WPRO News and the Associated Press
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – Two Providence police officers have received one-day suspensions for knocking a man down and erasing a cell phone video he had taken of them.
Attorney Shannah Kurland tells the Providence Journal the department notified her client, John Prince, that the officers had been found guilty of violating police policy at a departmental hearing.
Prince says Sgt. Roger Aspinal and Patrolman Francisco Guerra told him to stop taping as they were questioning two women outside his apartment last September. He says one of the officers jumped a fence, wrestled him to the ground, grabbed his phone and erased the video.
Prince works with Direct Action for Rights and Equality, a social justice group that often criticizes the police.
Kurland says the officers have also been ordered to undergo retraining.
