News & Commentary

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has filed suit against the City of Providence to challenge a recently enacted city ordinance that prohibits more than three “college students” from living together in certain areas of the city. The ACLU of RI argues that the ordinance is discriminatory and ineffective at its stated purpose of improving neighborhoods, and will likely have the most impact on lower-income students. 

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, the NAACP Providence Branch, the George Wiley Center, the American Friends Service Committee – South East New England, and Providence Student Union today filed an open records request with the Rhode Island State Police requesting the full report of its investigation, conducted in conjunction with the Pawtucket Police Department, into the actions of a school resource officer who was recorded body-slamming a 14-year-old student at Pawtucket’s Tolman High School on October 14 (VIDEO). The groups are also seeking the evidence gathered in the investigation, as well as documents related to any review of the pepper-spraying by Pawtucket Police of students protesting on the day following the incident.

Just days before suing the Tiverton Police Department for unlawfully arresting an 8-year-old student without cause last week, the ACLU of Rhode Island sharply criticized the Barrington Police Department for “an unconscionable use of law enforcement authority” in bringing criminal charges against children as young as 12 years old for violations of state “social media” laws. These recent incidents, the ACLU said, show an increasing trend towards punishing rather than teaching Rhode Island’s youth.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today filed a federal lawsuit against Tiverton police and school officials over an incident in which an 8-year-old girl was removed from a school bus, had her belongings searched, was taken alone to the police station without her parents’ knowledge, and then held and questioned at the police station for several hours before being released. The seizure, detention and interrogation of the young child were based solely on unsubstantiated claims from another child that the girl was carrying “chemicals” in her backpack, and occurred even after the police found nothing in the backpack.

Responding to the release of PARCC test results on Tuesday, a dozen organizations today called on the state Department of Education to immediately reverse its policies that allow school districts to use PARCC scores in a punitive manner against students as early as next year. The organizations called the reversal “a necessary step to promote a meaningful discussion of alternative graduation standards in the months ahead.”  The groups’ statement follows below:

Despite growing consensus that out-of-school suspensions should only be used as a discipline of last resort, Rhode Island school districts continued to overuse suspensions during the 2014-2015 school year, a report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has found. The report, Oversuspended and Underserved, a follow-up to previous ACLU reports on the use of suspensions in Rhode Island public schools, found that schools doled out 12,682 suspensions in the last school year, often for minor misconduct. As in previous years, students with disabilities and students of color served a disproportionate amount of these suspensions.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has called on all school districts that currently have school resource officers (SROs) to re-evaluate their use in the schools and to revise the agreements they have with police departments that set out their job responsibilities. The call was prompted by incidents at Pawtucket’s Tolman High School last week (VIDEO), which reinforced many of the serious concerns the ACLU has long held regarding the routine presence of police officers in schools.

The American Civil Liberties of Rhode Island has raised serious concerns with a Johnston town ordinance passed last week that could impose “unwarranted, and potentially unlawful, hardship and penalties on individuals who have not engaged in fraudulent activity.” The ordinance, aimed at preventing non-residents from attending Johnston Public Schools, requires every family to submit an affidavit affirming residence their residency in the town. If they do not, the school may refuse to enroll or re-enroll a student.

The ACLU of Rhode Island released the following statement today in response to reports of police actions yesterday at William E. Tolman Senior High School (VIDEO) and during the resulting protests this morning in Pawtucket: