Providence police oversight board slams department for ‘internal failures'

Boston Globe

22-07-2025

The three-page statement from
the oversight board criticizing the city police on Friday afternoon came in light of the
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Hanley's reinstatement 'should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the structural deficiencies in Rhode Island's police accountability framework,' the oversight board wrote. 'His return to duty, despite his admission to serious allegations of misconduct and a dissenting opinion from a high-ranking police official, reflects the deep-rooted ineffectiveness of current oversight mechanisms.'
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The PERA board is a civilian panel
created in 2002 that investigates alleged misconduct by Providence police officers and reviews policies, making recommendations for discipline, policy changes and training. While the group is ultimately advisory, the police department is required to cooperate with its work, and its findings and recommendations are made public.
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The board members are unpaid, but currently has three staff members including an executive director, an
administrative assistant and one investigator. Karoly, the executive director, is a lawyer and former deputy chief of the Middletown Police Department.
In its letter, the panel claims the police department has ignored the majority of its policy recommendations, and also has not responded to a
request to come up with a 'disciplinary matrix,' essentially a guideline for officer misconduct that lays out the recommended punishment for each offense, from harassment to excessive use of force.
The ordinance that created the oversight board says the matrix should be developed by the board and the chief of police.
'We submitted one several years ago, and they've just never approved it,' Karoly said. 'It's just kind of stayed in limbo.'
Multiple recommendations also went unanswered or were denied, Karoly said.
Josh Estrella, a spokesperson for the city, said the police department has responded to policy recommendations, as recently as March of this year.
'The Department has been actively working on a matrix and will continue to respond to PERA's recommendations formally as it relates to discipline or policy,' Estrella said. 'The Providence Police Department remains committed to transparency, accountability and strengthening public trust.'
He said the review authority's budget, along with other department budgets, was cut based on 'actual expenditures,' which were lower than the board's budget.
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The budget cuts will limit the group's 'ability to conduct hearings and fulfill our oversight responsibilities,' members wrote. 'These actions do not reflect a commitment to accountability — they are deliberate obstructions.'
The
oversight board members
also said the police department has repeatedly obstructed their investigations, sometimes taking more than a year to provide evidence so the board can review alleged misconduct.
In one case, the board said it investigated a complaint from a person who was videotaping and 'verbally criticizing' a sergeant who was arresting someone on Broad Street in 2023. The findings, released May 6, said it took until December 2024 – more than a year – for police to share the case file for the PERA investigator to review.
According to the board's findings, the person who was filming the arrest was 20 feet away and did not get in the way of the police, but the sergeant — whose name is redacted — kept engaging with him and 'bumping him with his chest' before having him arrested for disorderly conduct. The charge was later dropped.
The police department's internal investigation found the accusations of wrongdoing against the officer were sustained, and gave him a verbal reprimand, according to the oversight board's findings. The board
recommended that the punishment be modified to a five-day suspension and eight hours of retraining, but has so far been ignored, Friday's letter claims.
'Instead of cooperation, we have encountered resistance,' the civilian panel wrote.
'The Providence police department must acknowledge and correct its internal failures.'
One of the board-recommended
changes to the ordinance that created the Providence External Review Authority is that staff be given 'full user access' to police records, including internal investigations and the body-worn camera system, 'so that PERA may efficiently review and or audit all police internal investigations as well as complete its own investigations.'
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The review authority staff members would be 'subject to the same confidentiality requirements as police users and will not disclose personally identifiable information except as allowed by law,' the proposed ordinance says.
The oversight board has fought to get evidence in the past. When the city refused for months to release the
Then-executive director Jose Batista, who is also a state representative, publicly released the video and was ultimately fired for doing so. (Batista sued for wrongful termination, and later settled with the city for $45,000.)
The oversight board was not conducting investigations for a period of time after Batista's firing, but has ramped up its activities under Karoly.
Last week, PERA said it would investigate Providence police officers'
Related
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The letter also criticizes the state law formerly known as the Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights, or LEOBOR, which allowed Hanley to return to the force by leaving the decision to a panel of law enforcement officers, not the chief of police. The vote was 2 to 1 to reinstate Hanley.
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While the law was recently
But the state law alone cannot be blamed, the panel said.
'Accountability starts at the departmental level, and the issues raised in Sgt. Hanley's case reflect a broader failure within the Providence Police Department,' the
board's
letter said, citing Deputy Chief Timothy O'Hara's dissent in the LEOBOR case, which stated Hanley was 'a man prone to volatility, a man prone to violence, a man prone to vulgarity, a man prone to untruthfulness, and a man accustomed to lying.'
'The fact that Hanley achieved the rank of Sergeant, served in the Detective Bureau, and held supervisory responsibilities despite internal concerns about his behavior raises troubling questions,' the board wrote.
'We are ready to do our part,' board members said. 'But we cannot improve policing in Providence without the tools, cooperation, and political will necessary to challenge the status quo. The community deserves better — and we will continue to fight for it."
Steph Machado can be reached at