R.I. police seen violating profiling law
PROVIDENCE - More than a dozen police departments in Rhode Island are failing to meet a key provision of a state law intended to track possible racial profiling.
Officials at the American Civil Liberties Union say they tracked how many police departments have posted forms for filing complaints accusing officers of misconduct on their websites.
Under the law, any police department with a website must post the form and the procedure the department uses to respond to the complaint.
The ACLU said it found 32 Rhode Island police departments with operating websites, but only 17 of them had posted both the complaint form and their complaint procedures.
"A number of departments are in noncompliance with the clear terms of the statute," Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU, told The Providence Journal.
Brown said the problem with the websites is "one piece of a much bigger picture" of the way police have responded to the three-year-old law, which was intended to end discriminatory enforcement of the traffic laws.
Warwick Police Chief Colonel Stephen McCartney, vice president of the state Police Chiefs' Association, said the chiefs haven't met since the study came out last month.
He said his department's website had wanted complaints to be notarized, something the ACLU objected to, and McCartney said he removed that requirement.
The ACLU found six police departments, Foster, Glocester, Richmond, South Kingstown, Tiverton, and West Warwick ignored the statute by posting neither document on their websites.
Of the departments that have posted the forms and policies, Brown said, only 11 did not require complainants to submit "unnecessary and potentially intrusive information." 