Public safety officer at Providence College claims history of discrimination by superiors, colleagues

PROVIDENCE — A public-safety lieutenant says Providence College has harassed him and stripped him of most of his duties because he is Black.

Members of the college’s Coalition Against Racism plan to hold a news conference on campus Tuesday at noon to protest the alleged treatment of Lt. John Dunbar, the third-highest ranking officer in his department.

Dunbar, who has spent 32 years with the department, is calling on PC to remove the majority of public-safety administrators as well as security officers who he says have engaged in harassment and racial profiling. If the college does not take this action, he said, the college’s new public safety chief will be hampered in responding to what he calls the “ongoing discriminatory behavior of the public-safety office.”

In a statement released Tuesday, Providence College wrote that Dunbar continues to perform his duties as community-relations and crime-prevention officer.

"Since the assertions in the media advisory are of a personnel nature, it would be inappropriate for Providence College to comment on these assertions at this time," the college's statement says.

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"The college does have a clear and formal process for complaints of any nature, and we continue to encourage employees to utilize this resource.

"We take any assertions made seriously and are reviewing them at this time. The college is and has been committed to a culture of continuous improvement; to that end we will re-examine ourselves and our processes in an effort to improve and to become the beloved community we aspire to be."

In an interview Monday, Dunbar said the racist harassment escalated after his promotion from sergeant to lieutenant in 2017, when he was asked to serve as a bridge between the public-safety department, students and faculty.

“I was a rising star,” he said. “Unfortunately, members of my department were not happy about it.”

After his promotion, Dunbar said, safety officers would turn their backs on him at the entrance gate to campus and officers with lower rank refused to salute him.

“They didn’t want a Black man over them,” he said.

He said he was assigned to work in a basement office of another building while a supervisor of lower rank was allowed to maintain a private office within the public-safety office.

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Dunbar said he was gradually stripped of all of his duties, including supervising dispatchers, investigating civil rights complaints, and even his involvement in planning major on-campus events.

Dunbar also said the administration failed to investigate a situation in which Dunbar said a student spat at him and repeatedly called him the “N-word.”

The student also bit another officer.

In 2011, Jon Dooley, then president of the Student Advocacy Organization, emailed Father Brendan Murphy, then vice president for student affairs, about an incident in which Dunbar tackled a student.

According to the organization, several students said they witnessed Dunbar jump on top of the student to pin him down.

Asked about that incident, Dunbar said the student had bitten a fellow officer and that he had captured the incident by phone and sent it to his superiors. He said he was never disciplined for the action.

Dunbar took a leave of absence in 2018 because of the harassment he says he was receiving on the job.

V. Richardson, a part-time public safety officer, said she wouldn't have stayed at her job without Dunbar's encouragement and support.

"He is a wonderful boss," she said Tuesday. "He loves the college. He takes great pride in his job."

Former students come to the college's main gate and ask for him. Sometimes, Richardson said, the traffic backs up because Dunbar greets everyone at the gate.

But Dunbar is treated with disrespect by his fellow officers, in part because that's how his superiors treat him, Richardson said.

"John tries so hard to fit in," she said. "He is the friendliest, the most interactive, gets the most smiles. He is always very professional. They don't like that he is above them."

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Asked why he is going public with these allegations now, Dunbar said he doesn’t want the new chief of public safety, Chad Carnegie, who is Black, to go through what he did.

Racial tensions have run high on campus more than once over the past 10 years.

Black students occupied the president’s office in 2016, demanding an end to racial profiling.

In 2013, a group of Providence College students held a news conference to protest what they said is a hostile climate for minority students and faculty. Students said there had been multiple incidents of racial profiling by campus security.

One professor said she received a series of threatening emails after she announced a new social justice award.

Anthony Rodriguez, an associate professor in the elementary and special education department, said he has faced a similar history of harassment and retaliation by members of his department and the administration due to his reporting what he called discriminatory treatment of students of color in his department.

“What we have seen here is a pattern of discrimination,” he said Monday. “It’s the same techniques, the same procedures, the same way of targeting. When people of color have worked and filed grievances and shown unimpeachable testimony, the college has shunned or ignored them or blamed them for the thing they have brought up.

“Lieutenant Dunbar has been profiled at his own gate by other officers,” he said. “They work with him every day. If you are black or brown, you will be seen for the way you look.”

Linda Borg covers education for the Journal.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Providence College public safety officer claims history of racism