A retired fire captain, a Black Lives Matter activist, a young records specialist and a pastor will be among the inaugural members of Hartford’s new working group on police reform.
Mayor Luke Bronin and the Hartford City Council have identified seven people so far to join the Police Accountability Review Board, which was formed in June to develop formal recommendations on issues including cadet recruitment, hiring and staffing practices to ensure the department is racially balanced, training and deescalation techniques and use of weapons and equipment.
The appointments must be confirmed by the city council. The board will eventually have at least 11 members, all Hartford residents.
The mayor has also named a new chair of the Civilian Police Review Board and nominated people to fill two of the four vacancies on the long-standing watchdog group, which reviews complaints of potential police misconduct.
The two groups represent the main opportunities for members of the public to hold Hartford police accountable and shape conversations about the future of the department.
Lionel Thompson Jr. is looking to lend his expertise in improving diversity to the Police Accountability Review Board. Before he retired, the fire captain spent years recruiting Black, Latino, Asian, LGBTQ and female firefighters to the Hartford department.
Thompson also wants the board to push for greater transparency in internal affairs investigations.
“They shouldn’t be able to hide things. They need to be accountable,” Thompson said Monday. “Not saying they’re doing anything wrong, but as long as they have an overseeing eye, everybody’s going to be above board.”
Thompson and Frank D. Barrows were recommended to the board by council members Thomas “TJ” Clarke II, the majority leader, and Shirley Surgeon. Rev. Elizabeth Arulampalam was recommended by Council President Maly Rosado. Diego Lopez was recommended by Councilman Nick Lebron. Kylah Jackson was nominated by Working Families Party council members Wildaliz Bermudez and Joshua Michtom.
Charlie Ortiz and Lashawn Robinson were nominated by Bronin.
Barrows, a West End resident, is retired from the state Department of Correction, where he worked for 20 years after serving as a state senator representing Hartford and Windsor.
Thompson, of the Blue Hills neighborhood, has also served on the Hartford Juvenile Review Board, a diversionary program for young offenders.
He remains an executive board member of the Hartford-based Phoenix Society, a charter member of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters.
Jackson, who lives in Frog Hollow, graduated from UConn in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. Jackson started a new job during the pandemic in records maintenance for a Rocky Hill company, and previously worked in data entry and analysis and coding at Lincoln Financial Group and a clinical research organization.
Arulampalam, a resident of Barry Square, is a pastor at Riverfront Family Church in Hartford and member of the Greater Hartford Interfaith Action Alliance. She has worked in student services at the Hartford Seminary, as a teacher at Achievement First Amistad School in New Haven, and as a director at St. Martin de Porres Academy, a private school in New Haven.
Diego Lopez, who lives in downtown Hartford, is a team lead in Compass Peacebuilders, the city’s largest anti-street violence organization. He also works as a residential program instructor with Options Unlimited Inc., an organization for individuals with developmental disabilities.
Ortiz, another downtown resident, is president of Claro, a Hartford-based, LGBTQ+ organization for Latinos that he runs with his husband, former Mayor Pedro Segarra.
Robinson, of the North End, works for Women’s Family Center and Compass Youth Collaborative. She is a member of BLM 860, a Hartford-based Black Lives Matter group, she was a lead organizer of the Black Lives Matter mural painted on Trinity Street in downtown Hartford last month.
Robinson has also worked as a parent coach with Hartford Parent University, and sits on the board of Community First School in Hartford.
Civilian Police Review Board
Andrew Cascudo, an attorney who has served about one and a half years on the Civilian Police Review Board, has been named chair by Bronin.
The previous chair, Abdul-Shahid “Muhammad” Ansari, died May 3.
In a June interview, Cascudo said he thought the board could reach its full potential if it was given more resources, which Bronin did by increasing its budget from $35,000 to $235,000 at the recommendation of the city council. That’s enough to pay for a full-time staff member who can aid in investigations and administrative work.
Bronin has also nominated two people to fill vacancies on the board, Eric W. Crawford and Ronald D. Holmes.
Crawford, a North End resident, was recommended to the mayor by many residents, several council members, the Phoenix Society and Voices of Women of Color, a social justice firm in Hartford, according to Bronin.
Crawford is the director of student and family relations at the Capitol Region Education Council, with past experience as a member of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles and as an intervention specialist in Hartford schools. He’s also a past director of drug programs for Community Partners in Action, a substance abuse program for drug offenders in Greater Hartford.
“I believe that experience on an independent, quasi-judicial body will be beneficial to his service on the CPRB, as will his perspective as someone who has seen first-hand the way in which interaction with the criminal justice system has affected the lives of countless residents in our community,” Bronin said.
Ronald D. Holmes of New Britain has worked for nearly 20 years at the state Department of Children and Families, currently as a social worker in probate court and previously as a mental health worker.
He’s the president of the Greater Hartford Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance.
Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.
