More than two decades ago, a high-profile government study recommended that Rhode Island strengthen the power of the commission that oversees most police officers in the state. Today, despite repeated efforts in the state legislature, that commission still lacks the ability to strip police training certifications when officers violate certain rules, leaving Rhode Island as the last U.S. state without such a system on the books.
In 2001, the legislature failed to heed the recommendations of a Select Commission on Race and Police-Community Relations, empaneled after Black off-duty Providence Police Patrolman Cornel Young Jr. was killed by two white fellow PPD officers in 2001. That commission found that Rhode Island’s Police Officers Commission on Standards and Training (POST) “does not function the way a POST does in other states.” Rhode Island needs “mechanisms to hold individual officers accountable throughout every stage of their careers,” the commission said in its report.
Over the last few years, the other straggling states — California, Hawaii, Massachusetts and New Jersey — have passed legislation and begun to bring their statewide police certification bodies in line with the rest of the country. But in Rhode Island, similar legislation failed to gain traction in 2021, 2023 and 2024.
Stalled bills, even with a focus on police accountability
The issue is so-called “wandering officers,” police officers who are able to move between departments after committing misconduct because in Rhode Island there is no ability for the state to strip them of their police powers.
In 2020, during a hearing of another special legislative commission on police reform, Sid Wordell of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs’ Association (RIPCA) referred to the phenomenon as a “common occurrence.” Wordell said officers can often exploit loopholes in the law and policing custom in Rhode Island by resigning or retiring when faced with sanctions.
“We’re a small state,” Wordell said in an interview with Invisible Institute and The Public’s Radio. “Usually, if an officer leaves because of an issue, it goes through the chiefs anyway. But if that officer was to leave and decide they want to go to Florida, for instance, it’s up to that agency in whatever state they’re going to to make sure that they do the appropriate background.”
In 2021, the Rhode Island POST commission created a procedure to review all transfers between departments, which Wordell referred to as a “temporary fix” because there is still no ability to submit an officer to a national database of decertified officers.
Though the 2020 task force did not ultimately recommend anything relating to police certification, a 2021 bill filed by Rep. José Batista (D-Providence) aimed to address some of the issues brought up by Wordell and others during the task force’s meetings the year before.
The bill called for detailed background checks upon the hire of every officer, including a review of any previous misconduct cases at previous employers; mandated reporting by police departments about disciplinary actions to the Rhode Island Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission (POST); required POST to track officers between agencies and analyze its data for broader trends; and allowed POST to discipline officers, including stripping them of their certifications.
Batista’s goal was to implement “uniform policy across the entire state,” he said in a recent interview. “One problem we want to prevent is, someone works for the Jamestown police and they have an incident and get fired, they can just go up the road. In a lot of lines of business, that would be considered negligence, right? You’re supposed to do your due diligence and know who you’re hiring.”
The bill was considered by the House Judiciary Committee in April 2021, where it received support from the ACLU of Rhode Island, but strong opposition from law enforcement unions.
“Empowering the Commission on Standards and Training to revoke a law enforcement officer’s certification may expose them to double jeopardy,” Jim Cenerini of AFSCME Council 94 wrote to legislators. “It is also unclear how the Commission’s powers would interface with the Police Officers’ Bill of Rights hearing process.”
The Rhode Island Fraternal Order of Police echoed those comments in a similar letter. The bill died in the Judiciary Committee.
Batista, a former public defender and Providence police oversight official who has clashed with law enforcement groups, filed a follow-up in 2023.
This time around, in the face of near identical opposition from law enforcement unions, the Judiciary Committee was also urged to adopt the bill by Seema Sadanandan, a lobbyist for the criminal justice reform advocacy and philanthropy organization Arnold Ventures.
“No state in New England and hardly any other state in the country stacks the disciplinary hearing process in favor of the law enforcement officers as is outlined in the [Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights],” she wrote.
On top of that, she wrote, Rhode Island’s custom of relying on police chiefs to “collaborate effectively to restrict internal transfers where the officer may have a history of misconduct” makes it an outlier. “Just as lawyers can be disbarred by a state agency if they engage in serious professional misconduct, every state except Rhode Island recognizes that the same should be true for police officers,” she wrote.
Col. Michael Winquist, the Cranston police chief who chairs the POST commission, countered Sadanandan.
Writing on City of Cranston letterhead but on behalf of POST, Winquist said the bill didn’t provide sufficient “financial and human resources” to carry out its new missions, and objected to POST being “transformed” into a “quasi-judicial body” that would also be responsible for carrying out background investigations on individual officers. (The bill’s text did not call for POST to conduct background investigations, but instead created guidelines for what individual agency background investigations need to look like.)
The bill’s decertification process would be in “direct conflict” with LEOBOR’s disciplinary provisions, he wrote, and pointed to the processes put in place in 2021. The bill, again, never made it out of committee.
Changes to LEOBOR
When decertification legislation was reintroduced in the 2024 session, sponsored by Batista and three other Democratic lawmakers, it was significantly watered down, with the POST commission only able to decertify officers if they had been convicted of a felony or some federal crimes.
“Under the standards of this bill, officers such as… the Pawtucket officer who was acquitted of shooting at a teenager while off-duty and who faced multiple other allegations of misconduct could not be decertified despite objectively and deeply concerning actions,” wrote the ACLU of Rhode Island in a position statement.
The group was referring to Dan Dolan, who resigned from the Pawtucket department in the midst of a LEOBOR disciplinary hearing in November 2023.
Still, even with the lessened oversight in the new decertification bill, it was officially opposed by AFSCME 94, POST chair Winquist, and the Rhode Island Department of Public Safety. It again never made it out of the House Judiciary Committee.
Wordell said in an interview that the bill’s sponsor was himself an issue in the bill’s passage, in addition to the bill’s call for tracking of data about police employment and misconduct — something in the mandate of many other state POSTs, including in Massachusetts.
“Rep. Batista is a very liberal legislator,” Wordell said. His bills have gone beyond decertification — which Wordell said the police chiefs’ association supports — and “it’s really been about our Law Enforcement Bill of Rights and the repeal of the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights, the database and those types of things,” he said.
Batista said he took the “liberal” designation as a compliment. He added that it felt like the moment when reformers and police groups could come together on these issues might be slipping away.
“When George Floyd happened, that was a moment where I feel like a lot of members of the community, including myself, were hoping that we as community members, as decision makers, could reach some sort of consensus and acknowledge the severity of the problem that police violence and civil rights is not some issue for liberal legislators. We didn’t fabricate that video.
“So I was hoping that that would be more for us to kind of come together and realize the severity of the problem,” he continued. “I’ve been deeply disappointed in seeing that we have not as a broader community, including organizations like the police chiefs [association].”
What was ultimately signed into law in 2024: a bill that adjusts the LEOBOR process and who sits on disciplinary panels. A provision requiring reporting of some disciplinary actions to a national database was included, but comments submitted by the ACLU pointed out several significant gaps in the language, including for officers who resign before being terminated.
“Believe me, it was a very hard-fought negotiation,” House Speaker Joseph Shekarchi said after the House vote in May. “And if you go ask any of the parties at the table, no one’s going to walk away and say they loved this bill — no one!”
Batista said he’s not sure if he or any other legislator will file any related bills this year.
However, during a January 2025 POST commission meeting, members discussed “the POST statutes that are very conflicting and antiquated,” according to the meeting minutes. The Rhode Island Police Chiefs’ Association, led by Wordell, will be “putting together a study committee to study the statutes that need to be modified and bring it to the legislature.”
The committee will conduct a “general review of all POST statutes to determine any changes needed given the changing law enforcement landscape and ensure alignment with current needs of the profession,” POST chair Winquist said in an email.
Questions about potential decertification of officers, he said, will “likely be discussed.”
This story was produced as a collaboration by Invisible Institute, a nonprofit public accountability journalism organization, and The Public’s Radio.
Sam Stecklow is an investigative journalist and FOIA fellow with Invisible Institute. Follow him on Bluesky at @samstecklow.bsky.social or email him at sam@invisibleinstitute.com.
