ACLU Sues State Police
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
The Rhode Island ACLU has filed a complaint against the Rhode Island State Police for allegedly breaching a civil rights law.
According to an ACLU press release, State Police allegedly "failed to adequately assess the needs of [limited English Proficiency] LEP populations in Rhode Island, and has also failed to adequately address these needs."
ACLU legal representatives claim State Police failed to provide adequate translation and interpreter services to individuals of these LEP populations.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTA provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires "any agency receiving federal funding" to measure and determine the need of translation services. Allegations include a lack of bilingual police officers, an absence of "any language interpreters, Spanish or otherwise," and an insufficient amount of translated forms.
State Police spokeswoman: ‘a personal affront’
Lisa Holley, the legal counsel to the State Police responded in an interview yesterday with 630 WPRO, a GoLocalProv media partner.
“Frankly, this is a personal affront to the state police. We are very involved in minority communities. We have 50 troopers and staff with various language skills and we work with Language Line, a translation service that allows us to immediately have an interpreter on the line when someone calls in, responding and talking to people in real time,” Holley told afternoon talk show host Buddy Cianci.
She added: “In September, I hand delivered 112 pages of documents in response to (Executive Director Steven) Brown's complaints, and yet we have not heard a single word since. We take these complaints very seriously and I think these accusations are very dubious. We note in our records system every time we use a translator; each and every time we use an interpreter we actually put an additional tab in our records management system with the specific translations services used. We have these records and the corresponding case numbers.”
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