By Sam Stecklow for Ocean State Media
May 1, 2025
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.