News & Commentary

Calling the decision “deeply disappointing,” the ACLU announced that U.S. District Court Judge Mary Lisi had today denied the organization’s request to submit a friend of the court brief to address the issue of imposing sanctions on the three attorneys in the Cornel Young, Jr. civil rights case. They are facing sanctions for allegedly misrepresenting the judge’s position in court papers.

ACLU of Rhode Island executive director Steven Brown issued the following statement today in response to City of Providence’s release of an “action plan” to address racial profiling:

The ACLU of Rhode Island is seeking to have the Providence Police Department held in contempt of court for its continued failure to comply with the state’s racial profiling law and with court orders that had previously found the Police Department in contempt for non-compliance with that law. Even as the City continues its appeal of that initial contempt finding, the ACLU has today asked the R.I. Supreme Court to return the case to Superior Court for a further contempt hearing.

Relying on recently-released statistics showing that Providence Police Department’s compliance with the Traffic Stops Statistics Act in May, 2003 was the lowest than at any time since the City was held in contempt of court last October for violating that Act, the ACLU has called on the City to continue to collect traffic stops data on a voluntary basis for the indefinite future. Only in this way, the ACLU said in a three-page letter to Mayor David Cicilline, can the City seek to stem the problem of racial profiling in the City, which a top police official has acknowledged is occurring. Pursuant to a court order issued last year in response to the ACLU’s lawsuit challenging the City’s non-compliance with the Act, traffic stops data collection continued through July, but has since ceased.

The ACLU of Rhode Island has today intervened in the pending litigation between the state of Rhode Island and the Narragansett Indians over the highly publicized state police raid of the Indians’ smoke shop last month. The ACLU affiliate, joined by its National office, has filed a “friend of the court” brief in U.S. District Court in support of the Tribe’s legal arguments. The brief was prepared by National ACLU staff attorney Stephen Pevar who, as the author of The Rights of Indians and Tribes, has literally written the book on the subject.

The ACLU of Rhode Island and over 20 civil rights and community organizations joined today in the release of a report sharply critical of Governor Donald Carcieri’s civil rights record in his first six months in office. The 16-page report, “Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs in the Governor’s Office,” focuses on five major issues the Governor has dealt with during his term. The report calls his response to them “cause for considerable alarm,” and says they demonstrate “a pattern of ignoring the people with something to say about discrimination when an issue directly affecting them” arises. The report, prepared by the ACLU and two civil rights organizations, concludes with a series of twenty recommendations for the Governor to implement to address the concerns outlined in the report.

The ACLU of Rhode Island, joined by representatives from three civil rights groups -- the R.I. Civil Rights Roundtable, R.I. Affirmative Action Professionals and the Providence Human Relations Commission -- have called on Governor Donald Carcieri to publicly respond to “troubling issues” raised by the State Police internal report of the July 14th Narragansett Indian smoke shop raid, including information that the state police clearly knew that a confrontation was likely to occur if an attempt to execute a search warrant was made.

In a brief filed this week, the ACLU of Rhode Island has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Court of Appeals to allow its “racial profiling” lawsuit to proceed against the Town of Westerly on behalf of a 50-year old African-American man, Ashaway resident Bernard Flowers, who was stopped in his car and detained at gunpoint by town police. The appeal, filed by ACLU volunteer attorney Thomas G. Briody, claims that the district court erred when it ruled that the police had sufficient grounds to warrant a “felony car stop” of Mr. Flowers.

Representatives of the Providence Human Relations Commission, the Urban League of R.I., the R.I. Civil Rights Roundtable and the ACLU of Rhode Island issued the following statement in response to yesterday’s State Police raid of the Narragansett Indian smoke shop: