Gianquitti

PROVIDENCE — Even though Nicholas Gianquitti will probably spend the rest of his life in prison, his family will continue to collect his disability pension from the city, based on less than three years as a Police Department employee.

Gianquitti, 41, was sentenced last month to 40 years for second-degree murder in the 2008 slaying of his neighbor James Pagano, a Cranston Fire Department lieutenant. He will serve 20 of those years in prison; the remaining 20 years of the sentence were suspended. He will be eligible for parole after serving two-thirds of the prison time. At that point, he would begin serving a consecutive life sentence for using a firearm while committing a crime of violence.

The $3,481.50 monthly pension check, however, will continue to arrive each month at his Cranston home. The Providence Retirement Board has not made a request to consider revoking or reducing Gianquitti’s pension, according to Kenneth B. Chiavarini, Providence senior assistant city solicitor and legal counsel to the board.

Only the Retirement Board can move to revoke a pension, something it has done infrequently in the decade Chiavarini has represented it. That’s because the ordinance governing revocation allows a pension to be stopped only if the employee is convicted of a crime related to his or her employment, such as the misuse of public funds or of his or her position.

The city is currently moving to revoke or reduce the pensions of retired police Capt. John J. Ryan, former police Chief Urbano Prignano Jr. and former Maj. Martin F. Hames Jr., who were all implicated in the department’s cheating-for-promotions scandal that dates to the mid- to late-1990s.

The difference is that those men received pensions for honorable service, not for a disability incurred while on the job, as Gianquitti did.

Chiavarini said that if the board sought to revoke Gianquitti’s pension based on his conviction, his recommendation to them would be that the law doesn’t provide for that.

“My opinion would be that it would have to be a crime related to his public employment,” Chiavarini said.

In April, Gianquitti was convicted of killing Pagano on May 18, 2008, after the men got into an argument about Gianquitti’s admonishing children in the Pagano family after a tennis ball hit a car in Gianquitti’s driveway.

Gianquitti graduated from the Providence Police Academy in 1990, and went to work in the city radio control room as he waited for a position as a police officer to become available. He was assigned to patrol in July 1991.

He earned a commendation for helping rescue a family from a burning house in Silver Lake on Jan. 7, 1992. Then, on Jan. 28, 1992, Gianquitti fractured his left kneecap when he fell while chasing two suspects in a parking lot off North Main Street.

Almost a year to the day that Gianquitti was injured, the Retirement Board approved his application for a disability pension. The award credits the time that he served in the radio control room, as well as time he was on injury leave.

The board approved Gianquitti for a tax-free pension of two-thirds of his monthly salary — since adjusted because of inflation to $3,481.50 — plus benefits.

Providing he passes an annual recertification of his disability, Gianquitti will continue to receive his pension until his death; at that point, his spouse will continue to get half of the pension amount — $1,740.75 — until her death. Chiavarini said that if Gianquitti has no surviving spouse, or goes through a divorce, the benefits would transfer to his daughter, Britney, until she is 19 years old.

Each year, the city requires recipients to recertify their disability with proof from a doctor, Chiavarini said. He was unsure whether Gianquitti had been recertified this year.

With Journal staff reports

tbuford@projo.com