Neronha talks candidly on his role as AG, related topics

“Part of building that credibility is letting the community know who you are. Some is office hours, some is talking to people at neighborhood associations. It’s important to do that work … If I’m not leaving 150 South Main St. (the Attorney General’s Office in downtown Providence), I’m not doing my job.” —Attorney General

Peter F. Neronha

WOONSOCKET — Attorney General Peter F. Neronha is keenly aware of how law enforcement, and his role as the people’s lawyer, has changed since his career in public office began 23 years ago. But as he looks back – and, more importantly, looks ahead – the

Attorney General believes that he is making changes to the office that are for the better and will yield lasting results.

Neronha sat down with

The Pawtucket Times on Friday morning for a wide-ranging interview on a variety of subjects relating to his time and position as the AG.

Within moments of being administered the oath of office last January, Neronha got to work, making changes to the way the Attorney General’s Office operated. While some were cosmetic in nature, many of those changes were centered around the nearly 1,700 case backlog that existed upon his arrival at the office.

However, through some dogged work – some of which included staff working four consecutive weekends in exchange for a couple of pizzas – the 1,697-case backlog was totally eliminated by mid-summer.

“That’s an example of how hard people are working,” Neronha said.

However, those aesthetic changes to the AG’s Office are not going unnoticed. He first said he wanted to “make sure every Rhode Islander had a chance to compete for the office,” saying all openings with the Attorney General’s Office – be it a lawyer or professional staff – is now posted on the state jobs website.

“It’s fair and it drives merit-based hiring...” Neronha said. “Moving toward more merit-based, we’ll build a better merit-based workforce. It’s an effort to make our workforce more diverse. Our professional staff was reasonably diverse, but our lawyer staff was not. It’s letting people know the jobs are out there.”

The drive toward diversi

ty is something that has filled Neronha with pride over the past 11 months, as he said he wanted to “give women in the office more of an opportunity to lead the office,” including the hiring of Deputy Attorney General Adi Goldstein, only the second female deputy AG in Rhode Island history.

“We should have more women in positions of leadership,” he said.

A more diverse staff, which Neronha feels would be more representative of the melting pot that is Rhode Island, could also lead to more trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. Neronha acknowledges that he’s well aware of a “lack of trust” in law enforcement within some communities of color, which is why he feels his office’s community outreach is of vital importance.

“It’s critically important. We’ve taken our community outreach program to Woonsocket, Central Falls, Warwick, with community office hours in Providence, to help people on an everyday basis to let them know the AG’s Office cares about them … We can help people in the community. If they don’t know how to find us, we can’t connect with them. My hope is by helping them, they begin to trust us as someone working on their behalf,” he said.

“Part of building that credibility is letting the community know who you are,” he later said. “Some is office hours, some is talking to people at neighborhood associations. It’s important to do that work … If I’m not leaving 150 South Main St. (the Attorney General’s Office in downtown Providence), I’m not doing my job.”

Law enforcement has changed

That being the case, the Attorney General knows that all levels of law enforcement –

from the officers walking the beat to the prosecutors handling the cases – have changed greatly since his career began. Perhaps most notable is the way his office handles low-level drug offenses, which differs greatly from the hardline “war on drugs” mentality seen in the 1980s and 1990s, when someone found to be in possession of a needle and a syringe would be slapped with a five-year felony.

Not everyone who is found in possession of a small amount of narcotics is automatically arrested now, he said. Instead, someone with a few bags of cocaine or heroin or fentanyl will instead be taken to receive treatment and get help.

“We’ve changed over that 20 years or so. The more thoughtful we are, the better results we get,” he said.

“We also have to treat this as a public health crisis, that’s why I put in legislation last year to make small amounts of narcotics for personal use a misdemeanor, not a felony,” Neronha continued. “My hope is that if we handle this the right way as a public health crisis, they’ll be in recovery. I don’t want a felony hanging around their neck, it’ll impede recovery, access to jobs, housing, education.”

However, Neronha said his office will continue to actively and aggressively pursue the dealers who are selling these drugs on the streets across the state.

Protecting the people

Where his office is becoming more aggressive than predecessors, he says, is the “missions that don’t get a lot of attention, but impact the people of the state,” such as environmental regulations, consumer protections, and campaign finance violations.

“We really weren’t doing a lot in terms of environmental enforcement, a majority were not doing what they were doing to protect the environment and the people. We’ve really stepped up efforts in impactful ways, some of that’s not public yet,” he said. “When businesses don’t comply with environmental regulations, everyone should be playing by the same rules. We need to make sure they do, that’s good for business.”

As for consumer protection, Neronha said he has six employees at the Cranston office dedicated to ensuring the rights of the consumer are protected, which can range from assisting with an error in a utility bill to enforcing an insurance company pays a claim. These are things, he said, where his office truly acts as the lawyer for the people of Rhode Island.

“These are services we provide Rhode Islanders on a dayto-day basis,” he said.

Nationally, Neronha has represented Rhode Island in issues at the federal level, be it the rolling back of emissions standards or bringing cases against pharmaceutical companies.

“You’ve got to fight the national fight and the local fight … It’s not clear to me why we’re heading in this direction, other than to eliminate regulations. In the absence of regulations, in some cases, people are harmed,” he said.

All told, since his inauguration, Neronha has either joined a lawsuit or intervened as a friend of the court in more than 100 cases against the federal government and the administration of President Donald Trump.

The protest at the Wyatt

Perhaps the most high-profile case of Neronha’s 11-month tenure was his most recent – the case in which a captain at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility drove his pick-up truck into a group of protesters outside of the prison and guards from the Wyatt deployed pepper spray against the demonstrators.

Ultimately, the Providence County Grand Jury last week reported that no criminal charges were warranted in connection with the incident, a decision that sparked a demonstration of its own outside of Neronha’s downtown Providence office.

“That’s the classic case where using the Grand Jury

was exactly the right thing to do and appropriate,” Neronha said. “It’s a chaotic situation, you’re evaluating different kinds of conduct, the actions of the driver, the deployment of pepper spray. When you have that kind of situation and there’s a lot of evidence, that’s the perfect case to use the Grand Jury.”

“The Grand Jury is the ultimate tool in our democracy because it’s a Grand Jury of your peers to evaluate your conduct,” he later said.

Neronha said there were plenty of lessons to be learned from the incident outside of the Wyatt on Aug. 14 and its aftermath, most notably that the situation “could have been prevented if a more robust police presence had been there that night. There wasn’t, and as a result, people came in contact in a way that led to a really unfortunate incident.”

While Neronha said he was not criticizing any law enforcement decision from that evening, he said that since Aug. 14, follow-up protests have featured a “robust presence” of officers and no additional incidents have occurred.

“That was my lasting takeaway. I think all of us looking back had wished it worked out differently. You draw the conclusions and move forward,” he said.

But what Neronha hopes people take away from the law enforcement profession is that these are men and women who are our neighbors, who have friends and family just like the rest of us. He saw this first-hand on Tuesday night at a police awards ceremony in Burrillville.

“It’s a reminder that police officers are like every Rhode Islander … It’s not easy to be a police officer. The attributes you had 20 years ago you still need: integrity, bravery; today you have to be a diplomat, you have to be able to diffuse situations, deal with mental health situations, you have to bring more thoughtfulness,” Neronha said.

“I’ve been incredibly impressed with the men and women … The future is bright, but challenges are ahead,” he said. “We have to support our police, make sure they know they are valued members of our government.”

Jonathan Bissonnette on Twitter @J_Bissonnette