Hartford County States Attorney Gail Hardy
This mornings special meeting by the Criminal Justice Commission into the performance, or more accurately the lack of performance , by Hartford County States Attorney Gail Hardy is long overdue.
Gail Hardy's failure to perform her job points out several problems. The main one being that even though there is a Chief States Attorney, the individual States Attorney's for the Geographical Areas, really don't answer to the Chief States Attorney, and the Chief SA has no direct supervisory accountability or responsibility for them.
Gail Hardy's failure to complete mandated Police Use of Force investigations brought this issue to light. Some of the cases that have been sitting on Gail Hardy's desk collecting dust for almost a decade, according to documents received from the Connecticut State Police pursuant to an FOI request.
There is no excuse for that.
The system to have State's attorneys investigate Use of Force allegations was created to build the Public's trust in the credibility of these incidents. Gail Hardy's actions have done the total opposite.
Instead of people having confidence in the reports, whether good or bad, they must now be suspect.
Most of these incidents appear to be justified, but the delay will only raise more questions. Officers involved in these incidents, as well as the families of the "victims" deserve a timely conclusion.
To conduct an investigation and then potentially conclude that the actions of an officer were unjustified but the statute of limitations for any accountability has expired will not lead to any greater trust of a system that is often called into question.
It is not fair to the public or the officer's and agencies involved for that cloud of question to remain over the incident for potentially years without Hardy's reports being completed.
Gail Hardy has shown for years that she is out of touch with the communities she serves and continually refuses to accept invitations to community meetings to interact with the public.
The Legislature needs to look at correcting this antiquated, broken system of States Attorneys and bring us into the current day Judicial processes that work much better in other states and provide better accountability to the system of Prosecutor's in Connecticut
