The RI ACLU issued the statement on Tuesday.
The ACLU of Rhode Island has said that repeated instances of police failing to activate their body cameras in high profile encounters with the public needs the establishment of a more vigorous audit process, to hold officers responsible for violating the department’s body camera policy.
On Tuesday, the ACLU of Rhode Island called on Providence Commissioner of Public Safety Steven Paré and Police Chief Hugh Clements, Jr. to take stronger steps.
In a letter to the two officials, ACLU of RI executive director Steven Brown called the problem “persistent” and “one that severely undermines the transparency the Department is seeking to promote.” GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST
The Providence Journal
The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island wants the Providence Police Department to more vigorously audit officers to make sure they’re actually turning on their body cameras.
Executive Director Steven Brown cited multiple high-profile instances where officers neglected to turn them on when they were supposed to.
“The body camera policy is regularly flouted, violations are rarely punished, and the transparency these cameras are supposed to provide the public is undermined,” Brown wrote in a letter Friday addressed to Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steven M. Paré and Col. Hugh T. Clements Jr., chief of the Providence police.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, Providence, targets a collection of defendants and accuses Providence police of “excessive force and physical brutality” in their interactions with Jhamal Gonsalves.
The complaint says Gonsalves was riding a moped on Elmwood Avenue in “a safe manner” and “using due care” when Providence police followed him on Oct. 18.
The pursuit of two police cruisers forced Gonsalves to turn onto Bissell Street, says the complaint. The turn, it says, caused him to lose control of his moped, which crossed a sidewalk and hit a wall.
Gonsalves was ejected. At about the same time, says the complaint, Providence police Officer Kyle Endres turned his cruiser “in a negligent and reckless manner” onto the sidewalk, hitting a stop sign and striking Gonsalves.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) A lawsuit filed on behalf of a Rhode Island man who suffered a severe head injury when his moped crashed as he was being closely followed by a police cruiser alleges police.
Providence saw a spike in homicides and shootings in 2020.
The Police Department recorded 18 homicides in the year. The department reported 13 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters to the FBI in 2019 and 10 in 2018, according to FBI data.
The increase in shootings, which include people killed or injured by gunfire, was even starker: 73 victims as of Dec. 29, compared to 35 for all of 2019. That’s just as troubling as the increase in murders, because the difference between a fatal shooting and a nonfatal shooting is often just luck.
The increases came despite a remarkably peaceful start to the year. In the nearly six months between the beginning of October 2019 and late March 2020, there were no homicides, a stretch broken by the shooting death of a man in Roger Williams Park.