Just because someone is highly educated does not mean they are immune to being wrong. For one Rhode Island prosecutor, that reality came crashing down during a late-night scene at a well-known New England restaurant. It all began when the woman refused to leave Clarke Cooke House in Newport after staff asked her to go. The manager, clearly frustrated by her refusal, decided to call in the police to resolve the situation.
Now, most people confronted by officers would quietly comply and step outside, but Devon Hogan Flanagan felt she was above such ordinary treatment. That may be because she is not just anyone. She is a Rhode Island Special Assistant Attorney General. Her position gave her the confidence to argue instead of cooperate, and that confidence quickly turned into confrontation.
Rather than listening to the officers, the prosecutor tried to direct them. On body camera footage released by police, Flanagan can be heard ordering officers to turn off their cameras, insisting that protocol required it. She declared that, as a lawyer, she was right about the rules, and her companion even backed up her claims. The officers, however, were not convinced. At one point, an officer even asked the restaurant manager whether they wanted the Rhode Island prosecutor charged with trespassing. The manager responded that anything was fine as long as she finally left the premises.
The officers returned to Flanagan, but she remained defiant. She repeated her demand to switch off the body camera, and the police dismissed her reasoning as nonsense. When pressed to leave, Flanagan instead identified herself loudly and repeatedly as an assistant attorney general, shouting “I’m an AG” as if that would change the outcome. The officers had had enough. She was placed in handcuffs and led toward a police car while still protesting her status. Her boyfriend attempted to defend her, echoing the same line that she was an AG, but police ignored the protests and moved forward with the arrest. Flanagan, sensing her authority slipping away, shouted at the officers, “You’re going to regret this,” before being placed inside the cruiser.
Unsurprisingly, the video made its way online and spread quickly. Many viewers were not sympathetic. Comments flooded in mocking her behavior, calling it entitled and out of touch. One person wrote, “The privilege in this video is off the rails.” Others laughed at how she kept repeating her title as if it placed her above the law. Some were frustrated that the situation escalated at all, pointing out how easily it could have been avoided if she had simply left when asked.
“It was a power-play. They WANTED the cops to show up and the cops just treated her like a queen so could turn her nose up at everyone else how right and privileged she is. She wanted to be RIGHT sooooo bad and powerful,” one Redditor wrote.
