News & Commentary

By Johanna Kaiser, Communications & Development Associate

By Hillary Davis, Policy Associate

A Late Pay Day. April 14 was Equal Pay Day, the day symbolizing how far into the year a woman must work to earn what a man earned in the previous year. We need to close this gap and protect women from this discrimination that has persisted well into the 21st Century. 

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today blasted an agreement reached between Warwick police and a local Motel 6 to share the motel’s daily guest list of patrons, and to do so without notifying patrons. The ACLU called the agreement an invasion of guests’ privacy that sets a troubling precedent. ACLU of Rhode Island executive director Steven Brown said of the agreement: “When visitors go to a hotel for the night, they expect to be treated like guests, not potential criminals. Yet the blanket agreement between the Warwick police and the motel – sharing the guest list of all of its patrons on a daily basis – is hardly the sort of ‘hospitality’ one anticipates from such an establishment. A family on vacation should not be fearful that police may come knocking on the door in the middle of the night, courtesy of the motel, because Dad has an outstanding parking ticket he never paid. “Although Motel 6’s national policy claims to ‘recognize the importance’ of protecting the privacy of guest information, this agreement makes a mockery of that pretense. It adds insult to injury that the motel does not even plan to make customers aware that it is sharing guest information with the police. Motel officials should feel some obligation to let patrons know that a courtesy police check comes with the mint on the pillow. “There are many ways to deal with illegal activities at the motel without engaging in such a wholesale invasion of patrons’ privacy. In the absence of some suspicion of wrongdoing, a person on vacation should not expect their private information to be shared with the government in this way. We are also deeply concerned about the precedent this agreement sets, for it can only embolden police to press for similar policies from other establishments. “The ACLU urges that this sharing policy be immediately rescinded. At the very least, the motel should fess up to its customers as to exactly what it is doing so they can make an informed choice as to whether this is the hospitality they were looking for. When Motel 6 says in its ads that they’ll ‘leave the light on for you,’ most people probably don’t realize they’re talking about the light of a police siren.”

It is heartening to see a robust discussion on the use of the PARCC test in Rhode Island’s public schools, but the state Department of Education seems to have made up its mind: before the test was even off the ground it was already actively encouraging school districts to use the PARCC to penalize students as early as next year.

In the wake of yet another senseless killing of an unarmed black man by police, the ACLU continued our fight to address some of the issues that have created this unacceptable reality. Here in Rhode Island, we joined the community for discussion about urban policing, and called for a thorough public investigation into a police department’s practices given recent allegations of racism among officers.

In April of 2010, we sued the Division of Motor Vehicles for telling thousands of motorists that their license and registration were to be suspended due to unpaid fines without providing any information about the alleged offense, the penalty, or even the date that the offense supposedly took place.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island is urging the Pawtucket Police Department to conduct an in-depth examination of some of its policies and procedures in light of “disturbing” allegations of racism among its officers described in a recent news article.