VIA EMAIL ONLY

May 14, 2026

Ms. Amanda Milkovits Reporter, Boston Globe

Frank J. Milos, Jr., Esquire

Dear Ms. Milkovits and Attorney Milos:

We have completed our investigation into the Access to Public Records Act (“APRA”) Complaint filed by Ms. Amanda Milkovits (“Complainant”) against the Pawtucket Police Department (“Department”). For the reasons set forth herein, we find that the Department did not violate the APRA.

a copy of the police report regarding an incident involving [John Doe]¹ on Sept 11 and Sept. 12 of this year […] any reports of an incident on Sept. 11 believed to involve [Doe] and on Sept. 12, when he was apprehended in Central Falls […] any arrest report involving [Doe] since Sept. 11.

The Department denied the Complainant’s request.² It stated that it was in possession of two responsive reports: 25-1574-AR and 25-4152-OF. We note based on our in camera review that the “OF” report pertains to a different individual than the “AR” report and the subject of the “OF” report was apparently not arrested. The Department asserted that “[p]ursuant to R.I. Gen. Laws § 38-2-2(4)(D), such records are not public to the extent that disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” It asserted that:

¹ We decline to identify the individual named in the request for privacy reasons and due to the fact that their name is not material to our finding.

² The Department initially asserted an extension to substantively respond to the Complainant’s request. This is further discussed in our prior finding Milkovits v. Pawtucket Police Department, PR 25-73.

The last sentence of § 38-2-2(4)(D) mandates public access solely to “records or reports reflecting the initial arrest of an adult and the charge or charges brought against an adult.” By the express terms of the statute, this exception to the exemption is triggered only when charges have in fact been brought. The Rhode Island Supreme Court has stated that “the conjunctive ‘and’ should not be considered as the equivalent of the disjunctive ‘or’.” See Members of Jamestown Sch. Comm. v. Schmidt, 405 A.2d 16, 20 (R.I. 1979) (citing Earle v. Zoning Bd. of Review, 191 A.2d 161, 163 (R.I. 1963)). Here, although there was an arrest, no criminal charges of any kind were ever filed. Accordingly, the City contends that mandatory-disclosure provision is inapplicable.

Finally, the Department stated that “[a]fter balancing the public interest in disclosure against the significant privacy interests implicated by these records, [it] has determined that release, even in redacted form, would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy pursuant to § 38-2-2(4)(D)(c).”

The Complainant then submitted the instant Complaint to this Office.³ The Complainant asserts that “this report should be a public record.” She argues that “[w]hile the city is citing privacy as an exemption, I know the identity of the man who was arrested, but more importantly, this is about knowing what led the officers to their decision to arrest him.” She further asserts that “[t]his is not an ordinary arrest” as the Department’s officers “went into another city, without notifying local authorities, and tackled a resident at his home.” She asserts that “it appears that they had the wrong person, because the arrest didn’t result in charges” and the “city is denying the release of the report solely for that reason.” She finally asserts that disclosure of the responsive report is in the public interest “because we should know what led the police to apparently make a wrongful hands-on arrest in another city, against the usual protocol of notifying local authorities.” She asserts that it is in the public interest to know: “Who were the officers? Who made the decisions? What information were they acting on? Were there any consequences for apparently violating protocol?”

The Department submitted a substantive Response to the instant Complaint through Pawtucket City Solicitor Frank J. Milos, Jr., Esq. The Department explains that Department officers arrested an individual, however they determined that he was not the suspect they were seeking and released him from custody without filing criminal charges against him. It asserts that the responsive reports are not a part of the “narrow category of records that must be disclosed” pursuant to R.I. Gen. Laws § 38-2-2(4)(D) (“Exemption (D)”). It asserts that under Exemption (D), “records or reports reflecting the initial arrest of an adult and the charge or charges brought against an adult shall be public.” (Emphasis in original). It argues that “Rhode Island courts have repeatedly held that the word ‘and’ is conjunctive, not disjunctive” and “[b]ecause no charges were ever brought against

³ The Complainant also submitted an administrative appeal to Pawtucket Mayor Donald R. Grebien. It is unclear from the record whether the administrative appeal dealt with the denial, the extension, or both, or what the precise timeline of the administrative appeal submission and response was. In any event, the Complainant did not present any allegations about the Mayor’s response to the administrative appeal and accordingly this finding will not address the same.

Mr. [Doe], the City contends that the mandatory-disclosure provision does not apply, and the records remain fully within the law-enforcement exemption.”

The Department further asserts that even in redacted form, disclosure would constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy under Exemption (D)(c). It asserts that the arrested individual has a substantive privacy interest in disclosure of the reports as the Complainant’s public records request mentions him by name and he “is a private citizen who was detained for only a few hours, released the same day once the identification discrepancy was discovered, and never charged.” It asserts that the reports “contain sensitive personal information about an individual who ultimately bore no criminal responsibility.”

It argues that “[w]hile the complainant correctly notes a general public interest in police operations and accountability, that interest is significantly diminished where the detention was brief, the individual was promptly released, and no criminal charges were filed.” Accordingly, it asserts that the privacy interests at issue outweigh any public interest in disclosure.

The Department also provided this Office with the responsive reports for our in camera review.

We agree with the Department’s interpretation of Exemption (D). The plain language of Exemption (D) addresses records that reflect both “the initial arrest of an adult and the charge or charges brought against an adult.” By including not just the initial arrest of an adult, but also the charges brought against them, the best reading is that the Exemption’s mandatory disclosure clause applies only in situations where an individual is arrested and charged with a crime. See Members of Jamestown Sch. Comm. v. Schmidt, 405 A.2d 16, 20 (1979) (“Generally, the conjunctive ‘and’ should not be considered as the equivalent of the disjunctive ‘or.’). As such, this mandatory disclosure language does not apply to the unique circumstances here where an individual was arrested, but ultimately not charged with any crime. This is underscored by the fact that the arrested individual’s name did not appear in the Department’s arrest log. Indeed, an individual arrested, but never charged with a crime has significant privacy interests in the disclosure of any records referencing their interactions with law enforcement in connection with that arrest.⁴ See American Civil Liberties Union v. Department of Justice, 655 F.3d 1, 7 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (recognizing the heightened privacy interests of “individuals who have been investigated but never publicly charged at all”); Fund for Constitutional Gov’t v. Nat’l Archives & Records Serv., 656 F.2d 856, 864 (D.C.Cir.1981) (“[t]ypically, the decision not to prosecute insulates individuals who have been investigated but not charged from th[e] rather significant intrusion into their lives” occasioned by public indictment) ⁵. Finding otherwise would lead to an absurd result that the arrest report for a person whose arrest was expunged (because the case was dismissed, for example) could not be disclosed, but an arrest report for a person who was never charged would be. Obviously, that makes no sense.

Because we conclude that the arrest report is not per se public under Exemption (D), we turn to conducting the privacy balancing test analysis as to both records.

One of the reports at issue pertains to a situation that did not involve an arrest. And while the other report did involve an arrest, no charges were brought and it was later confirmed that the person was arrested based on a mistaken identity. As such, we find precedent regarding disclosure of incident reports where no arrest took place to be instructive for analyzing the privacy interest in both reports since the arrest was quickly acknowledged to be a mistake and not actually warranted.

When a law enforcement agency investigates a member of the public and determines that an arrest is not warranted, records related to the investigation implicate privacy interests. See, e.g., Fund for Constitutional Government, 656 F.2d at 864 (“There can be no clearer example of an unwarranted

⁴ As we will discuss further below, even beyond the statutory construction of Exemption (D), other exemptions in the APRA and state laws in certain circumstances protect from public disclosure records related to the arrest of individuals that do not result in criminal convictions. See R.I. Gen. Laws § 12-1-12.2 (sealing all arrest records of an individual wrongly arrested due to mistaken identity); R.I. Gen. Laws § 38-2-2(4)(S).

⁵ We reference FOIA caselaw because the Rhode Island Supreme Court has made clear that “[b]ecause APRA generally mirrors the Freedom of Information Act … we find federal case law helpful in interpreting our open record law.” Pawtucket Teachers Alliance v. Brady, 556 A.2d 556, 558 n.3 (R.I. 1989).

invasion of personal privacy than to release to the public that another individual was the subject of an FBI investigation.”); see also American Civil Liberties Union, 655 F.3d at 7 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (“[D]isclosure of records revealing that an individual was involved or mentioned in a law enforcement investigation implicates a significant privacy interest,” particularly where the individual was never charged or convicted).

This Office has repeatedly recognized that when applying the balancing test to incident reports where no arrest occurred, the privacy interests may be especially heightened and the scales could accordingly tip in favor of nondisclosure. See Jenkins and Langer v. Narragansett Police Department, PR 20-35; Mercurio v. Cranston Police Department, PR 20-31; Harper v. Portsmouth Police Department, PR 19-15. Nonetheless, we have also repeatedly made clear that every incident report that is the subject of an APRA request must be thoughtfully reviewed on a case-by-case basis and public bodies should not automatically withhold incident reports solely because the incident did not result in an arrest.

This Office has noted that there is heightened privacy interest where a requester seeks law enforcement records “pertaining to a specific individual or incident where redaction was unlikely to be able to effectively address privacy concerns.” See Milkovits v. Cranston Police Department, PR 24-09. Redactions may be more likely to effectively address privacy concerns when a request seeks a large number of incident reports or seeks reports not related to specific or identifiable individuals. For example, in Milkovits, this Office found that redactions could effectively address privacy concerns in incident reports where the requester sought “records related to a multi-month time period and d[id] not seek records related to any particular incident or private person.” PR 24-

09. In Yolken, et al. v. City of Providence, this Office considered Providence’s response to an APRA request that sought all police reports related to responding to suspected overdoses between certain dates. This Office determined that “the implicated privacy interests can be effectively addressed by redaction because the Complainants seek a large number of incident reports related to overdoses (approximately 200) and the request did not seek records related to specific and identifiable individuals.” PR 21-09.

In contrast, the Complainant here requested records pertaining to a specific individual, identified by name. The specificity of this request diminishes the likelihood that redaction could effectively address privacy concerns. See Hunt v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 972 F.2d 286, 288-89 (9th Cir. 1992) (contrasting a FOIA request for a single investigatory file with requests for numerous disciplinary files and concluding that “[t]he single file *** will not shed any light on whether all such FBI investigations are comprehensive”); see also Pawtucket Teachers Alliance v. Brady, 556 A.2d 556, 559 (R.I. 1989) (“[T]he report at issue in the present case specifically relates to the job performance of a single readily identifiable individual. Even if all references to proper names were deleted, the principal’s identity would still be abundantly clear from the entire context of the report.”).

Here, the Department withheld two reports: one arrest report and one incident report (involving two separate individuals). Our in camera review of the incident report reveals that it details law enforcement interactions with an individual who was never arrested or charged with a crime.

Disclosure of this incident report, that did not result in arrest, would certainly implicate strong privacy interests for the individual referenced in the report.⁶

The Department also withheld an arrest report that involved an individual who was arrested in connection with a criminal investigation and detained, but was released a few hours later when it was determined that there was a misidentification and he should not have been arrested. This is supported by the fact that the arrested individual’s name did not appear in the Department’s arrest log. Although the Complainant asserts she knows the identity of the arrested individual, we have not been presented with evidence that the arrested individual’s identity had been widely publicized at the time when the Department responded to the Complainant’s APRA request. It is this Office’s understanding that following the filing of the instant Complaint, the Complainant published an article that did publicize the arrested individual’s identity, seemingly with the person’s knowledge and participation. However, this does not change our legal analysis as “our review must consider the circumstances surrounding [the public body’s] reasoning for denying access to the responsive records at the time the denial was made.” Lefoley v. RIDOH, PR 23-11 (citing Bonner v. United States Department of State, 928 F.2d 1148, 1152 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (R.B. Ginsburg, J.) (“court review properly focuses on the time the determination to withhold is made ***[t]o require an agency to adjust or modify its FOIA responses based on post-response occurrences could create an endless cycle of judicially mandated reprocessing”)). Moreover, there is a material difference between what the subject of the report may voluntarily wish to disclose in a media interview and the disclosure of a police report, which is a document that carries a certain stigma and that was created without the subject’s participation or input. That said, while this after the fact event does not impact our legal analysis, the Department might consider releasing the report to the arrested individual if he requests it, outside of the APRA process, and to the extent it determines doing so would not conflict with any other law or requirement.

Additionally, our precedent recognizes that just because information has been publicized in some form does not automatically mean it is public under the APRA. See, e.g., The Providence Journal

v. Rhode Island Secretary of State, PR 18-38 (“we do not find that the disclosure of any voters’ dates of birth waives the SOS’s ability to withhold them in this context”). To the extent the Complainant is alleging that she has an individualized right to access these records because she knows the name of the arrested individual, it is important to note that the analysis under the APRA is not whether a responsive record is public just to a specific requester, but rather if the record is public to all. See McQuade v. Rhode Island State Police, PR 13-03 (“Accordingly, if this Department determines that a particular document is a public record, then any person may access or inspect that record regardless of whether or not that person is an interested party. Once a record is made public to one person under the APRA, that record is public to all.”).

Moreover, although the Department did not invoke Exemption S (which exempts records that are confidential under state law) or the sealing statute, we find it compelling that the Legislature has specifically provided for the sealing of the arrest records of someone who is arrested based on

⁶ It is not clear from the instant Complainant that the Complainant is even challenging the Department’s withholding of the incident report as the Complaint only references the Department’s denial of the police report regarding an arrest.

mistaken identity. Specifically, R.I. Gen. Laws § 12-1-12.2 provides that “[a]ny law enforcement agency, subsequent to the arrest of any person, that determines that such person was wrongfully or incorrectly arrested as a result of mistaken identity or any other reason, or wrongfully fingerprinted, photographed, or otherwise has generated any record of arrest for investigatory purposes and, as a result of such wrongful arrest, no charges have been filed in any court of this state, shall, within sixty (60) days of such determination that the arrest was wrongful or without probable cause, seal all such arrest records and destroy all identifying information and indices of arrest[.]” As such, state law specifically provides for the sealing of the subject arrest report. It would be inconsistent with this statute to require public disclosure of the report in response to an APRA request. Especially in light of this statute, which is seemingly premised on recognition of the stigma and privacy interests implicated by arrest reports in cases of mistaken identity, it would be contrary to legislative intent to determine this record to be public under the privacy balancing test. See Bucki v. Hawkins, 914 A.2d 491, 497 (R.I. 2007) (“This Court makes every effort to effectuate the legislative intent, while avoiding construing a statute to reach an absurd result.”) (citing State v. Menard, 888 A.2d 57, 60 (R.I. 2005)).

As part of conducting the privacy balancing test as to both reports, we consider whether the public interest in the disclosure of the withheld responsive reports outweighs the privacy interests implicated. See Dept. of Justice v. Reporters Comm. For Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749, 772 (1989) (“[W]hether disclosure of a private document . . . is warranted must turn on the nature of the requested document and its relationship to ‘the basic purpose . . . to open agency action to the light of public scrutiny.’”). Here, the Complainant alleges that there is a public interest in release of these responsive arrest report because “[t]his is not an ordinary arrest” and “we should know what led the police to apparently make a wrongful hands-on arrest in another city, against the usual protocols of notifying local authorities.” The Department argues that while there is a “general public interest in police operations and accountability, that interest is significantly diminished where the detention was brief, the individual was promptly released, and no criminal charges were filed.”

We agree with the Complainant that there is a public interest in what transpired here, and that the mistaken arrest of a member of the public is highly concerning. However, we find that the public interest in the disclosure of the responsive reports is outweighed by the privacy interests implicated by the disclosure of such reports, especially in light of the sealing statute. Our in camera review of the responsive reports reveals that the disclosure of the responsive reports would shed some light on some of the issues identified by the Complainant, although in a somewhat limited fashion. The responsive reports do not provide any information about if the other city’s police department was notified before the arrest was made, they do not explain why the other city’s police department was not notified (if it in fact was not), they do not explain what the protocol for making arrests outside of the City of Pawtucket is (if any), and they do not explain if there were any consequences for the officers (as the Complainant inquires). Release of the responsive reports would primarily shed light only on the specific details of the arrest and investigation (not on these larger questions posed by the Complainant). While we appreciate, and even share, the Complainant’s concerns about a mistaken arrest, disclosure of the arrest report could serve only to further victimize the erroneously arrested person while leaving many of Complainant’s questions unanswered. And, especially as disclosure of the arrest report would be inconsistent with the purpose and plain

language of R.I. Gen. Laws § 12-1-12.2, we do not deem that to be a result required by the APRA. As such, we find that the Department’s withholding of the responsive arrest and incident reports in their entirety was permissible. Accordingly, we conclude that the Department did not violate the APRA by withholding the responsive reports.