Hartford State's Attorney Suspended for 4 Days Over Handling of Police-Involved Shootings
The state's Criminal Justice Commission suspended the Hartford State's Attorney Gail Hardy for four days without pay Thursday. Hardy is up for reappointment to the post later this month.
June 18, 2020 at 05:53 PM
3 minute read
Connecticut's Criminal Justice Commission voted unanimously Thursday to suspend Hartford State's Attorney Gail Hardy for four days without pay over her handling of four police-involved shootings, the commission chairman said.
Hardy will be suspended Friday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Associate Supreme Court Justice Andrew McDonald, also the chairman of the commission, said. She will return to her post on June 25. She will appear before the commission June 26 for her reappointment hearing. Hardy's eight-year terms expires at the end of this month, McDonald said.
Hardy was suspended for her role in failing to report the findings of four police-involved shootings in a timely manner.
The state's NBC affiliate quoted McDonald as saying during the meeting Thursday morning that there was a "serious dereliction in duty for her inexcusable delay in submitting these reports." The shootings occurred between 2008 and 2012, the outlet reported.
Hardy did not respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon. She was one of several candidates for the position of chief state's attorney earlier this year. That job went to Richard Colangelo Jr., former state's attorney for the Judicial District of Stamford/Norwalk.
Several experts said the current national climate of rallies and protests almost daily since the May 25 killing of unarmed black man George Floyd at the hands of police could have been a factor in the commission's decision.
"You have to consider the context. There is a national reevaluation of police and prosecutorial conduct," said Mark Dubois, the state's first chief disciplinary counsel who now practices with Geragthy & Bonnano in New London.
The Minneapolis incident in which Floyd was killed is the latest of several.
"The Black Lives Matter movement has been pushing for years for police reform," Dubois said. "I don't think the Criminal Justice Commission was saying that attorney Hardy should have found one way or the other in her reports, but justice delayed is justice denied. She was late in her findings, which doesn't promote police confidence in the system. The system should critically self-evaluate on a timely basis."
Bill Dunlap, a professor of law at Quinnipiac University School of Law echoed Dubois' comments, and said the unpaid suspension "is a way the public does not lose faith in the criminal justice system."
"It could have been easier to just let her term run out later this month, but instead they suspended her," Dunlap. "The caveat there, I think, is they wanted to make a point that police-involved shootings are very serious and need to be dealt with."
Dunlap said the timing of the suspension in the wake of massive protests on police brutality and reform the past three weeks in this country and globally "could very well be related to Minneapolis, but it could also be coincidental."
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