Man alleges North Smithfield, Woonsocket police engaged in racial profiling in 2019

PROVIDENCE — A Connecticut man is accusing police in North Smithfield and Woonsocket of illegally targeting and detaining him based on his race as a Black man during a 2019 search.

Bryan Thomas sued the Town of North Smithfield; the City of Woonsocket; and individual police officers over what he charges were aggressive tactics that violated his civil rights as he stopped to buy lunch while looking for an apartment. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, accuses the officers of violating his Constitutional rights against unreasonable searches and seizures as well as his right to equal protection under the state and federal Constitutions.

Thomas also names as defendants in their official and individual capacities North Smithfield Police Officers Justin Switzer and Ian Bissonette and Woonsocket Detective Jason Berthelette, as well as unnamed officers. He is seeking unspecified damages and for Judge William E. Smith to declare the search unconstitutional.

A broken taillight

According to Thomas, Switzer stopped him around 2 p.m. Sept. 22, 2019, as he pulled into the Stop & Shop parking lot to grab lunch while looking for an apartment in anticipation of starting a new clerical job at Woonsocket High School. The stop was for a broken taillight, though the light itself still worked. Switzer questioned him about his whereabouts and whether he had illegal narcotics, including heroin and cocaine, in the car.

Switzer demanded to search the vehicle after Thomas responded that he didn’t use illegal substances. Thomas said he refused to consent to a search, prompting Switzer to remove him from the car and threaten to have it towed.

Bisonette and other officers arrived at the scene, along with Berthelette and his police dog about an hour later. Thomas says he was held in the back of a “sweltering” cruiser as the group searched the car, rifling through his personal belongings and damaging the car itself.

After close to two hours, the officers released Thomas and issued him a summons to appear in Municipal Court for the alleged broken taillight – a case dismissed by the judge after Thomas confirmed that the light worked.

The encounter left Thomas shaken, fearful of police, and unable to concentrate at work, leading to his firing from the job he held at the time of the stop, according to the suit. He now is a clerical worker at Woonsocket High School.

Thomas said he filed a civilian complaint with the North Smithfield Police Department about the incident and a review determined that there were no departmental violations. Rather, acting training officer Capt. Russell Ridge said that the department’s “proactive patrol tactics” played a role in Switzer’s decision-making during the stop, the suit says.

Study shows racial disparities in RI traffic stops

Underpinning Thomas’s claims were findings by the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at Central Connecticut University that reveal that people of color are being stopped at a disproportionately high rate in North Smithfield as compared to the makeup of its population.

In the most recent report, released in February based on 2019 data, North Smithfield again ranked among the communities with the most significant disparities.

Background:Study found racial disparities in R.I. traffic stops

“The lack of any substantive response by the Town to address its entrenched and well-documented pattern of racial profiling is integrally tied to its officers’ racially discriminatory conduct toward Bryan Thomas on Sunday, September 22, 2019,” Thomas’s lawyer, Shannah Kurland, wrote in the complaint.

North Smithfield Police Chief Tim Lafferty did not respond to a phone message left at headquarters.

Ken Barone, associate director at the institute, emphasized in a phone interview with The Journal that although the statistics show that people of color are being pulled over in Rhode Island at a disproportionate rate, it does not equal racial profiling – a practice in which police use race as the catalyst for making a traffic stop.

Barone said the research showed that 65% of the North Smithfield stops were in the Park Square area, where shops are frequented by residents from more diverse surrounding communities, namely Woonsocket.

The data also revealed that the town made the most traffic stops in the state based on equipment, such as a broken taillight, or administrative reasons, including lapsed registrations, Barone said.

Research has found that enforcement focused on hazardous driving behaviors equates to far fewer racial disparities, as opposed to “broken window” policies that focus on equipment, as seen in North Smithfield, which have been shown not to drive down crime, Barone said.

The 2015 Rhode Island law that enabled the institute's studies expired in 2020 due to a sunset provision, meaning that police departments are no longer required to collect or analyze traffic-stop data. Bills to remedy that gap failed to gain traction last year, but the Rhode Island Police Chiefs’ Association plans to continue to collect data and push for further legislation backing for such studies, executive director Sid Wordell said.

“There have been some disparities in traffic stops ...,” Wordell said. “At the end of the day we want to get to the bottom of it.”

Barone lamented that due to the expiration of the law Rhode Island won’t be eligible for $1.5 million in annual federal aid to study traffic data that was included in the massive infrastructure bill passed by Congress. Future laws should be enacted without a sunset date, he said.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: North Smithfield, Woonsocket PD sued in alleged racial profiling case