I lived on Wadsworth Street until two months ago.

I kept a close watch on police blotters during the time I lived there, and noticed that all too often, the police would arrest a person, or several people, at this specific address (60 Wadsworth Street). The arrests

SPECIAL EDITION!! Police Shoot Two in Hartford, one fatally!

Can a Bullet Stop a Car??
By Joanna Iovino What made three men in a parked car in an apartment complex on Wadsworth Street suspicious? Were there any drugs or weapons found in this car to justify the suspicions of the police officers? The police observed the activities of a man on foot, then, when they went to investigate, saw a parked car was the man they observed one of the people in the car? Did the police approach the car with their guns drawn, or did they draw their guns after the car started driving towards them? These are some of the questions I am pondering in the aftermath of the police initiated shooting which killed Ernesto Morales and injured Martin Casseras. I posed a list of questions to the mayor, the city council members and Lt. Paul Vance, spokesman for the state police. The response I received from both the mayor and the police spokesman, was, basically wait and see. To me, these are simple questions to which the answers should already be known. But, of course, they will not be revealed to the public until an investigation, which Lt. Vance said would take several months, is completed. I was able to clarify SOME information with Lt. Vance. I do know that the car was not pulled over by the police as some have said. The car was in the parking lot/driveway of the Casa Verde apartments on Wadsworth Street. Lt. Vance also informed me that the police officers did not know the car was stolen until AFTER the driver and his passenger had been shot. So, why did the police initially approach the vehicle? That information Lt. Vance could not, or would not, tell me.

were almost always for trespassing. Basically, they would stop people who they deemed suspicious, then arrest them for trespassing if they were unable to find drugs or weapons on the individual. To me, this constitutes harassment. This is why I would like to know what made this car suspicious enough for the police to approach the vehicle. Did the police observe illegal activities, or did they simply see a car with three men in it, in an area that is designated a trouble spot due to this ridiculous War on Drugs and decide that they would try to find evidence of wrongdoing? The police say that the vehicle drove towards them. Once they were able to get out of the way, why resort to shooting the driver, rather than pursuing the vehicle? Can a bullet stop a car? Obviously, the shooting did not stop the vehicle, since the car then ended up inside an apartment. In fact, the shooting not only killed the driver, but it endangered the people living in that apartment building, because it caused the car to swerve into the apartment. So, what is the efficacy of using a gun to attempt to stop a motor vehicle? Even for those who believe that the shooting was justified, because the car was a deadly weapon that was aimed at the police officers, there is the question of whether the initial contact was justified. The state police will not reveal exactly what made the police suspicious. If the police did not observe any illegal activities, why approach the car in the first place? And, I am of the view that if the police did not reveal that there were drugs or weapons in the car, they probably found nothing. They were very quick to mention that the car was stolen, to back up their implication of the criminality of the men in the car, so I am sure they would have been very happy to reveal the presence of drugs and or weapons to provide evidence that their suspicion was justified. There are so many unanswered questions in the aftermath of this shooting. I can almost guarantee that the police officers involved will be cleared of any official wrongdoing. But the rules for police are different than for the rest of us, and what they might consider justifiable is not necessarily moral or righteous to the members of the public in Hartford, a city that is besieged by an often unwelcome and decidedly unfriendly police presence.