The Court has afforded Plaintiff such leniency as is appropriate in his circumstances as noted in other decisions issued in this case. E.g., Boudreau v. Petit, C.A. No. 17-301WES, 2024 WL 4279522, at *1 n.1 (D.R.I. Sept. 24, 2024).

Boudreau v. Lussier, 901 F.3d 65, 69 (1st Cir. 2018) (“summary judgment in favor of the defendants on all of Boudreau's claims ... affirmed.”).

See Mazza v. City of Boston, Civil Action No. 24-10333-NMG, 2024 WL 4505328, at *3-4 (D. Mass. Oct. 15, 2024) (citing and explicating Monell v. Dept. of Soc. Servs. of City of New York, 436 U.S. 658 (1978)).

As to the “misconduct” for which Plaintiff seeks to hold Warwick responsible, Count 9 rests on the conclusory allegation that Officer Petit retaliated against Plaintiff for suing him in the 2013 lawsuit through the fabrication of probable cause and concealment of evidence resulting in the State prosecution for embezzlement initiated on June 11, 2014. ECF No. 79 ¶¶ 172-86. As far as the Court is aware, the only factual claim against Officer Petit is that, having been actively involved with ATC (a collateral victim of Plaintiff's 2011 possession of child pornography committed using ATC's computer), Officer Petit interviewed, at Rhode Island State Police Headquarters on July 30 and August 1, 2013, two employees of ATC about their contention that Plaintiff embezzled from ATC. Plaintiff alleges that, in performing these interviews, Officer Petit was acting outside the scope of his employment as a Warwick police officer because ATC is a Cranston entity and outside the scope of his assignment to a state-wide task force addressing on-line crimes against children because the crime in issue was embezzlement. See id. ¶¶ 100-01.

In Plaintiff's prior filings, including his “notice” of mail interference, ECF No. 203, he alleged that paper filings and production were posing serious issues, that each mailing must be placed in a specific type of envelope, with separate envelopes and mailing expenses for each tranche of paper approaching or exceeding one hundred pages. Boudreau, 2024 WL 4906265, at *1. In his objection, Plaintiff changed course and now advises that, because the mailings relate to a civil lawsuit, he is able to receive and store up to 5000 pages of documents without any limit. ECF No. 213 at 3-4.

To the extent that Plaintiff subsequently clarifies his factual allegations, Warwick will then have an obligation to supplement its responsive production. The Order issued today relates only to such documents of which Warwick is presently aware that are factually supportive of its affirmative defenses.

The memorandum that forms the basis for Plaintiff's collateral estoppel argument (ECF No. 59-1) states only that any “actions” of Warwick and Officer Petit with respect to embezzlement were taken in reliance on ATC's statements, which were sufficient to establish probable cause. ECF No. 59-1 at 5. The memorandum does not represent that Officer Petit performed an investigation.

This justification for discovery also fails because the operative fact – that Officer Petit became aware of the 2013 lawsuit in July 2013, before he conducted the embezzlement interviews – is admitted in his Answer. ECF No. 83 ¶ 10 (admitting ECF No. 79 ¶ 58).

Tucked into his argument about Request 11, Plaintiff also mentions Request 13, which seeks any policy addressing the duty of a Warwick employee to advise the City that he/she has been sued. Because Plaintiff presents no argument why the Court should compel production responsive to Request 13, to the extent that Plaintiff seeks to compel production of documents responsive to Request 13, the motion is denied.

Plaintiff challenges the accuracy of Warwick's response by reference to three civil cases filed in this Court: Shackelford v. Warwick, Chisholm v. Warwick and Heon v. Rhode Island. Having considered all three, the Court finds that none supports Plaintiff's contention that Warwick is covering up responsive documents. First, in Shackelford v. Major, an individual claimed that a Warwick police officer (not Officer Petit) relied on a vacated warrant (due to an error by the State, not the Warwick officer) to sue for false imprisonment, selective enforcement/prosecution and malicious prosecution. C.A. No. 14-316M, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 144520, at *13 (D.R.I. October 21, 2015). This Court found these claims lacking in merit and entered summary judgment in favor of Warwick and its police officer. Id. at *11-17. Shackelford is is not relevant to Plaintiff's allegation that Officer Petit intentionally concealed evidence and fabricated probable cause to induce the State Police to initiate the embezzlement prosecution. Chisholm is even more remote – it involves the claim of a Warwick teacher that she had been transferred in 2019 (well after any conceivable Monell period that might be applicable in this case) for raising concerns about her classroom. Chisholm v. City of Warwick, C.A. No. 19-00206-WES, 2022 WL 252075, at *1-2 (D.R.I. Jan. 26, 2022), adopted by text order (D.R.I. Apr. 6, 2022). Plaintiff's invocation of Chisholm illustrates the degree to which he is seeking Monell discovery that is utterly irrelevant to the claims and defenses in this case. Third, Plaintiff cites Heon v. Rhode Island, in which an individual claimed false imprisonment against Warwick and various Warwick police officers based on a 1991 prosecution. C.A. No. 17-109-JJM-PAS, 2017 WL 5634862, at *1 (D.R.I. Nov. 21, 2017). However, Plaintiff fails to add that these claims were dismissed in 2017/2018 as lacking any merit because the claimant had failed to supply more than conclusory allegations with no factual specificity. See C.A. No. 17-109-JJM, Text Orders of July 10, 2017 & Jan. 22, 2018. Documents related to Heon are simply not relevant to the claims and defenses in this case. The Court notes that, in his sanctions motion (ECF No. 178), Plaintiff relies on yet another case, Wheeler v. Nelson. This Court has already held that Wheeler also does not support Plaintiff's claim that Warwick has “lied” about not having received complaints sufficient to establish a Monell pattern. See Boudreau, 2024 WL 4771355, at *3 n.4.

The motion to compel Request 34 is also denied because it is duplicated by Request 53, in response to which Warwick provided responsive documents and as to which Plaintiff has not brought a motion to compel.

Request 46 is confusing in that it seeks policies concerning any internal discipline to which Officer Petit “has been subjected.” Because Plaintiff's motion asks only for the Bates ranges for already produced policies, the Court hereby grants this request, interpreted as seeking Bates ranges for Warwick's police discipline policies in effect for the year prior to and at the time of Office Petit's alleged misconduct (between July 30, 2013, and June 11, 2014). Warwick is ordered to supply the Bates ranges within thirty days of this decision.

The Court rejects Plaintiff's argument that, no later than 2014, Warwick was put on notice by a summary judgment filing in another case that it would be sued in this case, giving rise to a sweeping duty to suspend its retention programs and preserve all of the Monell discovery covered by these requests. The Court has examined the summary judgment documents to which Plaintiff adverts and finds that this argument is troublingly misleading in that Plaintiff's 2014 filing did not target Warwick at all; rather, it is laser focused on ATC. Boudreau v. Lussier, 13-cv-388WES, ECF No. 157-2 at 41. These issues will be addressed further in the Court's ruling on Plaintiff's motion for Rule 37 sanctions.

Plaintiff alleges that Warwick's objection to these requests is based in part on a claim of privilege pursuant to the Rhode Island Law Enforcement Bill of Rights (“LEOBOR”), R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-28.6-1, et seq., although Warwick's brief in opposition does not appear to rely on such a privilege. To be clear, my ruling on these requests has not been based on any such privilege in reliance on this Court's holding that the “prohibition against public statements contained in R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-28.6-2(12) was not intended to and does not absolutely immunize internal police investigations from discovery in civil litigation.” Mauti v. Scuncio, C.A. No. 08-054S, 2010 WL 11431466, at *3 (D.R.I. May 25, 2010). Put differently, to the extent that any clearly relevant non-privileged document has been withheld based on LEOBOR, it should be produced.

Warwick's brief in opposition to the motion to compel represents that Plaintiff already has a “full copy of Defendant Petit's [internal affairs] records.” ECF No. 210 at 16. Warwick's brief in opposition to the sanctions motion represents with respect to Officer Petit that all “[internal affairs] records and complaints against” him have already been produced. ECF No. 209 at 4. To the extent that it has not done so, Warwick should supply Plaintiff with a clear response advising which relevant records pertinent to Officer Petit have been provided and producing or identifying and explaining the failure to produce or providing a log as to any responsive ones that have been withheld.

This state child pornography prosecution resolved initially in January 2014 based on Plaintiff's plea of nolo contendere. However, this charge remains potentially pending in that this Court's denial of Plaintiff's habeas petition seeking to overturn his 2014 conviction is now pending before the First Circuit Court of Appeals. See Boudreau v. State of Rhode Island, 23-cv-259JJM, ECF No. 25 (D.R.I. Apr. 24, 2024).

Warwick's argument suggests that it believes there are no relevant responsive documents because Officer Petit's action – interviewing two ATC principals – was conducted at Rhode Island State Police headquarters, not at Warwick's police station. In any event, Warwick represents that its retention policy means that any documents covered by this request have long since been destroyed. If this is accurate, Plaintiff is entitled to a response that says so.

Based on its familiarity with Plaintiff's filings in this case, including his disingenuous misinterpretation of a Superior Court ruling, which holds that “the State” failed to turn over additional inculpatory material that confirmed Plaintiff's guilt of possessing child pornography, the Court utterly rejects Plaintiff's hyperbolic assertion that Warwick's failure to produce Officer Petit's personal cell phone records constitutes an “attempt[ ] to conceal material evidence in this case, and it would not be the first time.” ECF No. 177 at 23.

See Emma Kaufman, Territoriality in American Criminal Law, 121 Mich. L. Rev. 353, 356, 383 (2022) (concept of territorialism in law enforcement “is so familiar that it usually goes unstated” but in practice is affected by state law and agreements among municipalities permitting local police and fire officials to assist in neighboring communities).