Incident: In March 1970, the HPD set up a plainclothes unit to monitor nine recent purse snatchings in the North End. On March 14th, nineteen-year-old Gary “Mike” Hansley stole someone’s purse outside Mott’s supermarket, knocking her down in the process. Officer Elden Thibodeau and his partner received word of the theft and immediately saw Hansley running with something under his arm. Officer Thibodeau chased Hansley, yelled “Stop, I’m a police officer,” and then threatened to shoot four times. Hansley did not stop running, so Thibodeau fired a shot down low as Hansley vaulted over a fence. Hansley happened to stumble as he landed, such that the bullet entered his lower back and then heart. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. The Hartford Courant reported on the scene: “A youth, who police said was a relative of Hansley’s caused a disruption at St. Francis Hospital shortly after Hansley’s body was brought in. Richard E. Harris, 18 … was arrested with breach of peace.”¹ This detail, mentioned in passing, opens beyond the article’s cold language and transcends it. It reveals a bright trace of the community which held Hansley in life and would honor him, tirelessly and angrily, in death. 

Community Response: The killing led to outrage across Hartford. Mayor Ann Uccello held a meeting with Black community leaders who called for Officer Thibodeau’s suspension, stricter regulations regarding police use of firearms, and closer cooperation between the police and citizen groups. The Spanish Action Coalition issued a statement: “We trust that guidelines will be revised to bring them into line with present standards of human value extent in our community.”² Hartford’s Human Relations Commission, led by Reverend Alfred White, also asked for Thibodeau’s suspension, along with an end to warning shots, immunity for any witness of a police shooting, cooperation with the Oakland Civic Patrol (see below), and an emergency meeting of the state legislature to address “the worsening race relations of Connecticut.”³ The commission also called a mass rally at Horace Bushnell church, a hub of local political organizing at Albany Avenue and Vine Street in the North End. 

Subsequent meetings at Horace Bushnell yielded petitions and protests outside the HPD headquarters. Groups involved included the Hartford chapter of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union, the Welfare Mothers, the Vine Street Tenants Association, Greater Hartford Council of Churches, and Welfare Recipients Are People. The Community Renewal team, Hartford’s eight million dollar anti-poverty program, released a statement expressing dissatisfaction with the information offered by the police on Hansley’s shooting. 

The Horace Bushnell activity culminated in a city council meeting on March 24th. Over 300 people showed up to lend support to a set of community resolutions being presented along with a petition signed by 1,500. The council suspended their rules to allow four citizen representatives to speak, rather than one. Regina Brown, a youth counselor at Horace Bushnell, read three resolutions: that there be a policy under which any officer who has killed someone be suspended without pay until the investigation is over; that police only use guns when someone’s life is in imminent danger, including their own; and that the city council explore the use of tranquilizer guns so that an officer shoots to apprehend a suspect, not to kill. 

By April, the city had seen two more shootings of young men at the hands of police (William Casey and Abraham Rodriguez, below), which increased civilian pressure on Hartford officials. Protests were held outside of HPD headquarters and at the home of Mayor Ann Ucello. Reverend Edward Goode, an original plaintiff on Cintron v. Vaughan, was one of many who orchestrated sit-ins at city hall with the aim of provoking the city council to institute checks on police power. That month, the Hartford Star, Hartford’s most prominent Black newspaper, asked a range of citizens “What steps should the black community take in view of the recent killings?” Two responses represent the wide range of thought present in local discourse at the time.  

• D.P. Testman, Contractor – “with such atrocities, our black community can only ask for some kind of justification for the action of the police. We should have a better screening process. What we need now more than ever is some respect for human life; after all, this is not a war zone.”
• Helen Williams – “we should all group together and when a cop shoots one of our brothers, we should shoot one of theirs. In other words, I’m talking about an eye for an eye.”⁴

Community engagement, initially spurred by Hansley’s death and increasingly inflamed by subsequent shootings, would lead to the city council committee investigating police use of firearms (See City Council Committee on Police use of Firearms).

Investigation: Officer Thibodeau was found to be acting within police guidelines on deadly force, which followed Martyn v. Donlin. In Hansley’s case, Thibodeau was allowed to shoot because Hansley had knocked down his victim, constituting the felony of robbery with violence. Thibodeau was officially absolved of any wrongdoing by Coroner Irving Aronson on May 7th. The officer was reassigned to an administrative position, common practice when a police officer is involved in a shooting that causes them emotional trauma. In March of 1971, attorney Samuel Bernstein sued Officer Thibodeau for $300,000 on behalf of Hansley’s estate. Hansley’s mother commented, “even if Mike was guilty of the crime, then he should have been tried and punished accordingly; but is a pocketbook worth a person’s life?”⁵ There is no documentation of the suit’s result, but considering similar cases at the time, it is safe to assume that no damages were awarded.