CENTRAL FALLS — Last month was the first in more than four years in which the governing body of the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center did not hold a public meeting to discuss decisions about facility operations.

One of Rhode Island's foremost advocates of transparency in government says the hiatus is poorly timed.

"While I recognize that August can be a slow time for many agencies, it is deeply disturbing that the first month in four years to go by without a Corporation meeting is the month that a detainee died in the agency's custody and a Wyatt employee tried to run over peaceful protesters," said Steven Brown, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island. "If anything, the Wyatt Board should be calling a special meeting to expeditiously discuss this tragedy and whether the facility could have done anything differently to address the detainee's medical condition."

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Gilbert Delestre, a 39-year-old in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service who had been held at the prison, died early Sunday morning after almost three days at Rhode Island Hospital.

According to the Secretary of State Office's Open Meetings portal, the last month in which the Central Falls Detention Facility Corporation did not hold a public meeting was February 2015.

At that time the facility was in receivership and its investors were in litigation over its financial obligations to the City of Central Falls. The corporation's board of directors held no meetings from July 2014 until they resumed in March 2015.

Warden Daniel Martin said scheduling and conducting public meeting is the responsibility of the board of directors.

A spokesman for the corporation said that neither the protests nor Delestre's death played a role in the decision to not have an August meeting.

Wyatt said there was a meeting scheduled before either incident, but that quorum was not met due to one of the directors being away.

The Open Meetings portal shows no record of a canceled meeting this month.

— kandrade@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @Kevprojo