Hartford Courant – by Vinny Vella
Two Hartford police officers who were disciplined earlier this year in connection with an excessive-force investigation have been promoted.
Officer Steven Barone and Detective Christopher Mastroianni were promoted to sergeant Thursday by police Chief James Rovella. The promotions are effective Sunday, according to police officials.
In April, Barone, Mastroianni and three of their colleagues faced discipline after Internal Affairs investigators found that they violated department standards during a protracted stolen-car chase through West Hartford that embroiled several officers.
Barone was suspended for four days as a result of the findings, and Mastroianni was suspended two days.
“None of the officers promoted were disciplined for excessive force. Both officers were disciplined for policy and procedural violations,” Deputy Police Chief Brian Foley said. “The officers were given their discipline and then passed over for previous promotion. We try not to judge an officer’s entire career based on a single incident or mistake. When we discipline an employee, we hope it prevents them from making the same mistakes and holds everybody accountable.”
The chase resulted in an investigation by the office of the chief state’s attorney into the force used by former Sgt. Sean Spell, who was filmed kicking one of the suspects, Emilio Diaz, who was handcuffed and lying on the ground.
A 68-page Internal Affairs report released by police in April shows that Barone was disciplined for “improperly stopping the camera video” inside his cruiser three times: during an unrelated traffic stop; when he first tried to pull over Diaz and Ricardo Perez; and as the chase ended on Flatbush Avenue in West Hartford.
During his interview with Internal Affairs, Barone provided “excuses” that seemingly contradicted themselves, according to Sgt. Kevin O’Brien, the report’s author. These included that he had recently been transferred from the Conditions Unit (which uses cruisers that don’t have dashboard cameras), yet it was “muscle memory” for him to turn cameras off.
Barone also said he manually shut the camera off at the end of the chase and during the initial struggle with Diaz and Perez because he didn’t think it was “relevant” to record. He denied shutting off the camera so it wouldn’t capture the two being taken into custody, according to O’Brien, who noted that the angle the car was positioned would’ve captured at least a portion of Diaz and Perez being arrested.
The report also says that Barone manually shutting off his cruiser’s camera was one reason why state’s attorney’s office investigators “were concerned that the video was physically tampered with” and sent all cruiser hard drives to be forensically tested during its probe of the incident.
Mastroianni’s discipline stemmed from his delay in filing a supplemental police report or requesting a use-of-force report until June 11, a week after Diaz and Perez were arrested.
During an interview with Internal Affairs, Mastroianni said he “delivered multiple foot strikes to Mr. Diaz’s torso area” during the arrest, but stopped after he saw that Diaz had been secured by other officers.
Mastroianni told the investigators that he was a “little rusty” on the policy for use-of-force, but ultimately admitted that he “should have known better,” O’Brien writes.
http://www.courant.com/community/hartford/hc-news-hartford-barone-promotion-20170922-story.html
Emilio Diaz Gives His Version Of Arrest That Spawned State’s Attorney’s Investigation:
Before I hit the ground, ‘boom,’ he hit me in the head,” Diaz said. “I saw blood gushing, straight gushing. It looked like a fountain.”
The preceding chase was erratic and dangerous, with Perez weaving in and out of traffic and striking other vehicles, according to reports filed by Hartford and West Hartford officers. Eventually, spiked “stop sticks” disabled all four of the vehicle’s tires, but Perez “refused to give up,” deliberately striking the police vehicles that boxed him in on Flatbush Avenue, according to a report filed by West Hartford Officer Brian Delgrande.
In Diaz’s account, after the car stopped, one of the officers smashed the window near his seat in the car, then pulled him out of the vehicle. Those details are also in the police report filed by West Hartford Officer Jeremy Allen, but the narratives differ in how they characterize Diaz’s behavior.
A video from a West Hartford police cruiser surfaced, footage that “appears to show a police officer kicking or stomping one of the arrestees after that person was handcuffed,” Hartford Deputy Chief Brian Foley told the Courant at the time.
http://www.courant.com/community/hartford/hc-hartford-emilio-diaz-0902-20160901-story.html
All policemen involved in this story have last names ending with a vowel…you know, Italian. Do any of you think this coincidence has anything to do with the promotions?