Date: Fri 29-Jan-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

Powell-commentary-police

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COMMENTARY: Death On The Front Line Of Connecticut's Undeclared War

By Chris Powell

Last week a New Milford police officer was arrested on a murder charge because

he fired his gun too soon as he tackled a criminal who turned out to be

unarmed. Last Saturday night East Hartford police Officer Brian Aselton was

himself murdered as he answered a call, having not been able to fire soon

enough at another couple of criminals.

Exactly what happened in New Milford will be decided in court now. Even in the

light most sympathetic to the officer, the shooting is questionable; the

suspect had been running away and was shot in the back, apparently at contact

range while on the ground. But the officer's state of mind probably will be

decisive, especially if the case goes to a jury.

If the officer is persuasive about having felt threatened or agitated in the

heat of a chase, the state's attorney's murder charge may seem excessive and

be reduced to manslaughter. Indeed, a murder charge is unlikely to prevail

unless malice on the officer's part can be proved. Weakening the murder charge

and raising the possibility of accident or negligence is the New Milford

Police Department's use of a service pistol with an unusual cocking mechanism

in the handle and a hair trigger.

The murder of the East Hartford officer suggests the advantages for police in

shooting first and asking questions afterward. Since police in a decent

society cannot do that, they take great risks on behalf of society and

sometimes have to make instant decisions of life and death. Because policy and

training severely restrain most officers from resorting to force, more often

than not the death is theirs.

The lessons in the New Milford and East Hartford cases are old ones, just

never really learned.

First is that anyone who threatens, struggles with, or interferes with a

police officer is asking for big trouble, for cops are always targets and know

that they are and must behave accordingly, whatever the rules say. The New

Milford officer well may have exercised bad judgment and even may have

committed a crime in shooting the criminal he was chasing, and since he is a

law officer much more must be expected of him. But as a chronic troublemaker

who was making trouble again and resisting arrest, the man who was shot and

killed was more than complicit in his own death.

Second is that as society disintegrates and grows coarse and alienated, and as

more conduct is criminalized, Connecticut asks more of its police even as it

appreciates less the difficulties they face.

Only a few decades ago the murder of a police officer in East Hartford would

have been unthinkable. Now the town is the border between what Connecticut was

and what it is at dire risk of becoming. Brian Aselton died a hero's death at

the front of Connecticut's undeclared war but never had even a second to

realize it.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of The Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)