Ultimately, the consent decree was sunsetted not because the Hartford Police Department had fixed its deeply-ingrained problems, but because there was no proof that it had directly failed to comply with the 1973 or 2010 agreements. Much of the documents’ language was vague and aspirational, and holds little water in a courtroom. The story of Cintron v. Vaughan searches for a path between the potential and limitations of judicial police reform. Often, “justice” does not represent the totality of the facts, or the feelings of the public, or even the volume of harm caused, but rather a game played—earnestly—between narrow readings. 

In her final order regarding the dissolution of Cintron v. Vaughan, Judge Karen Dooley affirmed the need for reform in Hartford’s Police Department, but felt that judicial oversight was no longer the appropriate arena in which to do so. “The next step in Plaintiffs’ continuing, important, and commendable efforts to promote diversity in the Hartford Police Department lies not with this Court, but with the police department itself, the City of Hartford, and the greater Hartford community.” (Source, page 6). What do these steps look like? Is the force’s racial diversity—a concern which took the forefront in Cintron’s last leg of litigation and in Dooley’s decision—a promising avenue for decreasing police misconduct and advancing public safety? A full engagement with that question is beyond the scope of this project, but the work of Devon Carbado suggests an answer. 

Carbado, law professor and author of several books including Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment, has written extensively on the law, policing, critical race theory, and many nexuses therein. In “The Black Police, Policing Our Own,” published in the Harvard Law Review with legal scholar L. Song Richardson, a review of James Forman Jr.’s Locking Up Our Own—a Pulitzer-winning study of the War on Crime as supported by Black leaders in Washington, DC—turns into an assessment of racial diversity as police reform. Carbado and Richardson call on sociological, psychological and legal sources to explain why Black police officers often exhibit racial bias and use excessive force against Black civilians, in fact just as frequently as white officers do. To provide a brief summary of their arguments: Black officers may simply have the same racial biases as white officers; they may experience “self-threats,” or psychological threats to their selfhood which are then reaffirmed through demonstrations of authority; they may feel significant pressure to fit into their department’s culture; and finally, the structure and legal backdrop behind policing puts serious pressure on officers to overpolice poor minority areas. In reality, many police departments are significantly diverse; some, such as the LAPD, are majority-minority. This “progress” has not altered the structure of police power. 

Carbado and Richardson point to several recursive cycles which exacerbate overpolicing in Black communities, one of which is associated with “stereotype threat.” This psychological phenomenon “refers to the anxiety that occurs when people are concerned about confirming a negative stereotype about a social group they value and to which they belong.” (2000) Ironically and tragically, when police officers are worried about people assuming they have racial biases based on police stereotypes, they may exhibit an increased propensity toward violence because they fear their legitimacy is threatened. Often, the officer’s authority is reasserted through force directed towards Black civilians. This theory provides one insight into the deeply ingrained problems within police departments such as the HPD, which have been reckoning with discriminatory reputations for decades. Despite the warnings which have long been raised by victims of brutality and astute commentators such as Carl D. Smith, whose article “Black Police and the Community” was published in the Hartford Star in 1970, racial diversity has remained a stable aspiration within mainstream progressive visions of police reform. Carbado and Richardson conclude their article: “whether or not police officers are policing their own, if the broader structural forces we have discussed remain the same, the racial dimensions of policing with which the nation continues to grapple are likely to persist.” (2025) 

If not racial diversity, what are other “next steps” for the Hartford Police Department? One former HPD officer feels that what Cintron lacked in scope was taken up by 2020’s Police Accountability Act. Perhaps the legislature, in its more direct relationship with the populace, is a better arena for these kinds of negotiations; time will tell. Outside government, the media has been a moderately effective conduit for change, as seen in the department’s immediate response to the Hartford Courant’s 1992 investigation into police brutality case tracking. However, the media’s potential is sadly limited to those few cases which become spectacularized, in part disguising their normality and providing the illusion of easy progress. This kind of publicized change may actually slow real progress, since it is easier to behead the “bad apples” than it is to address systemic issues which guarantee the continuance of racialized violence and discrimination under the color of law.

Dooley’s decision to sunset the decree after fifty years caused great concern among Hartford’s organizers. “We are deeply concerned that this dissolution of the consent decree will go in a step backwards for the city of Hartford and its residents,” said Betts, “especially our Black and brown community members who have historically been targeted by discriminatory policing practices.” In keeping with the case’s inception, critiques of its dissolution are concerned with both over- and under-policing. While Betts advocated for judicial oversight to curb such issues as excessive force and discriminatory traffic stops, state NAACP leader Scot Esdaile pointed to the high rate of violent crime in Hartford; “39 murders last year. Violence is out of control in our city, and this particular decree should not be sunsetted.” (Source)  

These responses to the decree’s dissolution are not always directly tied to its actual functioning; in the public imagination, the consent decree wielded more power than it ever did in practice. From 1973, it was a statement of intention more than a method towards realizing significant change, and inertia reigns in matters of bureaucracy. To be sure, important tangible progress was made with regard to the civilian complaint procedure, the FDBI, and the investigations conducted into officer-involved shootings. But ultimately, Cintron v. Vaughan’s value may have lied most in the space it opened for imagining alternative futures. The consent decree provided a field of potential in which competing visions of policing could be negotiated, albeit via the formal demands of the justice system. Even when faced with barriers to progress and resistance from the HPD, Cintron signified hope. The case empowered community members to name the language of harassment used by police as a mode of racial violence. It became a vessel for public outrage and grief when community leaders such as Carmen Rodriguez exhumed it in response to the murder of Aquan Salmon. Cintron was a potent acknowledgement, consistently re-affirmed, that the police are not infallible, that claims against them are legitimate, and that power is worth confronting.