The Hills Have Eyes- Naugatuck’s small-town racism

Part 1

By Grant Miller

Carissa Walters and her 6-year-old son Zach Walters take a photo. (Carissa Walters/Facebook)

If any movie title could describe Naugatuck, Connecticut, it would be “The Hills Have Eyes”.

Naugatuck has a population of over 31,000 people, and many of them live on massive hills. Take a couple rights off U.S. Route 8 Exit 28, and City Hill Street is a long uphill drive lined with colonial-style homes and mowed lawns on both sides. There are two middle schools named Hillside and City Hill, and Naugatuck High School sits uphill on Rubber Avenue. Within all of these hills people are always watching and talking. Like any small town, rumors spread fast. Social media only speeds up the spread of gossip, even for those who left the hills years ago.

This is a screen shot of Jasen Markette’s profile photo on VK.com.

So when Naugatuck police officer Jasen Markette uttered a racial slur toward former Naugatuck resident Carissa Walters on Facebook, people from these hills talked about the racism in their town exposed on social media.

Walters, 27, from Springfield, Massachusetts, said the incident happened on August 16, 2017 after she commented on a now deleted post on Steven Oliveira’s Facebook profile that compared the Egyptian pyramids…