Compromise on LEOBOR reform seems near. Why one state senator thinks it doesn't go far enough.
PROVIDENCE – A potential compromise has emerged in the long-running battle over Rhode Island's Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights, but a state senator still upset over what happened to her daughter one Sunday morning in Cranston a decade ago is asking why bother if the end result is the same – cops judging cops.
"That doesn't make no sense to me," state Senator and congressional candidate Ana Quezada said of the proposal, which would enlarge from three up to five members the panel that judges complaints against police, but would still reserve three seats on the panel for police officers and give the other two to "civilians."
"If they put three police on that board, what's the purpose?" Quezada asked during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday night. The legislature might as well "leave it the way it is, because it's three police and they're going to go in favor of the police. They're not going to go in favor of the public."
Bill of rights reform has been a hot issue this session
The expansion of the so-called "LEOBOR" hearing panels was part of a multi-pronged compromise embraced by the lead lobbyists for both the International Brotherhood of Police Officers and the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association in the wake of a series of local controversies – and national scandals – over alleged police misconduct.
Other key features of the potential compromise: an increase in the number of days a police chief can suspend an officer without pay without triggering a potentially lengthy and contentious hearing.
The police chiefs' association suggested 10 days instead of the current two, but IBPO lobbyist John Rossi told The Journal on Wednesday: "I'm OK with 10 days, (but) my understanding is the temperature of the legislature is it's probably going to be 14 days. Am I OK with that? Yes. Does this give me a lot of angst? Yeah."
"But I also get that that's what it's going to take to get a bill done. I'd rather be part of the process than run over by it."
Rossi said even a 10-day suspension without pay could cost an officer $200 a day in pay, up to $2,000 "for not wearing your hat." While a suspension that long for that minor infraction is "unlikely," he said some chiefs are sticklers.
More: Providence police officer Lugo to keep his job despite efforts to terminate him
In pushing reform, senator recounts personal experience with police
But Quezada's questions during the hearing pointed to more serious circumstances and she said what happened to her daughter in 2013 is an example.
Elaborating on Wednesday, she told The Journal her then-26-year-old daughter rear-ended another car on her way to Quezada's house several years before she became a state senator.
There were no injuries, she said, but the responding officer grew increasingly "frustrated" at her daughter's inability to find the vehicle registration and insurance card for the car while traffic was backing up.
Quezada said her daughter called her, because the car was registered in her name, to say: "Mom, I cannot find my registration and my insurance." Quezada said she didn't know where the documents were because "I don't use your car."
As this was happening, Quezada said: "The police was getting frustrated because there was a long line. They were in the middle of the street." She said the officer started screaming at her daughter, who locked herself in the car and called 911 to ask for another police officer to come help.
"In the meanwhile, he broke the window of her car, dragged her out and arrested her," Quezada said.
In the end, Quezada said her daughter was convicted in Superior Court of resisting arrest and obstructing a police officer. She lost her job in Cranston Municipal Court and then had trouble finding another job, which cost her her apartment.
'Do you believe police lie?'
"Do you believe police lie?" she asked Bristol Police Chief Kevin Lynch, the president of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs' Association, during the hearing.
"Have police officers in the past been found guilty of lying? The answer to that question is yes," he answered. "There have been some. [Do] the vast majority ... 99.9% of the men and women that put the uniform on every day ... lie? No, they do not."
He had the same answer when she asked if police create "fake" reports. Some have; 99% do not.
Quezada replied she wasn't saying that all police officers lie, but that some do and those who know about the lying "stay quiet."
"Most of the time police protect police," she said. "That's what I believe."
"I have to disagree with you," the chief answered, repeating that 99% of the time "we are doing it the right way. We're honest and we're truthful. It's unfortunate that you have that perception of police and I'm sorry that you feel that way on behalf of the profession."
The committee held all of the bills for further study, including Quezada's own legislation to create new five-member panels with only two members being police. The others would be designees of the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights, the Rhode Island Center for Justice and the dean of the Roger Williams University School of Law.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Rhode Island police reform may be close. What's in the bills
