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A Rhode Island special assistant attorney general was arrested in Newport after failing to leave after being trespassed, and becoming defensive with police officers asking her to leave.
Special Assistant Attorney General Devon Hogan Flanagan was arrested Aug. 14 outside the Clarke Cooke House restaurant and charged with trespassing, according to a police report. The incident was recorded on an officer’s body camera.
“Buddy, you’re gonna regret this. You’re gonna regret it,” Flanagan is heard saying in the body camera video. “I’m an A.G.”
She was arrested along with another woman, who was identified as a friend from college.
The incident is under review by the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office.
“Ms. Flanagan has been employed with the Office for approximately 7 years and is currently assigned to Appellate Unit of the Criminal Division,” the Attorney General’s Office said in a statement. “The Office immediately began a review of the incident, which we anticipate will conclude within the next few days.”
The office said it was unable to comment further on the incident as it relates to “personnel issues.”
Special Assistant Attorney General Devon Flanagan, left, seen on Newport Police body camera footage outside the Clarke Cooke House on Aug. 14 prior to her arrest for trespassing.
What police say happened that night
At around 9:51 p.m. that night, officers responded to the restaurant at 24 Bannister’s Wharf for a report of an “unwanted party,” the Newport Police Department said.
Police reports for both Flanagan and the involved friend state that alcohol was involved.
Two women, later identified as Flanagan and the other party, can be seen on police body camera video standing outside the restaurant as an officer pulls up.
As the officer gets out of his cruiser, Flanagan tells him she wants him to “turn his body cam off.”
“Protocol is that you turn it off if a citizen requests to turn it off,” Flanagan, of Warwick, says.
During the recorded interaction, Flanagan repeatedly asks officers to turn off their body cameras, insisting it was protocol. Newport Police Department’s protocol allows for the footage to be turned off if a witness or victim requests it and the scene is non-confrontational, among other situations.
“They want you guys to leave. Let’s just leave. Let’s just make it easy,” an officer can be heard saying on the video.
The officer then walks over to the restaurant’s host station.
“You guys just want them out? Do you want them trespassed?” the officer asks.
“Anything we can do. Trespass, yeah. Cuff ’em. Please,” a man at the host station says.
Both women put into police cruisers, body cam video shows
Flanagan was handcuffed and placed into a police cruiser first, the video shows.
“I’m an A.G., I’m an A.G,” Flanagan repeats as the cruiser door shuts.
Has Flanagan been placed on leave?
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha went on talk radio Tuesday morning and addressed the incident.
“Look, she’s put me in a bad position. She’s embarrassed herself, humiliated herself, treated the Newport Police Department horribly,” Neronha said during the Aug. 19 interview on WPRO. “She is going to take some steps to try to address that in the next day or so.”
While he did not say what the “steps” would entail, he did say an apology to the Newport Police Department was “clearly necessary, and she understands that.”
Neronha said Flanagan would “take responsibility for her conduct and then we’ll go from there,” adding that he hadn’t yet decided what to do as far as discipline.
“It was inexcusable behavior,” he said. “She knows better … I’ve got 110 lawyers. She embarrassed all of them, in a sense.”
Neronha also said Flanagan “misstated” body camera protocol.
“Look, it’s my office that drove that body cam program in the first place. So I’m really glad that they’re on every police officer in the state,” Neronha said.
Kathy Gregg contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI Asst. AG Devon Flanagan berates cops while under arrest in Newport
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