News & Commentary

Nine local organizations have asked police departments across the state to formally adopt policies codifying the public’s right to record, without interference, the actions of police. The request, contained in a letter sent to all municipal police departments and the State Police, was made in the backdrop of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, where police have impeded individuals’ and credentialed journalists’ efforts to document the ongoing protests there.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has urged Warwick City Council to amend an ordinance barring certain city employees from running for office after a worker faced losing his job if he ran for a seat in the United States Senate.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a federal lawsuit to prevent the Smithfield Police Department from continuing to enforce an overly broad state law that makes it a crime to circulate anonymous political literature, including unsigned newspaper editorials. The statute, which carries a potential one-year prison sentence, unconstitutionally bars the distribution of any anonymous political literature that relates to ballot questions or that criticizes a political candidate’s “personal character or political action.”

The ACLU of Rhode Island has sent a letter to Attorney General Peter Kilmartin urging him to close any criminal investigation into a Facebook page satirizing Rep. Scott Guthrie — a page the ACLU says is a clear exercise of free speech.

The ACLU of Rhode Island has filed an open records request today with the Cranston Police Department in an effort to determine whether the decision by a police captain to engage in blitz ticketing of overnight parking violators, after the Cranston City Council voted down a proposed union contract, was done through official channels.

In response to the ongoing controversy in Cranston involving the apparent retaliation taken against two City Council members for their vote in November on a police union contract, the ACLU has written to Mayor Allan Fung, raising concerns about the investigation of the incident that is being conducted.

The City of Providence has agreed to pay $75,000 to settle an ACLU lawsuit involving the violation of the free speech rights of a local resident three years ago when she was barred from peacefully leafleting in front of a building where then-Mayor David Cicilline was speaking.

The Women’s Fund of Rhode Island, RI NOW, and the ACLU of Rhode Island issued the following statement in response to Governor Lincoln Chafee’s decision today not to veto a bill that authorizes public school districts to provide sex-segregated extracurricular activities of any kind:

Ruling in an ACLU lawsuit, U.S. District Judge William Smith has held that Providence police violated the free speech rights of a local resident when she was barred from peacefully leafleting on a public sidewalk in front of a building where then-Mayor David Cicilline was speaking. In a 35-page opinion, the judge left for further proceedings the question of whether the three named police defendants, including former police chief Dean Esserman, could be held individually liable for violating Ms. Reilly’s First Amendment rights, or whether only the City itself was liable.