The Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the City of Woonsocket and a former police detective for wrongfully arresting and incarcerating a homeless man for a 2022 break-in.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Providence alleges that Mack Blackie’s civil rights were violated when he was twice arrested and detained by Woonsocket police for a crime he didn’t commit.
Blackie spent more than a month locked up at the Adult Correctional Institutions on the felony breaking-and-entering charge because he couldn’t afford to pay the bail. (The felony charge has been dismissed and the case expunged from Blackie’s record.)
“This is a tragic case,” said Joshua D. Xavier, a Warwick lawyer representing Blackie who is working on the case with the Rhode Island ACLU. “This case really demonstrates that the harm caused by injustice is exacerbated significantly when the victims of the injustice are indigent.’’
(Blackie’s struggle to regain his health and sobriety were chronicled in The Public’s Radio’s 2022 series, Chasing The Fix. Blackie has now been sober for more than two years but still has no permanent home.)
Blackie was homeless and struggling with alcohol addiction when he was wrongfully arrested and detained twice in 2022 and charged with breaking into the apartment of a Woonsocket couple.
According to the suit, Woonsocket Police Officer Timothy M. Hammond, who was then a detective, made “false statements” in his recording of a witness statement, as well as in affidavits in support of Blackie’s arrest in August of 2022 and again the following October. And though Hammond told the witness that he would arrange a photo line-up so the couple could I.D. the suspect, Hammond never did. (Woonsocket police suspended Hammond without pay for 10 days and demoted him to patrol officer.)
It wasn’t until a court hearing in February 2023 that the crime’s only witnesses finally got a look at the man police had charged with breaking into their apartment. And the couple said they knew instantly: the police had arrested the wrong man.
Xavier, the lawyer representing Blackie, said that his client has experienced “significant emotional distress and suffering” as a result of his arrest and incarceration. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages including compensation for pain and suffering, as well as legal expenses.
Woonsocket City Solicitor Michael J. Lepizzera, Jr. on Friday declined to comment on the allegations in the suit, saying in an email that “the city has not yet been served with a copy.” He went on to say that the officer named in the suit had “acknowledged the shortcomings of his investigation in failing to follow standard investigative procedures’’ and that there was “nothing intentional on the part of the officer.”
This story has been updated with information from Woonsocket City Solicitor Michael J. Lepizzera, Jr.
Health reporter Lynn Arditi can be reached at larditi@thepublicsradio.org
