In 1960 at the tender age of six, Ruby Bridges had to be accompanied by four deputy U.S. marshals to William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, a moment iconized by Norman Rockwell in his now classic 1964 painting, The Problem We All Live With. The problem of racial conflict, only intensified as the decade of the 1960s unfolded, being marked not only by assassinations of major political figures – Medgar Evers, President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As well, the 1960s came to be defined by uprisings in Harlem (1964), Watts (1965), Detroit and Newark (1967), and in 1968 across many cities in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
These rebellions stemmed from historical racial dynamics including social/educational segregation, economic inequality, and the lack of an ability for Blacks to exercise constitutionally guaranteed rights. Another ongoing issue that also helped to spark these uprisings, was the excessive force utilized by law enforcement agencies.
In December 1969, the last month of the tumultuous 1960s, Blacks and Puerto Ricans (as they were identified at the time) in Hartford, Connecticut filed a class action lawsuit against selected city officials and the Hartford Police Department. They alleged that the government of Hartford, generally, and the chief of Police (Thomas Vaughan), city manager (Elisha C. Freeman), director of personnel (Robert Krause) and, specifically, several police officers, subjected residents of the city to a “systematic pattern of conduct consisting of violence, intimidation, and humiliation” and thereby denied them rights and privileges guaranteed by the Constitution.
Many charges were enumerated in the lawsuit, including employing unnecessary deadly force, using trained dogs and tear gas against the plaintiffs, and arresting residents for attempting to exercise their constitutional rights. However, none of these were the first claim mentioned. Notably, the first charge concerned the treatment of the residents in an abusive manner that lacked a recognition of their humanness: “a. Committing acts that have no purpose or justification other than to humiliate or degrade members of plaintiffs’ class.” The same issue was reasserted in a subsequent charge: “g. Habitually referring to members of plaintiffs class with humiliating, derogatory, and obscene racial epithets and in numerous other ways refusing to accord members of the plaintiffs’ class respect due to citizens by officers of the law.” These two charges illustrate the systemic nature of disrespectful behavior displayed toward the Black and Puerto Rican residents of Hartford.
Related, another charge, one which initially prompted the class action lawsuit, was not due to overpolicing, but rather to a case of underpolicing, another of the charges noted in the lawsuit: “h. Habitually denying plaintiffs and members of the plaintiffs’ class the same police protection from criminals, crime, and anticipated crime…” On August 26, 1969, ten-year old Roberto Cintron, one of the sons of the main plaintiff Maria Cintron, was repeatedly slapped by a white man. An hour after the incident, the police arrived, and asked Cintron whether she wanted the man to be arrested, to which she replied yes. The man apologized and said that he had an “Irish temper” and the police added that “he had to protect himself.” To this assertion, Cintron astutely responded: “maybe so, but not against a ten year old boy.”
Like the cases of Ruby Bridges, the Little Rock Nine, or the Topeka parents in the Brown v. Board of Education, an incident involving the treatment of a child was utilized to attack the system of racial hierarchy. The plaintiffs called for measures that would reform the Hartford Police Department. These included: the desegregation of the various units of the department (vice squad, burglary squad); changing the requirements for recruiting officers; recruiting members from the plaintiffs class; and “reducing the minimum height requirement to allow the inherently shorter Puerto Ricans – Spanish Americans to qualify.”
The Cintron v. Vaughan case did not go to trial but rather in 1973 resulted in a consent decree with the Hartford Police Department. This outcome provides a useful lens through which to understand the history of policing in the United States. It is perhaps the longest consent decree to have been initiated with law enforcement, and that such occurred in the liberal North versus the formerly segregated South is worthy of note. As well, that the case was not directly prompted by discriminatory police behavior but rather on an incident that called for police intervention demonstrates another reason for further examination. Indeed, the case was used to address systemic issues related to law enforcement but with implications far beyond policing, why continues to remain the situation across the United States.