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April 18, 2005

Providence PD adopts advanced gang technology

Exactly how the mentally ill, paranoid, cop killer fell on his face from three stories up without breaking his neck was not explained. Authorities insisted that all the damage was suffered during the fall, not when the injured, unarmed man violently resisted dozens of arresting officers several blocks from the scene.

It's usually called a Pumpkin Head:

From GangResearch.Net:

"You know what they do when somebody on their count
messes up? He gets a sanction. One of the sanctions is a
'pumpkin head,' where they lay you down and tap you on both sides
of the head with the blunt end of a baseball bat till your head
swells up. Ergo, the 'pumpkin head.'"

From the Oswego Police Department in Illinois:

Pumpkin Head
1. When a person stands on one side of a room and is told he is out of a gang when he reaches the door.
2. Gang member has to go through a gauntlet type of baseball bats to the head on his journey to the door.
3. Person’s head swells to the shape of a pumpkin, thus the term Pumpkin Head.
4. These are often rare in suburbs, however mild cases have been seen.
5. Death usually results and this form of punishment is reserved for violations.

From a 1997 murder case:

Three days after that incident, Aldridge and Shipp, also identified as gang members, were taken to the apartment of a gang "governor" and put on trial. Aldridge said he was sentenced to a six-minute beating or "pumpkin head."

Aldridge said gang members piled into three cars and took him and his cousin to a dark riverside park about 11 p.m.

Aldridge said he stood by waiting for his beating while Shipp was beaten with a baseball bat, tire iron and fists. After about 10 minutes, Shipp was slumped against a tree and the gang turned its attention to Aldridge.

Back to the case at hand:

An investigator swabs the 3rd floor window from where the suspect jumped after allegedly killing Dect. James Allen.

Some details on the case:

``He was really paranoid, just not making a lot of sense,'' David Carpio said of his brother.

Esteban Carpio insisted people were chasing him, trying to kill him. He agreed to be hospitalized at least twice in recent weeks and both times was quickly released, his stunned Roslindale family said.

On the morning after he allegedly shot a Providence cop dead in the police station with the man's own gun, family members wondered if the tragedy could have been averted by hospitalization.

``I don't know if we can make that assumption yet,'' David Carpio said. ``We were trying to get him help. It didn't seem to be there.''

Carpio said his brother wasn't on any medications that he knew of and didn't have a history of mental illness. He attended Weston High under the Metco program, which buses city kids into the suburbs for school.

Carpio said his 26-year-old brother, the oldest of three boys, seemed to be having a nervous breakdown. It got so bad, he said, the family called a Jamaica Plain hospital two or three weeks ago.

``We had Faulkner Hospital come pick him up because he might be a danger, but they let him go,'' David Carpio said.

Then, about a week ago, Esteban Carpio's girlfriend in Rhode Island took him to a hospital there as his behavior grew more erratic.

From the AP:

Earlier this month, Carpio's mother, Yvonne Carpio, called police and had her son taken by ambulance to a hospital, Gonsalves told The Boston Globe. He was released that night, she said.

"We were trying to get him help, and it didn't seem to be there," said his brother, David Carpio.

The suspect alternately lived with his mother in the Boston area or with a girlfriend in Providence, according to published reports. The sister of Carpio's girlfriend said he has a 3-year-old child with his girlfriend and had a job, though she did not know where.

Also from the Associated Press:

Esteban Carpio, 26, did not enter a plea in Providence court to a murder charge in the death of James Allen, who was questioning him Sunday about the stabbing of an elderly woman.

Police said Carpio, who was not handcuffed, got hold of Allen's gun and shot him twice, then broke a third floor window and jumped out. He was captured after a struggle a few blocks away, police said.

In court Monday, Carpio's face was badly swollen and disfigured from bruises and his hands and legs were shackled. Sheriffs wrestled his mother and another woman out of the courtroom as they screamed about police brutality.

And this:

Esserman said the department would review Carpio's treatment if appropriate, and would consider a review by an outside agency.

Allen, 50, was married and had two daughters, and had been a police officer for 27 years. A funeral Mass was planned for Wednesday.

Esserman said no charges have been filed in the stabbing of the 84-year-old woman, and that Carpio remains a suspect.

Posted by Mike at April 18, 2005 11:39 PM

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