riaclu – RI Future

October 13, 2015October 14, 2015

Activists rally outside Dunkin Donuts in support of #BlackLivesMatter

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Activists and supporters gathered outside the Dunkin Donuts on Atwells Avenue where an employee wrote #BlackLivesMatter on a police officer’s coffee cup. They marched in support of the employee, a 17 year old woman of color, and against the over reaction of the Providence police union. Police officers looked on as the peaceful rally progressed.

After the march, there was a short program of speakers. Some speakers spoke of the importance of acknowledging the date, October 12, as Indigenous People’s Day, so as to ensure that one cause not overshadow another. Other speakers spoke of the history of America’s brutality against people of color and called for the abolition of police and prisons.

The rally was organized by the STEP-UP Coalition of Rhode Islanders for the Providence Community Safety Act Ordinance, which released the following statement in response to the incident:

“Across the country, communities are grappling with the reality of violent and discriminatory policing practices. From Ferguson, MO to the jail in Walter County, Texas where Sandra Bland was found dead, to Providence, where youth of color are routinely profiled and harassed, it is clear that something needs to change. The Rhode Island American Civil Liberties Union released reports this year revealing that Rhode Island has even greater racial disparities in police arrests than in Ferguson. Those most directly affected by police brutality and profiling are society’s most vulnerable: people of color in poor neighborhoods with little access to stable employment and housing.

“In the face of this crisis, communities have been coming together to address a national and local state of emergency. Police brutality and state violence have lasting effects that ripple through communities and generations, effects borne in large part by Black communities and other communities of color. #BlackLivesMatter is a direct and courageous movement in response to incredibly high rates of Black people being killed by police. For some, it is easier to ignore these wide disparities; for others, it is an inescapable, daily reality.

“When a Dunkin Donuts employee wrote #BlackLivesMatter on a police officer’s coffee cup, she was expressing solidarity with a national, grassroots movement working for the validity of Black life. This affirmation is necessary because of the social, political, and economic disenfranchisement that continues to deprive Black lives of basic human rights and dignity. This affirmation is necessary because a Black person in killed by a police officer of vigilante every 28 hours.

“The Fraternal Order of the Police (FOP) has mischaracterized the #BlackLivesMatter movement as a threat to officers’ safety. In fact, the rate of violence against police officers has actually decreased since the #BlackLivesMatter movement gained national visibility. Rates of police homicide have decreased from 2014 to 2015. Meanwhile, people of color continue to be profiled, brutalized, and killed by police. The current imbalance of power between the Police Union and the people directly affected by police brutality is immense.

“Writing #BlackLivesMatter on a coffee cup is fundamentally an act of free expression. This was an act of peaceful protest. However, the FOP’s stated: “We bring this incident to the attention of other law enforcement officers across this city, state, and country, to remind them to stay vigilant in your efforts to protect and serve.” In other words, the FOP is using this act to justify increased vigilance, which plays out as profiling of people of color.

“Therefore, organizations and individuals that support the Community Safety Act, a Providence city Ordinance, express disagreement with the statement released by the FOP. We feel that the Providence Police took a simple message of racial justice and equality as a personal attack and justification for even harsher policing, rather than an opportunity for reflection on the current realities of state violence. We need police to stop addressing acts of peaceful protest and dialogue as “unacceptable and discouraging” and start giving that label to acts of racial profiling and police brutality.”

September 14, 2015

RI ACLU urges PVD to reject exclusionary zoning

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The ACLU has written the City Council of Providence and Mayor Jorge Elorza calling for the rejection of Jo-Ann Ryan’s exclusionary zoning provision.

The zoning, as proposed, would limit students to three-to-a-house occupancy in Zones 1 and 1A of Providence’s zoning code. Affecting areas with large single-family homes, many of the buildings in question can house far more than three people. Exclusionary zoning has major downsides for equity, and is also a big problem for transit, biking, and other non-single-occupancy-driving modes of transportation.

The proposal passed its first test last week when City Council voted 10-3 for the provision. Zoning provisions must pass twice, and either have veto proof majorities or gain the support of the mayor, to become law. Knocking just one vote off the victory margin would allow a mayoral veto, though the prospects of such a veto are unclear.

Read: Ten PVD City Councilors voted for exclusionary zoning

As of this weekend, a tweeted email reply from Elorza representative Evan England suggested that the Mayor Elorza’s administration was leaning towards support of the provision, though the language was vague enough to leave the administration open to changing its position (Hat-tip, Patrick Anderson, Projo).

The ACLU joins critics of the zoning provision, which have included the three “no” voters on City Council, Transport Providence, Greater City Providence, and Eco Rhode Island News.

In the letter to the Council, ACLU of Rhode Island executive director Steven Brown stated that, “The ordinance’s undue stigmatization of Providence’s students is contrary to the City’s reputation as a robust host to the local colleges and universities. The focus on this one criterion is unfair and extremely unlikely to help resolve any of the legitimate concerns prompting calls for action in the first place.”

The letter cites rejection by Rhode Island courts of similar laws, citing a 1994 Narragansett zoning provision that attempted to keep non-related persons from cohabitating (This answers a question I had had–a reader pointed out that Providence indeed also has such a law, preventing more than three unrelated persons from living together, and wondering whether the zoning law was ever enforced. It must be left over from before such provisions were struck down in the courts). Quoting the judge who rejected the provision, the ACLU letter shows how arbitrary many zoning provisions truly are:

“It is a strange—and unconstitutional—ordinance indeed that would permit the Hatfields and the McCoys to live in a residential zone while barring four scholars from the University of Rhode Island from sharing an apartment on the same street.”

The City Council is scheduled to vote on second passage of this ordinance at its meeting this Thursday, September 17.

A full copy of the RI ACLU’s letter is here.

If you haven’t contacted your city councilperson and the mayor, contacts for both along with voting records are in the original RI Future profile on this issue, here.

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August 5, 2015

ACLU wants broader investigation in Cranston Police Dept.

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Calling the findings of the Rhode Island State Police (RISP) investigation into the Cranston Police Department likely the “tip of an iceberg,” the ACLU of Rhode Island urged the Cranston City Council to call for further investigations into police practices and possible abuses of power against individuals outside the department.

In a letter sent to city councilors Tuesday, ACLU of Rhode Island executive director Steven Brown noted that while the RISP report was thorough, it focused on a handful of discrete, and largely internal, matters. Further investigation is warranted, the letter argued, because “the public deserves to know whether the improper actions so thoroughly documented in this report were, somewhat incredibly, the only such abuses to take place, or whether there were other unknown victims of these violations of the public trust.”

According to the RISP report, former police chief Marco Palombo not only hired private investigators to conduct surveillance of two police officers, but also briefly spied on a contract civilian computer technician. That spying also entailed police improperly accessing a DMV database to obtain information about the technician. The ACLU letter notes that “if police misused their access to state databases for one political purpose, the reasonable question naturally arises whether this was the only time such databases were misused.” As for surveillance of civilians in addition to the technician, another city employee alleged she too had been the subject of police surveillance. Though the RISP report was unable to substantiate her suspicions, Brown noted that under the circumstances, her concerns “cannot be dismissed out of hand either.”

The ACLU’s letter also pointed to RISP findings that police officials “improperly sought” search warrants for phone records of two targeted employees, and that the affidavits “appeared to be misleading to the Court.” At about the same time, Brown noted, a Rhode Island judge, ruling in a completely unrelated criminal case, sharply criticized Cranston police for, among other things, submitting warrant affidavits that contained “false statements that were deliberate or made in reckless disregard for the truth.” Many of the “dubious practices” cited by the Court, states the letter, “seem eerily similar to some contained in the State Police report.”

These examples lend credence to the possibility that the documented “questionable activities used against fellow officers may have seeped into police activities against non-officers.” As a result, the ACLU letter called it “essential that further investigations be conducted to see if any of these troubling, and potentially unlawful, practices were utilized against others in instances unrelated to Ticketgate and the internal power struggles examined by the report.

The ACLU noted, as the State Police did, that the vast majority of police officers in the Cranston Police Department should not be judged by the bad actions of a few. At the same time, the RISP findings “may represent part of a broader pattern of police misconduct that cannot and should not be ignored lest it unintentionally promote a culture of indifference to basic civil rights that may continue to sprout in other contexts.”

As a result, Brown urged the City Council to “demand answers as to whether the police department, with or without the knowledge of the Mayor, may have engaged in other questionable activities against city residents since 2009, whether it was through improper surveillance, misuse of state databases, or other questionable undertakings such as those that have now been documented.”

This piece is based on a RI ACLU press release.

February 1, 2013February 1, 2013

‘Loving Story’ Marriage Equality Movie on Monday

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As the struggle for marriage equality in Rhode Island continues, and as the state Coalition Against Racial Profiling prepares for the reintroduction next week of its anti-racial profiling bill, the story of Mildred and Richard Loving is more timely than ever.

You can come watch the movie with the Rhode Island chapter of the ACLU Monday at 6:00 PM, in the RIC  Student Union Ballroom. You can also watch the trailer here:

The Lovings were an interracial couple arrested for miscegenation in 1958 and exiled from Virginia. With the help of the ACLU, they took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1967 – finally — struck down these discriminatory laws across the nation.

Last September, the RI ACLU hosted a packed screening of “The Loving Story,” an award-winning HBO documentary about the case, at the Cable Car. On Monday, to kick off African-American history month, the ACLU and the Unity Center at Rhode Island College are planning to hold another free screening of this film at RIC to which the public is invited.

Tracing the history of the case, the film provides a compelling parallel to the contemporary issue of marriage equality, while also documenting the deep-seated nature of racial discrimination that still permeates our society.

We encourage you to attend, as it can only fuel the sense of urgency behind having 2013 finally be the year that the Rhode Island legislature both approves marriage equality for same-sex couples and enacts measures designed to reduce the unconscionable level of racial profiling that still exists on the streets and highways of Rhode Island.