Police Chief David Rosado on Wednesday fired Stephen Barone, the self-described “trigger happy” Hartford police officer who was filmed in August threatening a group of young people with deadly force. Barone’s comments, which were circulated on Facebook, prompted a reckoning over the police department’s racial makeup and how few of its officers live in Hartford.
“It’s clear to me that there’s no scenario in which Mr. Barone can return to his duties as a productive member of the Hartford Police Department,” Rosado said.
Internal affairs investigators had already decided Barone, a 10-year member of the department, violated its code of conduct and discredited the force when he warned the group he was feeling “trigger happy” and used profanity.
Reached by phone Wednesday, Barone declined to comment.
A sergeant at the time, Barone was the ranking officer of a new unit focused on quality of life concerns when he stopped seven men, whom he suspected were trespassing, on Heath Street.
“If anybody wants to fight or run, I’m a little trigger happy guys, I’m not gonna lie,” he was filmed saying on Aug. 9. One of the men Barone stopped, Rashawn Johnson, recorded the encounter on his phone.
In another video of the incident, which the city released a month later, Barone is heard listing the inconveniences of shooting someone on duty. Firing his weapon would make him ineligible for overtime, he explained. “That means I got to sell my cars, move from my nice house.”
The same internal investigators also found Barone flouted department rules when he failed to call off a chase in July, in which two Hartford police officers drove their cruiser the wrong way on Interstate 91 at nearly 60 mph.
Barone was demoted last month and assigned to desk duty, his salary lowered from the $89,200 base pay he made as a sergeant to $76,800 as an officer.
In an internal affairs interview, Barone said he could have used “a better choice of words,” but believed at the time his words were “effective in maintaining control.” He appeared to particularly regret widespread news coverage of the incident, telling investigators he was “very apologetic on how this is being portrayed.”
While police investigators decided Barone had not violated the civil rights of the group, who were mostly black and Hispanic, several community leaders and pastors said Barone’s handling of the encounter reflected a mistrust between the mostly white police department and a city more than 80 percent nonwhite. Barone was also filmed saying only “junkies” come to Hartford from his wealthy suburb of Glastonbury.
“He had a weapon. His badge gave him a lot of authority. And he abused it,” said Abdul Shahid Ansari, president of the Greater Hartford branch of the NAACP and the chair of a police oversight board. “The feeling in the North End was, if he were a person of color, he’d already be terminated.”
Hartford city councilors called a special meeting with Rosado and his command staff, focusing on the department’s racial makeup and a dearth of homegrown officers. Eighty-four percent of Hartford’s residents are people of color, compared to 34 percent of its police officers. Less than 7 percent of the force lives in the city.
Barone is the second Hartford police officer fired this year. Detective Robert Lanza was dismissed in January after he allegedly directed racial slurs at Plainville police officers, who were arresting him on suspicion of drunken driving. His criminal case remains active.
Still, it is rare that a Hartford police officer is fired. At the end of Barone’s weekslong hearing process, a hearing officer recommended he be suspended for 100 days without pay, but not fired, Rosado said in an interview.
“I took everything — I took both reports, I took the report from the hearing officer,” he said. “I reviewed them for a few days to really think about this, because this is not a decision you can make lightly. And I made the decision today.”
Barone can appeal his termination, and Rosado said he “would assume that that would be an option that they’re going to pursue.” A representative of Hartford’s police union did not respond to a request for comment.
Mayor Luke Bronin called Barone’s conduct “inconsistent” with the police force’s values, and said his firing was “in the best interest of our community as a whole.”
David McGuire, director of the ACLU of Connecticut, attributed Rosado’s decision to pressure from dogged residents and Johnson going public with footage of Barone’s threat.
“It is good news that Barone is no longer employed by Hartford,” McGuire said in a statement posted to Twitter, “but the department never should have promoted him in the first place.”
Barone had been disciplined in 2016 for turning off his dashboard camera during a chase that ended violently. Another Hartford police officer, then-Sgt. Sean Spell, was later convicted of assault for kicking a man who was handcuffed and lying on the ground.
Barone was suspended for four days after internal investigators found he had violated department standards. Four months later, however, he was promoted to sergeant — a decision that outraged many, including the ACLU and NAACP.
“I don’t know how he was able to remain on the force as long as he did,” Ansari said.
