Latest news with #AccesstoPublicRecordsAct
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
New era of government transparency? Indiana's public access counselor tackles backlog
When Hoosiers have questions about whether their public officials are following the state's public records and open meeting laws, they can turn to Indiana's public access counselor to investigate the situation on their behalf. However, that nonpartisan state agency has been engulfed in a period of transition following a state law limiting its scope. That change caused staff and institutional knowledge to drain out of the office, and Hoosiers' questions were largely left unanswered in the meantime. Now, with Gov. Mike Braun's selection of Jennifer Ruby as Indiana's next public access counselor, the office is poised to regain stability a year after the law took effect and following 16 months of understaffing. Ruby told IndyStar she is making progress rebuilding her staff, updating guidance and responding to the backlog of constituent questions. "Anytime you have a goal that's really hard and a long way away, you've just got to try to keep focusing on what your end goal is," she said. "And my end goal is to get this office in better shape." Braun has repeatedly said government transparency and constituent services will be two important pillars of his administration — and are both why the public access counselor was created. 'Transparency is essential and the PAC plays a big role in making sure our state government is providing that transparency," the governor's spokesperson, Griffin Reid, told IndyStar in a statement. Those who rely on the office will be watching closely to see how long it takes the office to get caught up and how constrained Ruby is by the changes to the law. The public access counselor is responsible for both educating officials about the public's right to information and answering Hoosiers' questions about the state's public access law. "Government, especially at the local level, can be confusing to folks who are new to engaging with their local officials," said Luke Britt, the previous public access counselor. "Access and engagement go hand in hand, and so just being there as a resource was my number one priority." Members of the public, journalists and government employees can ask Ruby's office questions about how to interpret the state's Access to Public Records Act and the Open Door Law, also known as sunshine laws. People can also submit complaints to the public access counselor if they feel there is a potential that those laws were violated. The office will then engage in an investigatory process that culminates in an advisory opinion interpreting how the state's laws apply to specific situations. All advisory opinions are published on the public access counselor's website. The state legislature curtailed the public access counselor's powers in 2023, so the office could only consider two sources — Indiana's public access law "as plainly written" and court opinions — when deciding on public complaints. Lawmakers disagreed with how Britt, the previous counselor, was interpreting the law. Amendment author Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, said at the time that Britt had "some very liberal interpretations of the statute." They especially drew issue with Britt's opinion that Hamilton East Public Library board members violated the Open Door Law amidst a high-profile reshuffling in response to a controversial book relocation policy. "Once that legislation took place ... if it was a complaint about a subjective area of the law or an ambiguity, all I could do was make a rote recitation of the law, and I don't think that's necessarily helpful," Britt said. Ruby said she is navigating what the office will look like under the new law and how to weigh the need for transparency with the letter of the law. "There is going to be a balance because we're supposed to broadly interpret so that there's openness and transparency," Ruby said. "There's going to be some learning here as far as what works and what doesn't." Another question is whether the thousands of prior opinions, which date back to when the office was created in 1999, can be used as precedent. If a court used a counselor's opinion to make a ruling, she said, that advisory opinion has legal standing. Where there isn't case law, she said, she'll have to evaluate whether previous opinions still stand and if she can come to the same conclusion using the plain text or other court cases. "There's a lot of times that you're building something or you're reviewing something legally and you can come at it from a different direction, you can still come to the same conclusion," she said. On whether her office will become ensnared in political tensions as it had in the past, Ruby said she'll rely on her background as a mediator to work through and discuss her decisions. Everything must stem back to something in Indiana code or case law, which she said provides evidence that the office is not engaging in partisan politics. "The law will potentially tick off one side or the other," she said. "But if I'm following the law, they're going to understand exactly why I made the decision that I made." Zachary Baiel, president of the Indiana Coalition for Open Government, is among Hoosiers who have expressed frustrations about the time it takes to hear back from the office. Still, Baiel is giving the Braun administration the benefit of the doubt since his term is still young and it took the time to find a person suited for the job. Government moves slowly, he said, which means staffing vacancies take longer to fill, and thus, longer to remedy issues. For people who have sent questions or complaints to her office and haven't heard back, Ruby said her office is working chronologically unless there is an emerging legal case that would need to jump the queue. "We will get to you when we can," she said. The office was understaffed for about 16 months and without an official leader since February. Ruby was working through requests alone until a paralegal joined her staff last week. The hardest part so far, she said, is dealing with the office's negative perception that's developed as people wait for answers. "The thing I like the least is letting people down," she said. "I know this office needs to be more actively engaged with the public, and it's hard to do that when there's only one of you." She said she is working to close out complaints filed in December, January and February. Notices will begin to go out for complaints filed in March and April. She plans to write her first advisory opinion "very soon." By the end of September, Ruby said, she hopes her office will have made a large dent in the backlog. And by the end of the year, she's optimistic that the office will be up to date. This year has been busier than last. She said there are at least 95 complaints filed so far this year, compared to about 88 that Britt responded to in all of 2024. "I think we're going to have a lot more this year to get through," she said. "We're going to have plenty of work to do." Britt was Indiana's longest-serving public access counselor and gained name recognition for his public education and accessibility. He announced he was stepping down in February after undefined. "If folks have that resource they can go to just for general questions about government or government transparency, that's a good thing," he said. "I always took that counselor word in the title quite literally." Ruby said she has similar motivations. She emphasized it was important to her to return to public service after 20 years running her estate and succession planning practice. She missed knowing she's helping people each day she works, she said. In her 15 years working in state and local government, Ruby often interacted with public access law. She worked in strategic planning, litigation and policy roles at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, New Mexico Environment Department and the city of Indianapolis. She's fulfilled records requests, ensured public meeting rules were followed and interpreted what could be discussed in private executive sessions. "I've dealt with (public access laws) in those ways," she said. "This (job) is just a lot deeper into that." The legislature made the public access counselor's job more difficult by limiting their ability to interpret statutes that are often broad, Baiel said. He is especially curious to see Ruby's first advisory opinion, which he believes will tell more about how she approaches open access laws. "That's the proof of any public access counselor," he said. "They all have different writing styles. They all have different sympathies. ... So what's Jennifer's (first opinion) going to look like, especially in light of the changes at the Indiana code level?" Ruby's goal is to begin conducting regular trainings so members of the public can better understand their rights in plain language. She said education is a critical role of her office and one she intends to more intensely pursue when they make it through the backlog. "We've been so underwater that we're just not there yet," she said. The USA TODAY Network - Indiana's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Have a story to tell? Reach Cate Charron by email at ccharron@ or message her on Signal at @ This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana's new public access counselor tackles backlog
Indianapolis Star
6 days ago
- Politics
- Indianapolis Star
New era of government transparency? Indiana's public access counselor tackles backlog
When Hoosiers have questions about whether their public officials are following the state's public records and open meeting laws, they can turn to Indiana's public access counselor to investigate the situation on their behalf. However, that nonpartisan state agency has been engulfed in a period of transition following a state law limiting its scope. That change caused staff and institutional knowledge to drain out of the office, and Hoosiers' questions were largely left unanswered in the meantime. Now, with Gov. Mike Braun's selection of Jennifer Ruby as Indiana's next public access counselor, the office is poised to regain stability a year after the law took effect and following 16 months of understaffing. Ruby told IndyStar she is making progress rebuilding her staff, updating guidance and responding to the backlog of constituent questions. "Anytime you have a goal that's really hard and a long way away, you've just got to try to keep focusing on what your end goal is," she said. "And my end goal is to get this office in better shape." Braun has repeatedly said government transparency and constituent services will be two important pillars of his administration — and are both why the public access counselor was created. 'Transparency is essential and the PAC plays a big role in making sure our state government is providing that transparency," the governor's spokesperson, Griffin Reid, told IndyStar in a statement. Those who rely on the office will be watching closely to see how long it takes the office to get caught up and how constrained Ruby is by the changes to the law. The public access counselor is responsible for both educating officials about the public's right to information and answering Hoosiers' questions about the state's public access law. "Government, especially at the local level, can be confusing to folks who are new to engaging with their local officials," said Luke Britt, the previous public access counselor. "Access and engagement go hand in hand, and so just being there as a resource was my number one priority." Members of the public, journalists and government employees can ask Ruby's office questions about how to interpret the state's Access to Public Records Act and the Open Door Law, also known as sunshine laws. People can also submit complaints to the public access counselor if they feel there is a potential that those laws were violated. The office will then engage in an investigatory process that culminates in an advisory opinion interpreting how the state's laws apply to specific situations. All advisory opinions are published on the public access counselor's website. The state legislature curtailed the public access counselor's powers in 2023, so the office could only consider two sources — Indiana's public access law "as plainly written" and court opinions — when deciding on public complaints. Lawmakers disagreed with how Britt, the previous counselor, was interpreting the law. Amendment author Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, said at the time that Britt had "some very liberal interpretations of the statute." They especially drew issue with Britt's opinion that Hamilton East Public Library board members violated the Open Door Law amidst a high-profile reshuffling in response to a controversial book relocation policy. "Once that legislation took place ... if it was a complaint about a subjective area of the law or an ambiguity, all I could do was make a rote recitation of the law, and I don't think that's necessarily helpful," Britt said. Ruby said she is navigating what the office will look like under the new law and how to weigh the need for transparency with the letter of the law. "There is going to be a balance because we're supposed to broadly interpret so that there's openness and transparency," Ruby said. "There's going to be some learning here as far as what works and what doesn't." Another question is whether the thousands of prior opinions, which date back to when the office was created in 1999, can be used as precedent. If a court used a counselor's opinion to make a ruling, she said, that advisory opinion has legal standing. Where there isn't case law, she said, she'll have to evaluate whether previous opinions still stand and if she can come to the same conclusion using the plain text or other court cases. "There's a lot of times that you're building something or you're reviewing something legally and you can come at it from a different direction, you can still come to the same conclusion," she said. On whether her office will become ensnared in political tensions as it had in the past, Ruby said she'll rely on her background as a mediator to work through and discuss her decisions. Everything must stem back to something in Indiana code or case law, which she said provides evidence that the office is not engaging in partisan politics. "The law will potentially tick off one side or the other," she said. "But if I'm following the law, they're going to understand exactly why I made the decision that I made." Zachary Baiel, president of the Indiana Coalition for Open Government, is among Hoosiers who have expressed frustrations about the time it takes to hear back from the office. Still, Baiel is giving the Braun administration the benefit of the doubt since his term is still young and it took the time to find a person suited for the job. Government moves slowly, he said, which means staffing vacancies take longer to fill, and thus, longer to remedy issues. For people who have sent questions or complaints to her office and haven't heard back, Ruby said her office is working chronologically unless there is an emerging legal case that would need to jump the queue. "We will get to you when we can," she said. The office was understaffed for about 16 months and without an official leader since February. Ruby was working through requests alone until a paralegal joined her staff last week. The hardest part so far, she said, is dealing with the office's negative perception that's developed as people wait for answers. "The thing I like the least is letting people down," she said. "I know this office needs to be more actively engaged with the public, and it's hard to do that when there's only one of you." She said she is working to close out complaints filed in December, January and February. Notices will begin to go out for complaints filed in March and April. She plans to write her first advisory opinion "very soon." By the end of September, Ruby said, she hopes her office will have made a large dent in the backlog. And by the end of the year, she's optimistic that the office will be up to date. This year has been busier than last. She said there are at least 95 complaints filed so far this year, compared to about 88 that Britt responded to in all of 2024. "I think we're going to have a lot more this year to get through," she said. "We're going to have plenty of work to do." Britt was Indiana's longest-serving public access counselor and gained name recognition for his public education and accessibility. He announced he was stepping down in February after undefined. "If folks have that resource they can go to just for general questions about government or government transparency, that's a good thing," he said. "I always took that counselor word in the title quite literally." Ruby said she has similar motivations. She emphasized it was important to her to return to public service after 20 years running her estate and succession planning practice. She missed knowing she's helping people each day she works, she said. In her 15 years working in state and local government, Ruby often interacted with public access law. She worked in strategic planning, litigation and policy roles at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, New Mexico Environment Department and the city of Indianapolis. She's fulfilled records requests, ensured public meeting rules were followed and interpreted what could be discussed in private executive sessions. "I've dealt with (public access laws) in those ways," she said. "This (job) is just a lot deeper into that." The legislature made the public access counselor's job more difficult by limiting their ability to interpret statutes that are often broad, Baiel said. He is especially curious to see Ruby's first advisory opinion, which he believes will tell more about how she approaches open access laws. "That's the proof of any public access counselor," he said. "They all have different writing styles. They all have different sympathies. ... So what's Jennifer's (first opinion) going to look like, especially in light of the changes at the Indiana code level?" Ruby's goal is to begin conducting regular trainings so members of the public can better understand their rights in plain language. She said education is a critical role of her office and one she intends to more intensely pursue when they make it through the backlog. "We've been so underwater that we're just not there yet," she said. The USA TODAY Network - Indiana's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.
Indianapolis Star
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Indianapolis Star
Phishing scam uses public's right to information to target state and local governments
Hoosiers can request a broad range of information from their local and state governments, such as police reports, contracts, policies and email communications. A recent phishing attack is twisting that right to information into a means to scam state and local government workers. Employees have reported that a recent surge of emails are posing as public records requests and encouraging records to be uploaded to a hyperlink. The Indiana Office of Technology is aware of the emails and has found them to be fraudulent, according to one of its email newsletters. Spokesperson Aliya Wishner said the city of Indianapolis' information services agency is aware of the phishing scam. The city uses a software system to fulfill records requests, not through email. One of the phishing emails obtained by IndyStar was sent from the domain "@recordsretrievalsolutions" and sought five years of information about an agency's purchase orders. Indiana's technology office said employees should be cautious with any emails from that domain and any contacts from Records Retrieval Solutions. The office said the scammers are pretending to be the Florida-based company. In light of the phishing scam, the office recommends that workers question whether a records requests is legitimate. Guidance includes contacting the sender to discuss the request, verifying the entity that's making the request, and searching the email text for red flags like hyperlinks. Under Indiana's Access to Public Records Act, members of the public have the right to request a wide swath of information held by government agencies. Some information may be withheld or redacted for legal or investigation reasons. The USA TODAY Network - Indiana's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Brown University police arrests are not public. ACLU lawsuit is looking to change that.
A gate on the Brown University campus. The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island is suing the university's Department of Public Safety for refusing to give arrest reports to local journalists. (Photo by Janine L. Weisman/Rhode Island Current) A new lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island aims to stop a three-decade practice in which Brown University police officers keep arrest reports hidden from the public. The complaint filed in Providence County Superior Court Monday was prompted by a pair of journalists — one is a former Brown University student journalist who graduated in 2024 and the second writes for arts and entertainment publication Motif Magazine. Each was separately refused reports of unrelated arrests made by Brown University's Department of Public Safety. Brown University contends that the officers work for a private agency, and therefore are not subject to Rhode Island's Access to Public Records Act. The ACLU argues that because Brown's police officers have the same seizure, detention and arrest powers as local and state law enforcement — laid out under a 1995 law — their actions, including arrests, should be subject to the same scrutiny as any other government agency or public body. 'By engaging in one of the most fundamental functions of government — the enforcement of criminal laws and exercising the power to search and seize individuals — BDPS is acting on behalf of and/or in place of a government agency or public body,' the seven-page complaint states. The legal action comes as good government advocates, including the ACLU, rally for more sweeping reform of the state's public records law, which has not been updated since 2012. Among the 48 changes proposed in legislation pending before the Rhode Island General Assembly is a provision clarifying that private university police bestowed arrest powers by the state must be subject to state records laws. Rhode Island School of Design police are the only other private university in Rhode Island given power to arrest under state law, though they are not named in the complaint. Steven Brown, executive director for the ACLU, said the good government group has received half a dozen complaints, mostly from journalists, about Brown University's refusal to hand over arrest records when asked. 'It just seems so clear that a police department, wherever it is located, is operating as a public agency when they detain and arrest individuals,' Brown said in a recent interview. 'It is rather daunting to consider the power that they have as law enforcement, that they claim they can hide.' Brian Clark, a spokesperson for Brown, said the university had not received the lawsuit as of Monday afternoon. 'Should we receive it formally, we will review it in full,' Clark said in an emailed response. Clark also pointed to a January opinion by the Rhode Island Office of the Attorney General affirming that Brown's police department is not subject to state public records law because it is not a government body or public agency. The eight-page opinion by Paul Meosky, special assistant attorney general, aimed to settle disputes between the university and two local journalists — the same two people named as plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit — over access to campus police arrest reports. Meosky concluded that it was 'undisputed' that Brown University's police department was a 'unit of Brown,' and therefore part of a private, nonprofit institution — not subject to state open records laws. 'Nothing in the record suggests that BUPD has open meetings or is listed as a public body on any government website,' Meosky wrote. 'Additionally, the record demonstrates that the BUPD is not authorized to operate beyond the university's campus and its immediate vicinity.' Meosky also noted 'the strong public interest' in campus police records. 'We strongly encourage the General Assembly to carefully review this issue and whether the APRA should be amended to make law enforcement-type records maintained by private campus police departments subject to the APRA,' the opinion states. Timothy Rondeau, a spokesperson for the AG's office, said the opinion 'speaks for itself' when asked for comment about the lawsuit. 'Our Office has been, and will continue, to be vigorously committed to open government,' Rondeau said in an email. 'This was a challenging issue, and we will await the Court's guidance.' Brown said he was disappointed, but not surprised by the AG's opinion, which followed what he called a 'pattern of deferring to local police departments when it comes to open records laws.' And it's incorrect, at least in the eyes of Noble Brigham, a Brown University Class of 2024 graduate and one of the two plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit. Brigham, 23, now lives in Las Vegas, where he works as a courts reporter for the Las Vegas Review Journal. During his time as a student at Brown, he freelanced for the Providence Journal and wrote for the campus newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald. Brigham asked campus police for arrest reports in December 2022 while working on a story about a man charged by Brown Police with trespassing and felony breaking and entering, after he was found sleeping in the basement of a campus dorm. Brown refused to hand over the documents, prompting Brigham to appeal to the AG's office in January 2023. Brigham no longer keeps tabs on the fallout from the arrest of the man, who had a 10-year history of run-ins with campus police, according to Brigham's reporting. But he insists access to campus police arrest reports is important. 'I didn't just file the complaint because I thought Brown was wrong in their interpretation of the records law,' Brigham said in an interview Friday. 'I also thought it was important for people to know what's going on.' Exempting Brown police from making arrests public also hides whether campus law enforcement are following through with charges on arrests — or, potentially, erasing those arrests even from internal records. 'One of the most important purposes of APRA is to make sure police agencies cannot make arrests disappear,' said Michael Bilow, a reporter with Motif Magazine and the other plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit. 'To this day, I have no legal assurance that Brown didn't do that.' Bilow first sought records for Brown University students arrested during a series of pro-Palestine sit-in protests in the wake of the Hamas attack on Gaza. An initial group of 20 students were arrested by campus police for a Nov. 8, 2023 protest, but the charges were dropped. Another 41 students were arrested for trespassing during a Dec. 11, 2023, sit-in protest, according to news reports. State law requires that Brown University police must submit any arrest reports to the Providence Police Department. But when Bilow first requested the arrest documents for the 41 students from Providence police, he was told there were no records. He had also tried to get them from campus police but never heard back. Five months later, Bilow spotted a Providence City Council post on X calling on the city solicitor to drop charges against the 41 Brown students. Bilow re-upped his request to the city, using the social media post as proof that arrests had been made and charges filed. One of the most important purposes of APRA is to make sure police agencies cannot make arrests disappear. To this day, I have no legal assurance that Brown didn't do that.' – Michael Bilow, a reporter with Motif Magazine and one of two plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit against the university Bilow eventually got the information he was asking for from the city of Providence, which admitted its error in previously telling him that there were no records. 'My understanding is that Brown Police did the 'processing' of the arrested individuals, which led to our confusion here,' a city spokesperson told Bilow in the reply, which is included in a story by Bilow on Motif's website. 'This is why Public Safety had no records of the arrest.' Samara Pinto, a spokesperson for Providence Mayor Brett Smiley's office, indicated this is not unusual. 'Brown University Public Safety reports come into the Department's possession when criminal cases involving their arrests are referred for prosecution in district court,' Pinto said in an email Monday. 'In many instances, the copy in the prosecution file may be the only one we receive.' While Bilow now has the names and charges against the 41 students, he doesn't know if anyone else was arrested, but isn't being prosecuted. That leaves him unable to confirm if others may have been charged but then had charges subsequently dropped. 'I have no proof, but I have no assurance either,' Bilow said. 'That in itself is pretty newsworthy.' A former Brown University police officer has begun to speak out about the lengths university officials are willing to go to keep information closeted within the 95-person department. Michael Greco, who worked as a patrol officer for Brown University Department of Public Safety for 18 years before leaving in August, testified in support of public records reform at a State House hearing on May 22. Greco told lawmakers the department's exemption from public records law was purposefully manipulated to hide information. On multiple occasions, he or other campus officers would be sent to handle incidents that should have been handled by Providence police, specifically because that would ensure any reports or arrests could remain private, he said. Greco has filed a workers' compensation claim against the university after leaving due to post-traumatic stress disorder, which he developed after a November 2021 shooting and bombing threat on campus. In an interview, Greco said he and other officers were sent to respond to a report of bomb threats and someone claiming they were going to 'shoot cops.' Greco said he was specifically instructed not to call in the threat on his radio so that Providence police would not hear the information and also respond. An initial report written by Greco on the day of the threat, Nov. 7, 2021, and shared with Rhode Island Current following the threats at Brown — which were ultimately not proven true — details his concerns about campus police being ill-equipped to respond to an active shooter threat. A printout also shared by Greco shows another officer modified the report two days later; the section in which Greco wrote that he was concerned about responding and was shrugged off was deleted. 'They were willing to dangle us in front of a building where a guy said he would shoot police officers in order to keep something from getting on the Providence radios and out into the public,' Greco said. 'If the primary function of Brown's police department is to take what should be public record and make it private, they are not prioritizing the safety of officers.' Clark did not respond to requests for comment on Greco's allegations. Providence police did eventually respond to the bomb and shooting threats on Nov. 7, 2021. However, the city police incident report notes the call was received at 5:21 p.m., three-and-a-half hours after the initial 1:50 p.m. call to Brown University police noted in Greco's report. There were no arrests. Brown University Department of Public Safety is also required to collect and report crime statistics to the U.S. Department of Education under The Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act. The university maintains an electronic log of daily incidents, dating back to 2018, noting the date and time of each incident, its classification — larceny, burglary, extortion, etc — and whether the investigation is open, closed or turned over to Providence police. The single-line entries offer little detail, and without a formal arrest or transfer to Providence police, most of the specific information remains out of public reach. If the primary function of Brown's police department is to take what should be public record and make it private, they are not prioritizing the safety of officers. – Michael Greco, a former Brown University patrol officer who left in August 2024 Greco also alleged police would routinely doctor incident reports to avoid federal reporting requirements — vandalism became 'property damage with malicious intent,' for example. 'I don't think that there's anything more troubling than the notion that an agency that has the power to arrest somebody can keep that information about those arrests secret,' Brown said. 'That should concern anyone who cares about transparency and accountability, when any entity is given such incredible power over information.' The lawsuit asks the court to issue a judgment determining that Brown's campus police department is a public body, subject to compliance with public records laws. It also seeks court intervention to force Brown University to hand over the arrest documents requested by Bilow and Brigham within 10 days. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Boston Globe
02-06-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Brown University police should not be exempt from public records law, ACLU lawsuit claims
Related : Advertisement The lawsuit argues that Brown University's Department of Public Safety wields state-authorized police powers and therefore fits within the state Access to Public Records Act's definition of an 'agency.' Get Rhode Map A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State. Enter Email Sign Up 'The purpose of this action is simple,' ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorney Fausto Anguilla said in a statement. 'Every city and town police department in Rhode Island must provide arrest reports under APRA. Brown's police should not be an exception.' Anguilla, a former state representative, filed the lawsuit in state Superior Court against Brown University's Department of Public Safety on behalf of two journalists, after the department refused to provide them reports of arrests made by Brown officers. In 2022, Noble Brigham, then a Brown Daily Herald reporter, was investigating the story of a man who had been charged multiple times by Brown's Department of Public Safety with trespassing and breaking and entering on the Brown campus. Advertisement Brigham submitted a public records request for the arrest reports, which was initially ignored by Department of Public Safety. When the department did respond, it was to assert that the Access to Public Records Act didn't apply because Brown is a private university. In 2023, Motif Magazine reporter Michael Bilow was reporting on When Bilow filed an public records request seeking the arrest reports, Brown public safety department ignored the request. Bilow and Brigham filed complaints with Attorney General Peter F. Neronha's office. In January, his office issued an opinion, agreeing with Brown that the university was not subject to the state's Access to Public Records Act. The lawsuit Monday notes that the public records law applies to private agencies that are 'acting on behalf of and/or in place of any public agency,' and the suit claims the Brown Department of Public Safety fits that definition. 'By engaging in one of the most fundamental functions of government — the enforcement of criminal laws and exercising the power to search and seize individuals — (the Brown Department of Public Safety) is acting on behalf of and/or in place of a government agency or public body," the suit states. The lawsuit asks the judge to declare that the Brown Department of Public Safety is a public body within the meaning of Access to Public Records Act, and that it must comply with requests for arrest records and other publicly available law enforcement documents. Advertisement Bilow said, 'Experience has proven that preventing police abuses depends on full transparency under the law, and it is a civic responsibility of news reporting to keep the public aware and informed about what is done in their name.' Brigham said, 'Access to police reports is a basic public right. The public should be able to understand why police have arrested someone, and Brown's stance that its nonprofit status exempts them from the state law every municipal Rhode Island police department follows is troubling.' Brown University did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at
