Shares

23-year-old Lauren Smith-Fields, and 53-year-old Brenda Lee Rawls, died on the same day in Connecticut. Both families are demanding a policy change from the Connecticut police to notify families of the death of a loved one within 24 hours of identification. The families called for the reopening of the women’s deaths by the state after skepticism over how the cases were handled.

The families of Smith-Fields and Rawls said that they were not contacted by the Bridgeport Police Department that the women were deceased.

Rawls’ family discovered her death after calling the medical examiner’s office after receiving no information from the police. Smith-Fields’ landlord directed her family to the police days after her death.

“When it comes to Black and brown people, you need to treat us like we’re human,” Shantell Fields, Smith-Fields’ mother, said in the online hearing. “I just need for everyone to be treated as a human being, and be notified of their family’s loss and to be treated with respect and kindness, which the Bridgeport department did not allow us.”

“The way that my daughter’s death was handled was simply an atrocity,”

Smith-Fields’ father, Everett Smith, called the bill “common sense.”

“We didn’t even get a phone call,” he added. “We had to search and dig and find from a fourth party.” The fourth party was Smith-Fields’ landlord, who left a note on her apartment door for the family to contact him.

If the bill is signed into law, it will require that officers who violate the bill be reported to the Office of the Inspector General and could face suspension.

Currently, the officers in charge of Smith-Fields’ case were suspended after receiving backlash from the family and public. The officers handling the Rawls’ case have yet to be reprimanded, but the family is demanding the state to reopen the investigation.