The Rhode Island Department of Public Safety is weighing a change to the state's body-worn camera rules that would let officers involved in serious use-of-force incidents watch their own camera footage before giving a formal recorded statement about what happened, according to the agency's June 2 filing with the Rhode Island Secretary of State.
The ACLU of Rhode Island warned in a July 8 statement that the change would weaken police accountability statewide. The proposal, filed under regulation 270-RICR-60-00-2, went through a public comment period that closed July 3.
Under the rules adopted when the statewide camera program launched in 2022, an officer involved in a use-of-force incident must record a formal statement describing what happened before ever watching the body-camera footage. That sequencing was designed to capture the officer's independent memory of a threat before it could be shaped by anything the video shows. Only after that formal statement is on the record can the officer view the footage and add a supplemental statement.
The amendment DPS is now considering would change that order. An officer could give an informal, unrecorded oral account to a supervising officer, then watch the body-camera video, and only after that provide the formal recorded statement, according to the ACLU's account of the proposed text.
Advocates argue that sequence removes a safeguard meant to prevent what investigators call "recollection contamination" — the risk that a person's memory of an event gets reshaped by information they learn afterward, in this case by watching video of the same incident they're being asked to describe. The Rhode Island Attorney General's own benefit-cost analysis of the original 2022 policy raised the same concern, warning that when an officer views a recording before providing a statement, "there is a possibility that the officer's recollection and perception of the incident may be tainted by information the officer learns from reviewing the recording."
Opposition to the proposed change was not limited to the ACLU. The Providence External Review Authority, the city's civilian police oversight board, submitted testimony against it. So did the Rhode Island Office of the Public Defender, Roger Williams University law professor Andrew Horwitz, and the ACCESS/RI Coalition, a group of open-government and press organizations.
The rule matters well beyond any single department. Rhode Island's Statewide Body-Worn Camera Program, funded with $16 million in state and federal money starting in 2022, has equipped more than 1,800 cameras across 42 local and state law enforcement agencies. Because departments must certify they've adopted the statewide policy to keep their camera funding, the state rule functions as a floor — individual departments can adopt stricter local policies, but none can fall below whatever standard the state sets. A weaker state rule lowers the baseline for nearly every uniformed officer in Rhode Island, even in towns that never separately debate the issue.
The regulatory fight follows a broader stall in police transparency legislation. A sweeping rewrite of the state's public records law, which would have required departments to release use-of-force body-camera footage within 30 days, died in committee during the General Assembly's 2026 session after opposition from state agencies, according to Rhode Island Current. DPS had told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a May 21 letter that it had "strong concerns" about that 30-day mandate. Lawmakers ultimately passed only a narrower measure making state crash data public, leaving the body-camera release rules untouched.
DPS has not yet released a concise explanatory statement or a final rule filing responding to the comment period, and it is not yet clear whether the agency will adopt the amendment as proposed, revise it, or drop the change altogether. Individual departments, including in Providence, could choose to keep the current statement-before-video sequence in their own local policies regardless of what the state decides.
The full public comment record is on file with the Rhode Island Secretary of State's rulemaking portal, where DPS's next filing on the regulation will also be posted.