Police Department
For the items examined in this study, the school departments and city and town clerks
came quite close to full compliance with statutory requirements. There is room for
improvement, but compliance is the prevailing practice. This is not the case with the
police. Compliance is the exception, not the rule. The police complied with only 35
percent of the requests included in the compliance rating. This percentage would be under
25 percent if the request for police brutality reports were included.
This widespread failure to implement the law is not surprising given the political
history of the statute. The police opposed the original Open Records Act in 1979. Many
departments have resisted implementation ever since. (See generally, Mike Stanton,
“Access to Arrest Records Limited,” Providence Journal-Bulletin, August 5,
1994). After repeated complaints from the American Civil Liberties Union, Attorney General
Pine sent a letter to all Rhode Island police departments three years ago reminding them
that the minimum they must allow the public to inspect upon request is “records
reflecting the initial arrest of an adult, including the name, address and age of the
adult arrested, the place of arrest, the name of the arresting officer and the charge
brought against the arrestee” (Bruce Landis, “Police Maintain Veil of Secrecy,
Despite Open Records,” Providence Journal-Bulletin, March 30, 1997: A-12).
These findings are also consistent with a survey of access to police records conducted
in 1996-97 by Professor Karen Bordeleau, a former managing editor of the Woonsocket Call
who currently teaches journalism at the University of Rhode Island. Professor Bordeleau
assigned students to write stories using police records across the state. Only a few
departments complied with the law, “everybody else ran into some difficulty, ”
she said. “I would say that 75 percent of the students had difficulty, and half some
serious difficulties.” (Landis, 1997).
While the police were unlikely to provide access to the documents requested, they were
more than twice as likely than the city clerks or school department clerks to ask for
identification or for a reason for the request . Police officers asked the researchers for
identification in all but three towns, Warwick, New Shoreham and Jamestown. In contrast,
27 city and town clerks never asked for identification. Only in Newport and Burrillville
did the city/town clerk ask for identification all of the time. Twenty-two police
departments asked for identification all of the time.
The police were also far less courteous than either the city/town clerks or the school
departments. Six police departments received a rating of very discourteous; not a single
city/town clerk and only one school depart-ment (Pawtucket) was rated so poorly. In some
police departments “inquisitiveness” bordered on intimidation and harassment
(see, e.g., the narratives for Burrillville, Hopkinton, and Smithfield).Only the Central
Falls, New Shoreham and Tiverton police departments received an overall rating of very
courteous. In contrast, the city and town clerks received this rating in 27
municipalities.
Despite these trends of a high degree of inquisitiveness and a low degree of legal
compliance a handful of departments stand out to the contrary. Seven departments fulfilled
both of the requests used to calculate overall compliance: Cumberland, East Providence,
Middletown, North Kingstown, New Shoreham, South Kingstown and West Greenwich. At the same
time, 27 departments provided us no documents whatsoever. Only Central Falls, New Shoreham
and Tiverton’s police departments received an overall rating of very courteous.
Sidebox: Police Brutality Reports
The third item requested from police departments was the most controversial -- recent
police brutality reports — but the request was crafted in order to fit the
established case law in Rhode Island. The research protocol specifically indicated that
redacted copies of those with names blacked out would be acceptable. The first Rhode
Island Supreme Court case to interpret the Access to Public Records Act of 1979
specifically held that these documents are not exempt from disclosure under the act The
Rake v. Gordetsky, 425 A. 2d 1144 (1982). A recent Superior Court decision in Providence
is even more expansive, holding that “the plaintiff is entitled to all the [police
brutality complaints] it sought, without redaction of any names ” (Direct Action for
Rights and Equality v. Gannon [C.A. No. 95-2474], slip opinion at 16). That decision is on
appeal, however, and its enforcement has been stayed pending appeal.
It was expected that the request for police brutality reports would be met with
resistance. Given The Rake decision, however, this seemed an ideal test of whether the law
serves its purpose: to insure the right to access to documents that officials might
otherwise be inclined to conceal.
Not a single police depart-ment in Rhode Island complied with this request. Five
departments responded that there were no complaints on file. It is difficult to know what
to make of that response. Until recently, the Westerly Police Department apparently told
potential complainants that it “did not accept” such complaints. The Department
was eventually instructed to develop such a procedure. In response to the request in this
study, the officer in Westerly told the researcher that she “wasn’t supposed to
release them.” Making the claim more plausible, however, the five police departments
that made this claim are all quite small: Foster, East Greenwich , Little Compton,
Jamestown, and Glocester. This item was excluded f rom the overall compliance rating
because cases like these would have to be excluded, destroying the uniformity of the audit
and hence the comparability of the overall ratings.
In the remaining jurisdictions, some researchers encountered considerable runaround
that could be interpreted as a denial, others were treated so badly after asking for
arrest reports that they never had the opportunity to ask for brutality reports. But at
least a dozen departments flatly denied the request — in direct contradiction to the
holding in The Rake. Some departments indicated that the request was denied on policy g
rounds, that such reports “are not public records” (see e.g. the narratives for
Barrington, Burrillville, Cranston, and Narragansett). Since the request was carefully
tailored to meet the holding in The Rake case, the policy of these departments clearly
contradicts Rhode Island law. (See Appendix B.)
