Chris Powell: Hartford mayor confronts the mob while legislators pander
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Maybe black lives matter a little more now, but mainly, it seems, when they are taken by white cops. When they are taken by anyone else, that seems to be nobody's business.
For where are the protests of the murder of New Haven high school basketball star Kiana Brown, 19, shot to death a week ago as she slept at her home, apparently killed by a stray bullet fired from outside? And who is protesting the fatal shooting of Luis Nelson Perez, 27, on a New Haven street a few days later?
New Haven may be the most indignant city in the world but it gives its own social disintegration a pass. Indeed, the social disintegration underlying most wrongful deaths in Connecticut gets a pass not only in New Haven but throughout the state amid the clamor to end racism and defund the police.
At least Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin last weekend became the first elected official in Connecticut to talk back to the mob. Hundreds of protesters descended on his home, demanding that he take their wrath out on the city's cops. The mayor tried to explain why law enforcement should not be abolished but he was interrupted, jeered, and largely drowned out. The protesters wanted only to intimidate.
But Bronin's plan to create a civilian agency to respond to seemingly noncriminal incidents such as mental breakdowns and drug overdoses, eliminating police response, won't appease the mob and is not realistic anyway. For the mentally ill and the druggies are not always harmless. They quickly can become violent.
Does the mayor not remember the nearly fatal stabbing of a Hartford police officer two years ago as she responded to a commotion caused by a mentally ill woman resisting eviction from her apartment? Any social worker or therapist responding to the incident would have faced the same threat. Police already try to reduce tensions at incident scenes. Their authority to use force is more a help than a handicap. Social workers and therapists get less respect.
While Bronin got the mob treatment, Connecticut's state legislators are being let off too easily -- and not just by the protesters to whom they have been pandering. Nobody is asking legislators who was in charge while Connecticut's police became so unaccountable and social disintegration worsened, especially in the cities.
Last week state Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, at least was asked if legislators would do anything about the provision in the state police union contract that allows concealment of brutality complaints. Looney replied that the current contract can't be revised but the law might be changed someday to forbid similar provisions in future contracts.
This was a dishonest dodge. For the General Assembly and Governor Lamont could nullify the secrecy provision by repealing the law authorizing state employee union contracts to supersede the open-government law, as the state police contract does. Then the contract wouldn't have to be changed. The legislature and governor also could repeal collective bargaining for the state police. Such a threat might induce the union to concede the secrecy provision immediately.
No one asked Looney how the state police contract provision came about and how it so easily got past the governor and those legislators who now are insisting that black lives matter. Just whom were the governor and legislators serving when they agreed to conceal complaints of police brutality? Not the public.
Feigning impotence, Looney and his colleagues still think that the contentment of government employees matters more than black lives.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
Mayor Luke Bronin