Dimitri Lyssikatos had asked Superior Court Judge Melissa Long for summary judgement in his suit against the Pawtucket Police Department’s refusal to release 57 internal-affairs reports produced over a two-year period.

PROVIDENCE — A Superior Court judge on Monday ruled a Providence man was not entitled to immediate access to internal affairs reports generated by the Pawtucket Police Department without additional court arguments over whether they are public records.

Dimitri Lyssikatos had asked Superior Court Judge Melissa Long for summary judgement in his suit against the Pawtucket Police Department’s refusal to release 57 internal-affairs reports produced over a two-year period.

But Long rejected the request for a swift decision, saying she might have to impose a form of “balancing test” that weighed the public’s interest in the documents against any potential privacy concerns of the officers involved.

That was not what civil libertarians wanted to hear.

“I believe secret government won today and the people lost,” said Lyssikatos, a member of the Rhode Island Accountability Project, a nonpartisan organization which promotes transparency in local government.

Steven Brown, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, which is representing Lyssikatos, said, “We have two Rhode Island Supreme Court decisions that make it very clear that the final reports of investigations of police misconduct are public” — without mentioning any requirement of a balancing test.

“Mr. Lyssikatos has asked for records. He thinks they’re important, and the agency that wants to hide the records shouldn’t be in the position of deciding that they’re not,“ said Brown.

Joseph F. Penza, a lawyer representing the Pawtucket Fraternal Order of Police, declined to comment after the hearing. But earlier this month in a hearing before Long, Penza said some of the records were internal complaints similar to issues that would be reported to human resources, such as an officer needing a haircut or wearing the wrong uniform. The police opposed the release of the documents, he said.

Brown said that in withholding the records — which would have the police officer’s name and other identifying information redacted — the department is making a distinction that the Supreme Court never made: that somehow internal affairs complaints generated within a department can be treated differently than complaints filed by the general public.

He blamed the administration of former Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin for creating that distinction in an advisory opinion to the Pawtucket Police Department, which denied Lyssikatos’ initial open records requests.

“It’s unfortunately another example of the continued impact that the previous attorney general is having on access to public records,” said Brown. “This is all based on an advisory opinion his office issued a year or so ago and some police departments are clinging to it to deny the public access of very important records.”

James Cullen, the ACLU volunteer lawyer representing Lyssikatos, said the state’s Access to Public Record Act is a “disclosure statute” — not a law to be used to withhold public records.

“It’s about what the government is up to, whether they are investigating internal issues of violence or internal issues of uniform compliance. I think the same rules ought to apply,” Cullen said.

Brown said despite Long's denial for summary judgement, the ACLU would move forward with the case.