Charges filed against the two students arrested in separate Sept. 10 incidents that led to allegations of police misconduct were dismissed Wednesday at pre-trial conferences at the Sixth District Court in Providence.
Following a prosecutor's recommendation, Associate Judge Madeline Quirk said charges of assault and resisting arrest would be dismissed against Chipalo Street '06 GS, who was arrested on campus after refusing to show identification to Department of Public Safety officers, following Street's completion of 20 hours of community service and payment of a $200 fine.
Charges against the second student, who was arrested downtown by Providence Police Department officers, were dismissed, and a motion by the defense to expunge the case from the student's record was accepted by the court without objection from the prosecutor.
Following the downtown incident, the student asked for a formal investigation into the incident by the PPD.
The student had been charged with misdemeanor counts of assault, using force to resist arrest and acting in a disorderly manner. His arrest stemmed from a confrontation with PPD officers that started when the officers "directed (the) student who was driving his vehicle along the route to move aside so that the Providence Police vehicles could pass," according to a Sept. 12 campus-wide e-mail from President Ruth Simmons and Interim Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services Russell Carey '91 MA'06.
The e-mail continued, "When the student allegedly did not immediately move his vehicle, the situation escalated to the point where officers used force in effecting his arrest."
According to the PPD police report of the incident, at one point during the confrontation, "Police then opened the drivers side door of (the) vehicle and grabbed the left arm" of the student, who "then reached over towards Police with his right arm and punched Police in the arm causing Police to let go. Police then grabbed onto the shirt of (the student) and began pulling him from his vehicle. At this time (the student) pushed Police in the chest and sat back into the drivers seat of his vehicle."
The report states the student then "attempted to flee while driving (his car) forward causing the drivers side of this vehicle to come into collision with the front bumper of the marked Police vehicle."
According to the report, "While (the student) was attempting to flee the scene," two other PPD officers had approached the passenger side of the student's car and became "pinned" between the car and another car parked on the side of the street. In "an attempt to get (the student) to stop his vehicle before striking these officers," the report states, one of the officers broke the two passenger side windows of the student's car, while the other officer broke the rear window.
Andrew Horwitz, a professor of law and director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at the Roger Williams University School of Law, told The Herald that the charges filed against the student - assault, using force to resist arrest and acting in a disorderly manner - were typical for incidents like the one described in the police report.
"That trio of charges - frequently called the trifecta by those of us in the criminal justice industry - frequently appear as a package and frequently represent a real kind of altercation between the police and the defendant," Horwitz said, noting that either the police or the defendant could be the one to initiate the altercation.
But "it's very unusual that those charges are outright dismissed," he added.
After hearing the facts of the case, Horwitz suggested that the prosecutor might have agreed to drop the charges in exchange for the student signing a "release dismissal agreement," which is a written statement from a defendant declaring that he won't pursue a civil complaint.
"I personally find those agreements remarkably offensive, and, from the prosecutorial point of view, I believe they are unethical," Horwitz said, explaining that a prosecutor's sole job should be to decide the merit of criminal charges without consideration of the police's interest.
Horwitz suggested another possible explanation for why prosecutors decided to drop the charges against the student: to gain his cooperation if the PPD has reason to believe its officers were involved in wrongdoing.
"If the higher-ups at the police department have decided that the officers are in the wrong and they want to pursue internal and maybe eventually criminal charges against the officers, then they need to obtain the cooperation of the defendant," Horwitz said.
Street, who was arrested in a separate incident that occurred on campus and involved both PPD and DPS officers, has said publicly that officers assaulted him.
University officials launched an investigation into the incident, which found that DPS officers were justified in their actions and did not cause injury to Street. The conduct of the PPD officers who arrested Street was outside the scope of the University's investigation, but administrators said Oct. 16 that the PPD would undertake an investigation upon the filing of a formal complaint.
Horwitz said the resolution in Street's case - dismissing charges by agreeing to a minor penalty - was "not out of the norm" for a case involving "a college kid who maybe they think is under the influence of alcohol who otherwise has an unblemished record ... if the altercation with the officer is minor."
Street, the student involved in the downtown incident and the prosecutor's office did not return phone calls seeking comment Wednesday.
