NORTH SMITHFIELD — The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the town’s Police Department, claiming it illegally withheld an arrest report earlier last month.

Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU’s Rhode Island affiliate, said the suit was being filed on behalf of Gregory Pehrson, executive director of Fuerza Laboral, a Central Falls-based workers-rights group. The suit, filed by ACLU volunteer lawyer Gary D. Berkowitz, seeks the release of the report and $1,000 in penalties.

Brown said Pehrson went to the North Smithfield police station Nov. 11 to get a copy of a report on the arrest of Jose Hernandez, whom he said had been charged by North Smithfield police on Nov. 6 with using a fictitious or fraudulent identification.

Hernandez was a passenger in car that was pulled over in North Smithfield on Nov. 6, Brown said. Hernandez produced a document that Brown said gave his correct name and address, but was still charged.

When Pehrson went to get a copy of the arrest report, Brown said the dispatcher on duty told him that no copy of the arrest report would be provided until the case was resolved. The dispatcher was also quoted as saying Hernandez would have to come to the station with a lawyer to get his own copy.

Brown said that in-person request was followed up by a faxed letter to Chief Steven E. Reynolds. Brown said there was no response to the faxed letter.

Reynolds said the ACLU’s announcement of the suit was the first he had heard about the legal action and until he’d had a chance to review the matter with the town’s lawyer, he could not comment on the specifics of the case.

“What I can tell you is, the matter will be reviewed by myself along with the town solicitor,” he said.

Arrest reports are public information under state law, Brown said, calling the dispatcher’s refusal to provide a copy “direct defiance of the state’s Access to Public Records Act.”

The public records law has a section devoted to police records and states: “ … records or reports reflecting the initial arrest of an adult and the charge or charges brought against an adult shall be public.”

“It’s inexcusable,” Brown said of the refusal.

“I think what we need is a new open records law that increases the penalties for this,” he said.

mmckinne@projo.com