Town’s Leaders Try to Ease Tensions After Shooting

Community leaders worked the streets Tuesday to defuse racial tensions that led to the arrest of 30 black and Latino youths in a rock-throwing protest over a white police officer’s killing of a black suspected drug dealer.

The dead man’s mother appealed for calm.

“I don’t want nobody else’s child to get hurt. I just want the kids to stay in their houses,” Lucille Williams said outside her home. “I know my son is not an angel but I still think he should have had a chance just like everybody else.”

Samuel C. Williams, 26, was shot Sunday while swinging an iron reinforcing bar at a policeman. Officer Paul Letizia, a seven-year veteran, was trying to arrest Williams on warrants for assault, weapons violations, contempt of court and parole violations, police said.

Mayor Harry Curley announced at a news conference that there would be added police patrols, but he denied there was a racial problem in the city of 54,000.

“I am not aware of any racial tension in Vineland,” Curley said. “This is the first time a police officer killed a suspect.”

Authorities also set up telephone hot lines to combat rumors of additional violence and promised that a grand jury would be asked to decide if the shooting was justified.

An attorney for the state Division of Civil Rights met with Curley and minority leaders to thwart a repeat of Tuesday’s early morning violence and looting. But tensions still seethed on the streets of Vineland.

“A white cop shot a black guy. It wasn’t fair,” said James Santalia, 14, as merchants along the city’s main street cleaned up display windows broken in the violence.