Amanda Pinto reports:
In what may be the first lawsuit of its kind in the state, a Rhode Island man is suing the town because he was listed in an online arrest log when he was 17 years old, which is not permitted by law.
The plantiff, now 18, is identified in the suit as John Doe to protect his privacy. State law mandates that arrest records for people under the age of 18 “shall be confidential and shall not be open to public inspection,” his attorney, Diane Polan of New Haven, wrote in the suit.
Polan and other law scholars said the case is unique.
“In my experience, (police) are scrupulous about this, following the state law,” Polan said. “I’ve never heard of this happening.”
Once it did happen, in this “age of Internet privacy invasion” police could not put the genie back in the bottle, Polan said.
According to the lawsuit filed in Superior Court in New Haven, the information remained on the Web site for nearly one year, and is now available on other Web sites.
Read more in the New Haven Register.