May 9th, 2013 at 9:58 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan and Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Several Rhode Island school administrators spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on a trip to China, dining at high-end steakhouses and an in-state overnight staff retreat in 2012, according to a Target 12 review of school district travel data.
March 3rd, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
February 27th, 2013 at 12:05 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan and Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I., (WPRI) – Thousands of dollars in cash assistance were withdrawn from ATMs in liquor stores, bars, smoke shops and even Twin River casino last December, according to welfare data obtained by Target 12.
February 25th, 2013 at 10:27 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The reputed one-time acting boss of the New England crime family has been moved to a Pennsylvania prison, from Central Falls, to serve his sentence.
February 22nd, 2013 at 10:59 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
February 5th, 2013 at 6:47 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Ted Nesi and Tim White
SCITUATE, R.I. (WPRI) – Police officers in Scituate are criticizing a plan crafted by town officials that would make officers pay more for less generous pensions in order to help close an $8 million shortfall that opened up over the last decade.
• Interactive: Town-by-town map of local pension liabilities in Rhode Island (Feb. 4)
February 4th, 2013 at 10:00 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Ted Nesi and Tim White
SCITUATE, R.I. (WPRI) – The officials charged with overseeing Scituate’s troubled police pension plan held next to no meetings for more than a decade, even as the plan’s cash shortfall quadrupled to $8 million, a Target 12 investigation has discovered.
• Interactive: Town-by-town map of local pension liabilities in Rhode Island (Feb. 4)
February 4th, 2013 at 9:04 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. (WPRI) – A corrections officer from the Wyatt Detention Center is accusing the prison’s administration of mishandling an investigation into an alleged attack on him by an inmate and says he was admonished for raising questions about the incident.
January 23rd, 2013 at 4:31 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. (WPRI) – A state police investigation has found the chief of security at Wyatt Detention Center may have destroyed video evidence that he put a correctional officer in harm’s way just before the officer suffered a serious head injury.
January 11th, 2013 at 3:15 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – There’s a lot to like about Governor Chafee’s new transparency website. There’s also room for improvement.
January 8th, 2013 at 12:33 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – As it turns out, it was an offer Frank “Bobo” Marrapese could refuse.
December 13th, 2012 at 11:44 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The sweeping federal crackdown into organized crime in New England, which took down former and reputed acting mob bosses, ended with a whimper Thursday.
November 29th, 2012 at 6:12 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
WOONSOCKET, R.I. (WPRI) – Several friends and family members of “thrill kill” victim Jeannette Descoteaux say they are organizing a push to make sure neither of her murderers get released from prison early.
November 28th, 2012 at 1:28 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Brissette
By Tim White
Since Target 12 broke the story on the pending release of convicted “thrill” killer Alfred Brissette, questions have emerged as to why a murderer was getting an early release, particularly in the wake of the Michael Woodmansee controversy.
It’s important to note the two cases are different in terms of how each inmate was awarded an early release from prison.
Woodmansee was convicted of killing 5-year-old Jason Foreman in South Kingstown in 1975. He completed his prison sentence at the Adult Correctional Institutions after earning more than 12 years of time off for good behavior. After outrage erupted over his release, Woodmansee agreed to voluntarily commit himself to the Eleanor Slater Hospital, a state psychiatric institution.
Brissette was convicted of killing Jeannette Descoteaux of Woonsocket in 1999. He and co-conspirator Marc Girard had been planning to kill a woman at random for months before they lured the 38-year-old to the woods of Burrillville and beating her to death with a lug wrench, shovel and their fists, according to prosecutors and investigators.
November 28th, 2012 at 11:47 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The Rhode Island Parole Board has backed off its decision to grant early release to a man convicted of a brutal 1999 “thrill kill” and will take another look at the case following a series of Target 12 investigative reports this week.
November 27th, 2012 at 4:47 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The ex-wife of a convicted murderer set to be released from prison decades early says she was never notified that the so-called “thrill” killer was up for parole.
November 26th, 2012 at 5:50 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – A Woonsocket man convicted in the “thrill” killing of a woman at random has been granted parole and is set to be released from prison in December, decades early.
November 11th, 2012 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
November 9th, 2012 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – When Jeffrey Sallet walked into a Federal Hill restaurant and approached Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio, the aging mobster – who knew just about everyone in Providence – had never seen the man in his life.
November 5th, 2012 at 1:50 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Rhode Island teachers were absent from school more than their colleagues anywhere else in the country, according to a study released Monday by the Center for American Progress that examined data from the 2009-10 school year.
October 2nd, 2012 at 5:35 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE R.I. (WPRI) – A Superior Court judge upheld the 2006 termination of Providence teacher Bernard McCrink, saying a state law that requires school districts to terminate teachers by March 1 may be an “undue burden,” but it’s up to the General Assembly to rewrite the statute.
October 2nd, 2012 at 2:28 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
MEDFIELD, Mass. (WPRI) – Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has put his 26-acre property outside Boston on the market and is seeking nearly $3.5 million, less than four months after his taxpayer-backed company 38 Studios filed for bankruptcy.
Update: Boston magazine’s Jason Schwartz tweets:
Full circle alert: Schilling was hosting a fundraiser at that house when he met RI Gov Carcieri & they got ball rolling on #38Studios deal.
— Jason Schwartz (@SchwartzHub) October 2, 2012
• Related: Schilling talks 38 Studios tonight in ESPN documentary ‘Broke’ (Oct. 2)
September 25th, 2012 at 1:50 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – State and Providence police are investigating whether several of their own officers injured an off-duty Providence patrolman during a fight in a possible case of mistaken identity.
September 17th, 2012 at 5:31 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – A Delaware law firm has submitted a bill approaching six-figures for less than three months of work in the 38 Studios bankruptcy case, according to court documents.
September 13th, 2012 at 3:00 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
Former Governor Donald Carcieri said he’d talk about 38 Studios soon – and tonight he will.
Carcieri sat down with WPRI 12′s Tim White on Thursday morning for an exclusive one-on-one interview – his first since last spring’s dramatic implosion of Curt Schilling’s video game company, which received a $75 million loan guarantee from Rhode Island taxpayers on Carcieri’s watch.
“I will take responsibility for approving the deal,” he said during a taping of WPRI 12′s Newsmakers. “When I left office, it was just beginning. … I have no knowledge and no input after that, and it looks to me from the outside that there was a lot of things that might have been able to be done along the way here to salve 300 jobs.”
Carcieri discusses a wide range of topics, including his surprise and regret at what happened; how much blame he puts on his successor Lincoln Chafee, Curt Schilling and state lawmakers; and whether the EDC did enough to vet the deal in advance. He also has his own opinion about what should happen to bondholders.
Highlights from the Carcieri interview will air on WPRI 12 tonight at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., and the full extended interview will be posted online. The entire episode of Newsmakers will air at a special time Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (or after football) on WPRI 12 in addition to its regular showing at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence.
(photo: John Villella/WPRI)
August 9th, 2012 at 3:35 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. (WPRI) – In the early morning hours of April 9, 2011, guards at the Wyatt Detention Center suspected inmate Christopher Morales was drinking from a bottle of homemade alcohol. When the inmate was questioned through his cell door, he became unruly, clogging his toilet and breaking off a sprinkler head, flooding the small room.
July 31st, 2012 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under General Talk
By Tim White
BRISTOL, R.I. (WPRI) – R.I. Attorney General Peter Kilmartin said a record 750 people signed up for this year’s “Open Government Summit” at Roger Williams University. Here are my quick hits and takeaways.
July 20th, 2012 at 4:11 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. (WPRI) – The former boss of the New England mob has been moved out of the Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls and is on his way to another prison to serve out the rest of his sentence, the Target 12 Investigators have learned.
June 14th, 2012 at 2:36 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
David Scharfenberg talks to Tim in The Providence Phoenix:
I’M WONDERING IF YOU COULD PUT IN PERSPECTIVE JUST HOW AWFUL RHODE ISLAND’S PUBLIC RECORDS LAW IS AT PRESENT. I have worked in other markets and when I came here I was absolutely stunned to find how much was sealed from public inspection. And as I got more familiar with our public records law, I realized that Rhode Island is in the dark ages.
Rhode Island has a reputation [for] corruption — it’s not always fair, but some of it is earned. And I think the public records law has a lot to do with it, honestly. I’m not being overdramatic here. I think that because public records law keeps so much sealed from inspection, it’s created a petri dish for bad things to grow in the dark.
• Related: Common Cause, NEFAC urge Chafee to sign public records bill (June 13)
June 8th, 2012 at 4:43 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Rosemary Booth Gallogly, Rhode Island’s revenue director, said Friday she “was not in favor” of the 38 Studios deal in 2010 and expressed those concerns directly to then-Gov. Don Carcieri as a member of his cabinet.
• Related: Carcieri, tracked down in RI, won’t address 38 Studios mess (May 26)