PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union says protests outside a convicted child rapist’s Providence home violate a city ordinance.
Steven Brown, the executive director of the ACLU Rhode Island, said in a letter to Mayor Jorge Elorza that loud protests outside of Richard Gardner’s home “violate a city ordinance that bans targeted residential picketing.” Brown also criticized Elorza for encouraging the “raucous protests.”
Elorza had previously said that Gardner’s crimes were “absolutely heinous” and that he had “given up his right” to live in the community.
The ACLU has argued that Gardner is allowed to live in Providence.
Gardner was released from prison in 2016. He was convicted of multiple child rapes in the 1980s and early 1990s in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
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