The shooting is, like so many, an example of fear-based policing with grave consequences. After a 9-1-1 call reports an attempted robbery, Officer Allan pursues Salmon and three other boys. Allan later claims that he ordered Salmon to stop running and saw him reaching for a weapon, so he fired a single shot into Salmon’s back, killing him. Salmon is found with no weapon, and witness accounts report that Salmon was surrendering with his hands up when he was shot. Officer Allan had been “rebuked by his sergeant and lieutenant for unnecessarily displaying his service gun on calls” the year prior. (Source) 

In keeping with Cintron’s origins, in particular the story of Maria Cintron and her son, the circumstances surrounding Salmon’s death call into question not just over-policing but under-policing. The day after the shooting, Salmon’s grandmother Norma Watts tells the Hartford Inquirer “We are going to seek justice. I called the police two weeks ago to report that my grandson had ran away and never heard from them.” (Source) 

A month after the shooting, HPD officers hold a benefit party for Allan, who is under suspension. Residents protest outside, wielding signs with messages such as “no justice, no peace.” (Source) 

In July, various civic and religious leaders come together to pursue justice for Aquan through Cintron v. Vaughan, which had been relatively inactive for many years. A press conference is held to announce their plans. Attorney Joseph Moniz, the lawyer responsible for investigating the consent decree’s potential, says “the city had already agreed to have a higher standard of police protection, and they have failed drastically in certain areas.” Moniz would later have a major role in litigating Cintron alongside Attorney Schulman. Also in attendance is Carmen Rodriguez, executive director of La Casa de Puerto Rico, who would also become a major player in the consent decree’s future. Offering words to a sentiment surely felt by many in the room, Minister Cornell Lewis remarks, “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” (Source) Indeed, as Cintron crystallizes as a viable path towards pursuing police accountability, Lewis’ words gesture to the potential fortuitously left behind by the judiciary thirty years after the suit was initiated. Cintron, long forgotten, is a door already open to those who look. 

In June, Chief Joseph F. Croughwell Jr enters a period of medical leave, unknowing that this medical leave would lead to his permanent retirement just a couple months later. Assistant Chief Deborah Barrows, the highest-ranking Black person in the HPD and one of the highest- ranking female police officers in Connecticut, takes Croughwell’s place (Source). She is promoted to interim Chief in July, when Coughwell decides that his health has affected his ability to continue his tenure as Chief. It is a volatile moment to enter the role, amid a dysfunctional department racked with scandal. Of the many pressures Barrows faces, some come from the community leaders pursuing justice through the consent decree. They ask that she re-establish the Firearms Discharge review Board (FDBI); prevent officers from using mace and other chemical weapons for crowd control; conduct sensitivity training and code of conduct training; and increase routine training for veteran officers. These issues are not all directly tied to Salmon’s shooting, but are occasioned by the momentum it has brought to the wider demands of the consent decree. (Source) (Source) 

The HPD is under scrutiny from within the city administration at this time, as well. On April 12, just one day before Salmon would be fatally shot, city council names a “looming and lingering crisis in the police department” which requires outside attention. The City commissions a management study of the HPD from Carroll Buracker & Associates, a prestigious DC-based consultancy firm. (Source) The researchers conduct many interviews with staff, perform onsite observation of the department’s daily functioning, and consult a vast amount of data, literature, and comparative evaluations with similar departments. They end up presenting over 150 recommendations for change within the department. Overall, Buracker & Associates find that the HPD is deeply disorganized and operates with poor efficiency, wasting taxpayer money without providing effective public safety for Hartford residents. The study provides quotes from HPD officers who feel their own department is seriously flawed: “Discipline is virtually non-existent in this Department;” “Our hiring practices here are terrible;” “I haven’t been evaluated in over 12 years; I don’t know whether I’m doing a good job.” Of particular relevance to Cintron, the firm recommends an overhaul of its hiring and promotion process, as well as its citizen complaint procedure. This latter recommendation comes five years before the plaintiffs in Cintron would submit their motion for contempt concerning the complaint procedure’s dysfunction; clearly, the department already knows that their policies are inadequate long before they will be forced to change them in 2004. (Source)