Last August I posted about a Hartford Police Officer who was being accused of stealing lobster from the Stop and Shop store on New Park Avenue.You can read that posting here.
That posting received the most comments ever on the blog and strong feelings were posted about the officers fitness to be a Police Officer based upon her judgement and choices she made. It also evolved to name calling that it was a racial issue. I'm not sure what race had to do with it, since right is right and wrong is wrong . The only color that should have come into it was orange, when she dropped the larceny lobsters into the boiling water.
Sources are telling me that this latest Chapter in HPD scandals may be coming to a close soon.This will come as a relief to many officers who have repeatedly called me asking why she was still allowed to work the streets in a cruiser, covering the District area that the Stop and Shop is in none the less. I guess it is that old saying, innocent until proven guilty.
From what I have have been told, the guilt is about to be proven and the Officer continues to find herself in hot water. For anyone not aware, Stop and Shop has extensive video surveillance and anytime you make a purchase using you Stop and Shop card the purchase can be tracked and is recorded, so if you are scamming your purchases at the self checkout line , consider yourself forewarned.
Also, once those videos are obtained and used as part of a Police investigation they become "public Documents" as detailed under the Connecticut Freedom of Information laws. Now start reading between the lines here and make your own conclusions as to where this is going.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, any blogger could request those videos to post for the public to view. There is an exemption under the FOI laws that might actually prevent the release of those videos if they are part of an investigation that may result in criminal charges. If the videos could be used to prosecute the criminal case, that would prevent their release until an arrest was made. Until an arrest was made that would mean that they would not appear on a blog as public documents.
If there was no arrest, no criminal prosecution and the matter was handled administratively, that would mean the videos would then become public documents and they would be posted here. Hopefully that determination will be coming soon
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