The families of Lauren-Smith Fields and Brenda Lee Rawls say no one has been held accountable for the deaths of their loved ones, nor the behavior of authorities in the wake of their deaths, which they say was disrespectful and uncommunicative.
Though it has been nearly two years since Lauren-Smith Fields and Brenda Lee Rawls were found dead on the same day in the same Connecticut neighborhood, their families say that they are no closer to the answers they so desperately need. And adding insult to injury, the families of Smith Fields and Rawls say no one has been held accountable for the deaths of their loved ones, nor the behavior of authorities in the wake of their deaths, which they say was disrespectful and uncommunicative.
Lauren Smith-Fields died on Dec. 12, 2021, after going on a Bumble date with a 37-year-old. Her mother says she learned of her daughter's death after she arrived at the 23-year-old's apartment and found a note stuck on the door with a number to call. It belonged to a Bridgeport Police detective.
Smith-Fields’ family was not happy with their conversation with the detective.
“He was horrible. He told us to stop calling his phone, that the guy [Smith-Fields went on a date with] that night was a good guy, leave it alone, just to stop calling his phone, just talking disrespectful. It was crazy,” Smith-Fields’ brother, Lakeem Jetter, tells Inside Edition Digital.
The medical examiner ruled Smith-Fields’ cause of death “accidental,” saying she had several drugs in her system, including fentanyl.
Roderick Porter, the new Bridgeport Chief of Police, tells Inside Edition Digital that the man Smith-Fields went on a date with the night she died was who called 911 about her condition.
“From my review of the records, he called 911,” Porter tells Inside Edition Digital. Cronin’s records indicated the same, he says. “That he arrived on the scene and he investigated, as they're supposed to do when they respond to a scene like that."
He also denied the Smith-Fields family's claims that the date may have had a personal connection to the Bridgeport police department. "And I didn't see anything in the files that indicated that there was any relationship or any connection or anything like that. I just didn't see that,” Porter says.
Porter says the Bumble date was never a suspect in Smith-Fields' death.
The same day Smith-Fields died, Brenda Lee Rawls was found dead after visiting with a neighbor her sister, Dorothy Washington, says was someone she used to date.
Once her family stopped hearing from her, they went searching for her. Washington says her siblings found out their little sister was dead from that neighbor, who then handed them her clothes.
By then, Rawls’ body had been transferred to the medical examiner’s office. They ruled that Rawls died of natural causes, specifically heart disease, triggered by diabetes. She was 53.
Her family was outraged by how authorities handled her death.
“The case was never about if she had illness or not,” Washington tells Inside Edition Digital. “The case is specifically about the fact how they treated my sister like a Jane Doe in death, how they violated her civil rights, how they violated the family's civil rights without even notifying us.
"And we want to know what happened that night, who came to get her, what police officer was there," Washington continues. "Was she taken by an ambulance or what? Why didn't they question the guy that was there? Why wasn't there tape around? You find somebody dead in your bed in the morning. Who did he call? What about the 911 tapes?”
Washington believes that neighbor was the last person to see her sister alive.
“Absolutely. Absolutely. First things first. I don't believe there ever was an investigation,” she said.
The families say that in neither case did Bridgeport Police contact either family to notify them of their loved one's death.
Both families tell Inside Edition Digital that they’re gutted and want answers, noting they do not believe they know how their loved ones actually died.
“They didn't take that guy's phone that night. They didn't search or nothing. We still haven't gotten any feedback on what they found on Lauren's phone. We still haven't got her ID back, any of the items that the police took from her that night, when she passed. I mean, it's just ridiculous at this point,” Smith-Fields’ brother, Lakeem Jetter, told Inside Edition Digital.
Darnell Crosland, an attorney representing both families, tells Inside Edition Digital, “Presumptively, they have body cams, and they tap the body cams as they walk in. That has not been released."
Crosland says Smith-Fields’ and Rawls’ cases are strikingly similar.
“All the experts that looked at this case say that you treat these cases like a homicide, and you dial them backwards as need be," Crosland says.
But that’s not what happened in these two cases, he and the families say.
“They didn't go to the gentleman's house that she was found at. They didn't try to trace anything to see if there's anything nefarious that happened. They just wrote it off like an accident,” says Washington, Rawls' sister.
Porter, the Chief of Police, says that since he became chief on Dec. 1, 2022, he has reached out to each family and has been in contact with them. “And thus far, the only family that has come in was the Rawls family. And I gave them some documentation, some police reports and things of that nature. The Smith family, we were in contact, but we've not yet secured a time for them to come in. They wanted to speak with their lawyer, and they haven't gotten back to me as of this point,” he says.
When asked why it took so long for the families to collect the belongings of their loved ones and to get 911 recordings and police reports, Porter says he couldn’t speak to that, but could to the time he has been in his position.
“I'm not sure what belongings that they have not been given," he says. "I do believe there were some belongings that were returned. As I read the reports, I do see some notations that there were some belongings that were returned. So I'm not sure what outstanding belongings there are.”
One small victory came for the Rawls and Smith-Fields families in the Spring of 2022, when local lawmakers voted unanimously to require police to notify the families of deceased relatives within 24 hours.
The requirement comes as the city of Bridgeport comes under fire for an alleged lack of transparency. A recent Hearst Media CT Investigation turned up that the City of Bridgeport has a backlog of more than 2,000 freedom of information act records requests. The law, which is commonly referred to as FOIA, is how the public can access certain records on public officials, including police body cam footage, in order to gain information and, if necessary, hold tax-funded government entities accountable.
CT Insider reported that despite Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim’s promise for transparency, he and his administration have done little, if anything, to address the years-long backlog.
“The head administrator just came out now and said that in order to make FOIA requests more effective, they're going to have the departments that the request is going to answer their own FOIA because there's a bottleneck,” Crosland tells Inside Edition Digital. “So they're saying instead of doing that, they'll just have the fire department answer their own FOIA requests, the police answer their own, Board of Education answer their own.”
Chief Porter tells Inside Edition Digital that their investigation turned up no evidence of foul play in Brenda Lee Rawls’ death. The man believed to have last seen Rawls alive was never considered to be anything more than a person of interest.
Noting he was not in his current position at the time of Rawls' death, Porter says, "Well, I think there was some things that we could have done better. There's definitely things that should have done better. Our communication to the family definitely could have been done a whole lot better. So we're trying to improve upon that, and we're trying to be transparent."
Both families expressed their frustration, saying that if they were white, they would have never encountered such a struggle in the first place.
“I would say sadly, in many respects, sometimes that is true. Sometimes it's perception. Sometimes it is reality. But not just Black women, but Black people in general,” Porter says. “But that's a sad commentary on where we are, but I can say that's something that I would not tolerate, something that I don't condone, something that we are really trying to make sure it doesn't occur again.”
Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim declined requests to appear on camera. He and “Chief Porter are dedicated to this City and continuing to do the best we can for the City," he said through a spokesperson to Inside Edition Digital.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has not responded to Inside Edition Digital's multiple requests for comment.
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