Accountability Dies When Police Misconduct Goes Unpunished

12/09/25

On November 19th, Hartford’s Civilian Police Review Board (CPRB) held a special meeting at which newly appointed Inspector General Joe Lopez delivered his first “State of the CPRB” report. IG Lopez revealed that from early 2021 through late 2024, none of the CPRB's findings of police misconduct were forwarded to the Hartford Police Department (HPD) for discipline, in violation of Hartford's ordinance requiring that transmission.

This is not a paperwork glitch. It is the failure of the most basic function of civilian oversight. And it has human costs: as many as 75 residents who filed complaints, endured interviews, and saw their claims sustained by the CPRB may have been denied justice.

We call them The Forgotten 75.

OUR POSITION

The American Justice Project (AJP) exists to disrupt injustice, demand transparency, and uphold accountability. We applaud IG Lopez for exposing this breakdown and commend his actions to correct it going forward. But transparency is only the first step. The City must address the past as proactively as it fixes the future. Hartford owes the Forgotten 75 more than regret – it owes them action.

Here is the bright line: 

  • A sustained finding that never reached the HPD is a dead end for accountability.
  • The CPRB ordinance requires transmission. If it didn’t happen, the system failed.
  • Repairing that failure is not optional; it is the minimum required to restore trust.


WHY THIS MATTERS

Five years ago, after decades of weak oversight, Hartford made a promise: if you step forward with a complaint of misconduct, the system will respect your courage and follow through. The City has spent roughly $250,000 a year for an Inspector General and independent investigators to deliver that promise.

But accountability only works when every link in the chain holds: Intake → Review → Investigation → Adjudication → Discipline → Public Reporting. Break the chain, and everything collapses.

What gets lost when complaints die in transit?

  • Justice for complainants. Their injuries, fears, and experiences are dismissed.
  • Fairness for good officers. Without resolution, clouds of doubt linger over the many who serve honorably.
  • Public confidence. City dollars are wasted, volunteer hours squandered, and the CPRB’s metrics rendered meaningless.

This failure undermines everyone—residents, officers, and the City itself.


WHAT WE’RE ASKING

Following the November 19th revelation, AJP is pressing for specific, concrete steps:

  1. Determine who knew what—and when. How did this breakdown persist for nearly four years? Did CPRB staff and Board leadership know? It strains belief that they didn’t. What about former Mayor Luke Bronin and the City Council, who celebrated the CPRB reforms in 2020 but failed to oversee its work? Did the Council’s Quality of Life and Public Safety Committee—tasked with direct oversight—miss or ignore warning signs? And what did Mayor Arulampalam know? In a WFSB Channel 3 interview after November 19th, he claimed, “In almost all those cases some level of discipline was already enacted by the Police Department.” Why should anyone accept that at face value when the City’s record on police misconduct is so disgraceful? Hartford deserves a factual, candid accounting.

  2. Publish sustained misconduct information—retroactively. For more than five years, Hartford has ignored a clear requirement of its 2020 CPRB Ordinance: that repeat offender officers’ names and discipline imposed be posted on City’s website. Compliance must begin now—and include past cases.

  3. Repair the damage. Commit to a 60-day plan to transmit, re-open, or otherwise resolve every case that was dead-ended. Notify complainants directly and transparently. Regret without repair is just performance.

  4. Launch a public dashboard. The public should be able to track, online, the status of complaints, sustained findings, transmissions to HPD, and disciplinary outcomes. Transparency must be built in.

  5. Conduct an independent audit. Commission a third-party review in six months to verify that the fix is working and the Forgotten 75 have been remembered and restored.


WHAT YOU CAN DO

  • If you filed a CPRB or Internal Affairs complaint and never heard back, contact us in confidence at [email protected]. AJP is working to ensure complainants receive updates as the backlog is addressed.
  • Share this story. Accountability thrives when the whole community is watching.


A FINAL WORD

IG Lopez inherited a broken system and chose transparency on day one. That matters. But now Hartford must finish the job: fix the pipeline, restore trust, and make sure no one else is abandoned by the very oversight system designed to protect them.

No resident should ever again be added to the list of the Forgotten 75.