Relations between the HPD and the greater Hartford community are volatile due to a summer of protests. Tensions escalate when officers shoot and kill two young Black men, Dennis Jones and Charles Jones (no relation). Around the same time, the Guardians perform their walkout and call attention to internal discrimination.
In this context, local organizers in Hartford file a class action lawsuit in New Haven’s US District Court against city management and members of the Hartford Police Department (HPD), including chief Thomas Vaughan. The federal suit, Cintron v. Vaughan, claims that the department had engaged in “a systematic pattern of conduct consisting of violence, intimidation, and humiliation directed at plaintiffs and members of their class solely on account of race, color, alienage or ancestry” under color of law. Further, the suit alleges that this treatment was exacerbated by internal discrimination against officers of color. The eponymous plaintiff Maria Cintron has a story of personal harm caused by police, as do the other two citizens and four organization representatives who join her: Andres Vazquez; Eddie McMullen; Glenda Copes, president of the Hartford chapter of the NAACP; Jose Cruz, president of the Spanish Action Coalition; Edward E. Goode, vice president of the NAACP; and David Hudson, chairman of the Hartford branch of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Cintron and the other plaintiffs are represented by Attorney Sydney Schulman of Neighborhood Legal Services, who would remain on the case for its entire five-decade duration. The original suit is available to read here.