MIDNIGHT WOONSOCKET
Woonsocket Police Department
At five minutes to midnight, officers gather at the Woonsocket Police Department for the morning shift. The lights flicker, and conversation falls away as they line up for roll call. A snowstorm is coming, Sgt. Robert Frye instructs, and they should keep an eye out for unregistered vehicles that need to be towed. Before they can leave the station, a call comes in: breaking and entering in progress in Fairmount, a one-time mill village on the city’ s western edge. They jump in their squad cars and head to the scene.
Outside the house, neighbors in pajamas peer from the decks of their triple-deckers. After forty-five tense minutes and one arrest, the situation dissipates, and silence descends once more upon the street. Another call comes in, this time for a domestic dispute. Criss-crossing the river that bisects the city, Frye is on familiar territory. He grew up here, in an affordable housing complex on the city’ s eastern side. After dropping out of high school and obtaining his GED, he joined the Rhode Island National Guard and deployed to Afghanistan. He later worked a stint at the Wyatt Detention Facility before training as a police
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