The issue of beach access is ever present in Rhode Island, but has taken on renewed prominence in the last few years, due at least in some part to a man’s arrest in June 2019. He was collecting seaweed on the beach just east of Charlestown Town Beach. Beachfront property owners had hired a security guard to tell people like Keeley to move along, when he refused the police were called.
Rhode Island law says people have the right to access the shore to do things like fish and swim and walk and collect seaweed. Different people have different interpretations about where those rights begin and end, what can be done on either side, and how that line can even be measured.