​Responding to an Access to Public Records Act (APRA) complaint that the ACLU of Rhode Island filed last month, the Woonsocket Police Department has released copies of its final investigations of internally-generated complaints of police misconduct that it had previously declared confidential. Last month, the ACLU had filed a formal complaint with the Attorney General when the department refused to provide the records to Dimitri Lyssikatos, a member of the Rhode Island Accountability Project. As a result of the City’s change of position, ACLU of RI cooperating attorney James Cullen is withdrawing the pending complaint.

Dimitri Lyssikatos Appeared On The Coalition! Click Link For Podcast!
 
In two major Access to Public Records Act (APRA) lawsuits filed in past years by the ACLU, the R.I. Supreme Court has ruled that the public is entitled to obtain final reports of investigations of police misconduct. Both cases happened to involve requests for reports involving citizen-generated complaints of misconduct, and a 2017 APRA advisory opinion by the Attorney General’s office, Piskunov v. Town of Narragansett, seized upon that fact to hold that the Narragansett Police Department could withhold their final reports of misconduct investigations if they were initiated internally.  Until its reversal, Woonsocket had been one of only three police departments in the state the ACLU was aware of that refused to hand over these reports, relying on the Piskunov opinion.
 
The ACLU is presently in court suing the Pawtucket Police Department, the only other known department besides Narragansett that relies on Piskunov to keep these records of alleged misconduct secret. The complaint that the ACLU filed last month against Woonsocket had asked the Attorney General to similarly reverse his office’s 2017 decision.
 
In its now-moot complaint to the AG, the ACLU had argued:
 
“The Piskunov opinion has cast a pall over police department accountability and transparency and is being used to hinder the public’s right to know in significant ways. We request that your office take this opportunity to reconsider and reverse that pronouncement, and conclude that the text and intent of the APRA . . . compel the conclusion that internally-generated reports regarding alleged police misconduct, no less than citizen-generated reports, are public records.”
 
ACLU cooperating attorney Cullen said today: “I am glad that Woonsocket accepted our arguments and voluntarily produced the requested internal affairs reports.  Access to public records is essential to the proper functioning of democratic government.  I can think of no better example of public records that should be made public than police internal affairs reports.  All such reports should be made public regardless of their origin.”
 
Lyssikatos added: “Woonsocket's response to my public records request was the most egregious violation of the Access to Public Records request that I have seen to date; they neglected to list a lawful reason for their denial or issue me an avenue of appeal. Although the city has now released both internal and citizen generated reports to avoid legal action, I believe that had this request been initiated by anyone unfamiliar with the public records law, the City of Woonsocket would have been successful in its violation of the law.”
 
ACLU of RI executive director Steven Brown said: “With the resolution of this complaint against Woonsocket, we will refocus our efforts against the Pawtucket Police Department’s unseemly secrecy. Anybody interested in government transparency should be appalled at that agency’s continued refusal to shed light on allegations of police misconduct in their department.”
 
Copies of the ACLU’s filings in both the Woonsocket and Pawtucket complaints can be found here.


 
 
 

Citing a “persistently disproportionate use of disciplinary action and suspensions against students of color,” the ACLU of Rhode Island has called upon Providence school officials to take immediate action to address this problem before the school session starts next month – a problem that former school superintendent Christopher Maher attributed to “racism” before he stepped down from his post earlier this year.
 
In a letter sent this week to Acting Superintendent Frances Gallo and the members of the Providence School Board, the ACLU pointed to its review of the disciplinary data from the 2017-2018 school year, the latest that is available, to document severe racial disparities in out-of-school suspensions, especially  “for relatively minor and often subjective types of ‘misconduct,’ such as insubordination and disrespect.”
 
Among the ACLU’s findings cited in the letter from the recent data:

• The  range of students most affected by this disparity are Black students in Kindergarten through 5th grade, “grades at which any suspensions at all seem suspect and counter-productive.”
• Percentage-wise, Black students in those grades were three times as likely to be suspended as their white classmates.
• A total of 201 suspensions of students in those early grades was reported, including 46 suspensions for Kindergarteners and first graders, and the vast majority of suspensions of these vulnerable children were for offenses such as “disorderly conduct” or “use of obscene language.” Suspensions like these are taking place despite passage of a 2016 law designed to limit their use.
• Across all age groups, not only were Black students suspended more often, but the average duration of both their suspensions and those of Latinx students was 21 percent longer than the average duration of a suspension meted out to a white student.
• These disparities have remained incorrigibly steady over time. During the 2014-2015 school year, the percentage of suspensions issued to Black students in the Providence public school district was 25.7 percent; during 2017-2018 school year, that percentage was 24 percent. Across these time periods, the percentage of Black students in the student body has consistently stayed around 16 percent.
• Disturbing disparities also exist for students with disabilities. While students with IEPs composed 15 percent of the school population, they made up 28 percent of all suspensions.

 
The ACLU’s letter asked school officials to take four immediate steps to combat these disparities and the overuse of suspensions:

• Suspension notices should specifically reference the standards in the 2016 law, which limits use of this discipline to seriously disruptive behavior, to confirm that the suspension is justified under that law.
• The Administration should bar certain vague and open-ended infractions from serving as the grounds for an out-of-school suspension.
• Elementary students should never be given out-of-school suspensions for any misconduct in the absence of evidence that it creates a clear and present danger to the health or safety of students or staff.
• Although state law requires school districts to provide reports to RIDE on corrective actions they are taking to address suspension disparities on the basis of race and disability, Providence has never submitted such a report. One should be prepared and submitted immediately.

 
A copy of the ACLU’s letter is available here.
​

In an important decision enforcing a law aimed at reducing harm caused by out-of-school suspensions, an appeals committee of the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education (CESE) has up held an R.I. Department of Education (RIDE) hearing officer’s decision that the Barrington School District improperly issued an out-of-school suspension to a middle school student. The ACLU of  RI represented the student in the appeal after the district contested the RIDE hearing officer’s decision that there was no evidence that the student’s conversation with others – prompted by a recent school shooting – was “disruptive,” a requirement for out-of-school suspension.

​In an effort to address the widespread overuse of suspensions by schools, a law enacted by the RI General Assembly in 2016 bars of out-of-school suspensions for non-disruptive misbehavior.  In this decade, the ACLU of Rhode Island has issued a series of reports analyzing school suspension data, and found that among the most common grounds for suspending children from school are such non-threatening and subjective infractions as “disorderly conduct” or “disrespect.”  This led to passage of the 2016 law, but despite its enactment, data continues to show high rates of out-of-school suspensions for minor infractions.  The Barrington middle school student's suspension in this case is one example.
The incident at issue arose when the student, designated as “E. Doe,” and six others were discussing the Parkland, Florida school shooting. The discussion turned into a brief conversation about how they would defend themselves against a school shooter, and then what they would do if they were a school shooter. A student who overheard some of the conversation reported it to their parents, who then contacted the police department that some boys – though not Doe – had been talking “about bombs and shooting up the school.”  After other students mentioned Doe’s participation in the conversation for the first time, police interviewed him on two separate occasions without notifying his parents that he was being interrogated alone.

In overturning the suspension in January, the RIDE hearing officer criticized the school for not notifying the parents before Doe was interrogated by police at school. The hearing officer also concluded that
Both the principal and assistant principal testified that E. Doe was a good student with no disciplinary record. … In addition, before E. Doe was questioned by the school authorities, the Barrington Police had concluded that he posed no credible threat to school safety. Indeed, the BMS Principal reached the same conclusion and thus notified parents, teachers and administrators by email before conducting his own investigation, that “it was quickly determined that there was no threat to our learning community or environment.”

The facts make clear that E. Doe was neither a “disruptive student” … nor posed a “demonstrable threat to students, teachers, or administrators” under [state law] and as a result, the imposition of an out-of-school suspension was in violation of an express statutory prohibition.

The school district appealed the decision, and the ACLU’s brief to the CESE appeals committee, filed by ACLU cooperating attorney Aubrey Lombardo in support of the hearing officer’s ruling, noted:
The School Department could not produce a single piece of evidence during the lengthy disciplinary appeal hearing of [Doe], showing that he had made a threatening or intimidating statement. Likewise, they could not produce a single piece of evidence that anything he said, made anyone who overheard feel threatened or intimidated.

After hearing arguments from both sides on July 16th, the CESE appeals committee voted to uphold the hearing officer’s decision against Barrington. A written decision will follow.
Students who are suspended from school are up to ten times as likely as other students to drop out of school or repeat a grade. Ironically, suspensions are associated with higher rates of misbehavior after suspension, and lower academic achievement. Perhaps most troubling, suspended students are significantly more likely to become involved with the juvenile justice system.

ACLU attorney Lombardo said today: “School districts work best when they are able to achieve the delicate balance of keeping students safe, while refraining from the overuse of out-of-school student suspensions, which have negative long-term consequences for both students and school districts.  In this case, Barrington suspended a student who had not made a single threatening remark and then deprived him of the due process he is entitled to under the law.  While I support a District’s right to enforce policies designed to keep schools safe, it is important that they don’t become so focused on disciplinary measures that they overlook ‘teachable moments’ for students, which would have been far more effective in a case such as this, where no actual or implied threat was made.”

ACLU of RI executive director Steven Brown added: “Barrington’s decision to appeal the hearing officer’s ruling was a waste of taxpayer money and a direct attack on the legislature’s attempt to reduce the harmful effect of suspensions on students. School officials may have been banking on the fact that most families wouldn’t have the stamina and determination to challenge an unlawful school suspension like this,  so we applaud this family for doing so. Out-of-school suspensions are all too often the punishment of first, rather than last, resort, and that has to stop.”
Click here for a copy of the ACLU’s brief.
Click here for the RIDE hearing officer’s January decision.