did pretty well?" asked Neronha.

"I did excellent."

"Came in first?"

"That's correct."

"97 out of 100?"

"That's correct."

Perrotti said that the statutes he copied from the paper that Collins showed him were, in fact, on the exam.

"So," Neronha asked, "you didn't have any doubt after you took the exam on what Collins had given you was right on the money in terms of what was going to be on the exam, correct?"

"Correct."

Perrotti also described an encounter with Collins in the courthouse after the exam.

"He said, 'How did you make out?' I told him I made out well. And he said, 'OK, we're never going to talk about this again.' "

PERROTTI'S ADMISSION During Operation Plunder Dome, which ran from 1998 to 2002, the FBI looked into allegations of police wrongdoing as part of its wide-ranging investigation of corruption at City Hall.

Although some details of the testing scandal emerged during the probe, those actions did not figure into the racketeering case against Cianci and others in 2001.

When Prignano was called to testify during Cianci's trial in June 2002, under a grant of immunity, he admitted giving advance information for promotional exams to two other officers, Capt. John Ryan and Sgt. Tonya King-Harris.

"I'm not proud of that," he testified. "It's one of my dark days in the Police Department in my 34 years."

On July 17, 2002, Perrotti denied to an internal affairs investigator that he had received inside information prior to the 1997 sergeant's exam.

On Sept. 18, 2002, Perrotti refused to testify before a Rhode Island grand jury, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Three weeks later, on Oct. 9, Perrotti returned to the grand jury, this time under a grant of immunity, and testified that he had received the source information from Collins.

In January 2003, the new mayor, David M. Cicilline, hired a new police chief, former New York City prosecutor Dean Esserman. One of Esserman's top priorities was to bring out the truth about the testing scandal, which continued to plague department morale.

Esserman assembled a team of investigators from the department, and also consulted with the FBI and state and federal prosecutors.

No criminal charges have resulted from the investigation, partly because the statute of limitations has expired on some possible crimes and partly because other key figures, including Perrotti and Prignano, had previously received immunity.

But the department earlier this year fired King-Harris and suspended another officer, Rhonda Kessler. They have appealed the city's actions in Superior Court in Providence. Documents chronicling the cheating investigation, including reports, memos and Perrotti's grand jury testimony, have been filed by the city as exhibits in those cases.

The city has suspended Perrotti, with pay, and is trying to fire him for cheating on the 1997 exam.

Perrotti has gone to court, arguing that the city can't fire him because the statute of limitations had expired. His case is before the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

The city has also asked the Providence Retirement Board to revoke Prignano's $59,138-a-year pension.

PRIGNANO, in a recent interview, said that he was surprised to hear of Perrotti's testimony that Collins had given him the source sheet.

"I didn't have the slightest idea," he said. "I thought it was a lie."

Prignano said that he didn't give the source sheet to Collins.

"I never did that," he said. "I can also unequivocally say that I know nothing about that."

Prignano, who still keeps in touch with Collins, said that he has never asked Collins whether he gave Perrotti, or anyone else, advance test information.

In another instance cited in an internal police report, the investigators write that "on one occasion prior to the 1997 exam for sergeant, Collins told a candidate that he/she would not make the list" of officers to be promoted. Subsequently that individual did not make the original list of 10. Following arbitration, the individual prevailed."

Former Deputy Chief Andrew Rosenzweig, who oversaw the testing investigation, was "astonished" by Collins' close relationship with senior officers. While informants are the lifeblood of police work, he said in a recent interview, it is a basic rule that there be an arms-length relationship.

"It fell into the category of a totally inappropriate relationship with a source," said Rosenzweig, now an assistant police chief in Hartford. "Usually, this is a pitfall that an amateur or inexperienced officer can fall into. What astonished me here was that you had very experienced, high-ranking members of the department who should have known better. Their judgment was warped. It was symptomatic of a department that wasn't managed well."

In his grand-jury testimony, Perrotti said that he felt justified in accepting Collins' assistance because he believed that other officers had cheated on previous exams.

"I felt that it was my turn, that I had been cheated out, and this is just the way things are done," he said.

Prosecutor Neronha asked Perrotti why he thought Collins had helped him.

"I've been running that through my head for years," replied Perrotti. "He's never asked me to do anything. The only thing I can come up with is the fact that I feel in my heart that I should have made the exam the second time and that they felt bad and wanted to correct a wrong."

Perrotti conceded that Collins relied on favors from cops to do his job.

"At some point in the future, you would have been in a position to help David Collins someway?" asked Neronha. "He could come to you and ask you to run a license plate? He could come to you and ask you to give a guy a break? He could come to you and ask you to see a police report, right?"

"Yes."

"And those are the kinds of things that Wayne David Collins needs to do what he does, correct?"

"Correct."

"Isn't the logical conclusion that you would come to, as an experienced police officer, that he was trying to ingratiate himself to you, to get on your good side, so you would owe him?" asked Neronha.

"That's true."

Mike Stanton can be reached at 277-7724, or mstanton [at] projo.com

Bill Malinowski can be reached at 277-7019, or bmalinow [at] projo.com