Providence 'Dancing Cop' Disinvited

DARREN MCCOLLESTER/GETTY IMAGES

Dancing Cop’ disinvited from second Rhode Island city - Rhode Island’s “Dancing Cop” lost his invite to direct holiday traffic in a second city Tuesday after the flak over his stance against Black Lives Matter.

Retired Providence police officer Tony Lepore has been dancing jigs and making jazz hands while managing Providence motorists around the holidays since 1984.

Yet officials in Providence and, now, East Providence, have canceled his renowned yearly boogie after Lepore led a protest outside a Dunkin’ Donuts where a staff member wrote “#blacklivesmatter” on a Providence officer’s coffee cup.

East Providence leaders asked Lepore to perform in their town following Providence’s dismissal of him last month. But the seasonal hire in East Providence provoked an outcry by Providence NAACP president Jim Vincent and area activists. East Providence Mayor Thomas Rose told Lepore in a phone call Tuesday that the officials had withdrawn their invite, Lepore said.

Lepore, 68, said on a local TV station he just wanted “to make sure all police officers were treated like police officers, not like dirt,” when he organized the coffee shop rally. Providence Police Commissioner Steven Pare accused him of trying to speak for the department through his activism, though, and the chief put the kibosh on the dance.

Lepore plans to file a defamation of character suit against Providence “and whoever else my lawyer wants to go after," he said Tuesday. “They're trying to say I'm a racist."

He also slammed Vincent, saying on WPRO-AM, “You don't represent what Martin Luther King Jr. wanted your organization to be."

Vincent said he is saddened by the dispute between the two men who have known each other for years but supports East Providence officials’ decision to disinvite the Dancing Cop.

“He would be the last person I would think that would cause harm and division in the community, which is basically what he did,” Vincent said. “We don't need anything to make things worse. He made things worse. He ended up being divisive, maybe unintentionally.”

The mayor wound up as the sole member of the East Providence City Council supporting Lepore and lost out to the four other members who opposed him, the Providence Journal reported. The council members called off a vote on Lepore that had been slated for Tuesday night.

“He’s certainly evoked a significant emotional response from people here,” Councilman Timothy Conley told the Journal. “I certainly don’t share his views and I think he will get the city in the news for all the wrong reasons.”