It was calamitous on so many levels in December 2021: 23-year-old Black female Lauren Smith-Fields invites White-male Bumble date to her Bridgeport apartment. The tequila flows, drugs flow, the condom follows, according to official public reports.
She passes out, he tries to awake her. She does not respond. He calls police for assistance. They arrive. Tragically, peak of young adult life, she dies.
It’s awful, but what happened to personal responsibility?
What comes next takes on a life of its own, the height of the me-too movement, a national story, screaming headlines, demonstrations locally with protest marches, then-Police Chief Rebeca Garcia locking herself in a closet lancing the mayor’s office to deal with the national media.
Rather than focus on the tragedy of a lost life, it became a Black-White monster because police, apparently, despite efforts could not reach the family within 24-hours of notification, or that was the spin, at least, for a big pot of money.
Enter sartorial splendor attorney Darnell Crosland who has a history of making most everything about race. (Paging Dyshan Best case, a felon with a gun is pulled over by police. He runs. Why? Because he’s a felon with a gun. A chase follows. He brandishes the gun. Cop fires, Best dies from the bullet wound. Crosland says it was a vape, not a gun. No, it was a gun, as validated by state police.)
The overwhelming evidence in the Smith-Fields case concludes she dies with a White man by her side. He does the right thing, doesn’t run, doesn’t hide. So, Crosland, in the Smith-Fields case, fans the flames of race.
Demagogues had people believing the police had killed this woman. No, they simply responded to a call. Sadly, she perished before they got there.
Politicians, understandably, ran for cover, passing a law requiring family notification of a death within 24 hours.
Some OIB readers wrote me off line. Why won’t you publish the name of the White guy when most media outlets have done so?
I do my own reporting. I’ll not gouge a man, Black, White, Brown, or anyone else, who did the right thing under the tragic circumstances.
So, after all the hullabaloo, after all the grandstanding, race-baiting, demagoguery, demands for $30 million, what do we now have?
Two civil right complaints were dismissed by a federal judge who ruled race had nothing to do with Smith-Fields death.
And, now, after demanding $30 million, attorney Crosland and family have agreed to a proposed settlement for $30,000 for sign-off by the City Council. Quite a drop from the hysteria nearly five years ago. Why did the city agree? It would cost more for the city to defend it. Why did Crosland and family agree? It’s the best deal they could get.
At Monday night’s council meeting the proposed settlement will be submitted to the Miscellaneous Matters Committee then the full council likely later this month or in May.
See full council agenda here
