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 with 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 the 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.
‘Undisputed,’ AG says
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.”
Erasing information
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.”
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.”
Whistleblower steps up
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 the 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.
Federal reporting in play
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.
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.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
