Block Log

Block Island police chief says he’s lobbied to keep crime stories out of print

By Katie Mulvaney
Journal Staff Writer
Posted Sep 3, 2017 at 7:28 PM Updated Sep 3, 2017 at 8:48 PM

The police chief on Block Island has reiterated that he believes the media should not run news stories about offenses he considers minor, such as local people driving under the influence or possessing alcohol in public, because such press proves embarrassing.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The police chief on Block Island last week reiterated that he believes the media should not run news stories about offenses he considers minor, such as local people driving under the influence or possessing alcohol in public, because such press proves embarrassing.

“I’ve always said, ‘Is it really newsworthy?’ That is how I feel,” Chief Vincent Carlone said on Tuesday.

Carlone’s comments came days after a column in which he was quoted saying that he had asked The Block Island Times, the local weekly newspaper, not to publish details about island arrests.

David Collins, a columnist for The Day newspaper in New London, Connecticut, wrote a piece entitled “Hushing up Block Island crime.” He quoted Carlone saying that he had urged the newspaper to stop running arrest logs because it embarrasses people.

“It is terrible. I have lobbied [The Block Island Times] about it ... I have to arrest a guy for drinking a beer,” Carlone said. “Do we have to doubly embarrass him?”

“This is a nice community, and I’ve made that representation to them,” Carlone said of the paper. “They have apparently agreed at some level.”

Carlone, who was named police chief in New Shoreham in 2004, didn’t dispute that his years as a police officer in Narragansett had proven to him that reporting arrests for minor crimes unnecessarily shames people. He accused Collins of writing the piece with an agenda.

“The fact is we’re having a beautiful year, and now you have a jackass trying to make the island look bad,” Carlone said.

“It’s all families. People are being nice out there,” Carlone said of those visiting the island. “The place has dramatically changed in 15 years.”

The piece by Collins, whose husband owns what used to be the Littlefield Bee Farm on Corn Neck Road, was prompted by the arrest in New London of two men for allegedly firing a Glock 43 9mm handgun from aboard a ferry coming from Block Island. He then recounted several drunken incidents on the ferry in 2006 and a shooting by a summer worker with mental-health issues.

“He’s trying to blame Block Island. They came from Connecticut with a gun and they went back to Connecticut with a gun,” Carlone said of the Aug. 25 arrest of Michael Richard, 53, of Blythewood, South Carolina, and Michael McMahon, 55, of Hamden, on weapons charges.

Carlone asserted that his crackdowns on drunken driving and visitors publicly carrying alcohol has cleaned the island up dramatically.

“Drunk driving? You don’t see it,” he said. “We handled things one at a time.”

“Everything is down considerably, and yet the number of people coming to the island has increased vastly,” he continued.

The downturn in the economy also played a role, he said. “We’re getting people of means. They don’t normally get arrested in my 37 years of experience,” he said.

He said The Block Island Times is free to publish the arrests it pleases. “Whenever they want the police log, they come in and get the police log,” he said. “Whatever they choose to run, they run. ... That’s their right.”

Lars Trodson, the editor of The Block Island Times, did not return two phone calls Wednesday seeking comment. The newspaper has not posted police logs online for several years, and Carlone reported that the paper hasn’t run the police log at all “in awhile,” although it used to do so.

Carlone said he notifies the media of major crimes.

Collins remains troubled by the absence of police logs in the island’s only newspaper.

“It’s just a basic in small-town reporting,” he said. From his perspective, “The community should know ... what the police are doing to keep the order.”

If crime is down, as Carlone said it is, then the community should know about it, Collins said. Otherwise, residents are “blind to how the whole system is running” and the impact of having so many tourists visit its shores during the summer.

“It seemed like a real blindspot for people,” Collins said, adding, “I can see that the island establishment wants to control its image.”

And, Collins said, he used to find the police log’s tales of drunkenness and stolen dinghys amusing.

“They do a good job of covering the island,” Collins said. “In general, I’ve always found The Block Island Times to be engaging and thorough. This was a real blindspot.”

“A newspaper isn’t required to run a police log,” said Linda Lotridge Levin, president of Access/RI, a coalition of First Amendment advocates. “Newspapers don’t have to run a police log just because it’s a public record.”

The bigger question, she said, is if Block Island police are releasing information that by law is public in compliance with state Open Records Law, which requires departments to provide arrest logs within 48 hours of an arrest.

John Pantalone, chairman of the University of Rhode Island’s journalism program, took a more strident view of the newspaper’s role as the fourth estate.

He said it wasn’t clear to him whether the newspaper agreed not to run the logs or is simply negligent in not seeking the logs.