They worry about further police actions, citing recent raids by federal immigration officials in Providence and other communities.

07/16/2003

BY TATIANA PINA
Journal Staff Writer

Members of Rhode Island's minority community yesterday condemned the state police raid of the Narragansett Indian smoke shop, calling it racist and excessive.

At a news conference in Newport yesterday evening, Latino advocacy groups criticized Governor Carcieri's decision to use troopers to shut down the shop on Monday.

About 15 people from Latino organizations and the Green Party of Rhode Island, stood in front of St. Joseph Church in Newport and took turns condemning the state's actions.

Groups represented included Progreso Latino, the Rhode Island Latino Political Action Committee, the Latino American Outreach Project, the League of United Latin American Citizens of Massachusetts and the Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty of Undocumented Immigrants

They asked the governor to work with the Narragansetts, but also wondered what the state police would be ordered to do next.

"I hope that Governor Carcieri will not use the police to look for hard-working immigrants next," said David Quiroa, of the Latino American Outreach Project in Newport, alluding to a series of recent raids federal immigration officials have conducted in Providence and other communities.

Quiroa said that Latinos could identify with the Indians because the majority of them have Indian blood. He said the raid on the Narragansetts had brought to memory the beatings and killings of Indians by the Guatemalan military in his country during the civil war in the '70s and '80s.

The Rhode Island Civil Rights Roundtable -- an organization made up of representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Urban League and the Providence Human Relations Commission among others -- said that while there are many factual disputes surrounding the raid, members considered the state's action to be "inappropriate and excessive."

Other groups, including the Cambodian Society and Direct Action for Rights and Equality, also condemned the state police action. The incident has people thinking beyond the Narragansett Indians, to wider political and social ramifications.

Melba DePena, president of the Rhode Island Latino Political Action Committee, said she was "appalled" by the raid, which she termed "racist and abusive."

"We are very concerned as to where all these actions are going. There has been a lot of abusive, out-of-control immigration raids in Providence with immigrants. To see this done to Native Americans, who own land [and] go through disrespect and abuse -- what can we expect as immigrants?"

DePena said that RILPAC members along with members of other minority and advocacy groups plan to meet with the Narragansett Indians tomorrow at their smoke shop to talk about how they might help the tribe.

Quiroa, who worked on Carcieri's election campaign, said the governor's actions would hurt the Republican Party's chances of bringing more minorities into the GOP.

"The governor was seen as being someone who could help rebuild the GOP. He can kiss that goodbye. No party is good without the minority community. Now, on the street, the governor is seen as someone who has no regard for basic human rights," Quiroa said.

Molly Soum, president of the Cambodian Society, said that while the videotape of the smoke shop raid was shocking, hostile treatment by police is nothing new to Cambodians.

"We felt very sorry for what happened to the Indians. The way they treated women. A canine was biting a man. They were choking a woman. It was like a child's act," Soum said.

"Police brutality in our community is nothing new. We were abused in Thailand by Thai soldiers. In the United States, it is the police who do the brutality," Soum said.

Soum said that Carcieri's decision to send in the police to the Indians' smoke shop was his "second mistake" regarding people of color. The first was not picking O. Rogeriee Thompson as a Supreme Court judge, she said.

Juan Garcia, an organizer at St. Teresa Church in Providence and a member of the Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty of Undocumented Immigrants, said that Monday's show of force by police served to further frighten the immigrant community, which was already on edge because of recent immigration raids and because of the governor's decision to end the use of individual tax ID numbers to acquire a driver's license. That change adversely affected many immigrants, who complain that they have difficulty obtaining the new documents that are required to get a license.

Dale Jackson, president of Direct Action for Rights and Equality, called the state police raid an unnecessary use of force.

"It reminded me of down South," Jackson said. "I was stationed in Tampa, Florida. To go to town, I had to ride the back of the bus. There were only certain fountains you could drink out of. You could not go to white men's service clubs. And here I was serving my country. Seeing that stuff reminded me of all that prejudice going down."