Remember that kid from North Branford we arrested for impersonating a police officer?
Maybe he was the one who went on the police radio and said the “n word.”
That encapsulation of a conversation among New Haven police detectives reflects the latest stage of an investigation into a racial incident that sparked a department-wide soul-searching and brought the FBI to 1 Union Ave.
The incident occurred shortly after midnight on Dec. 30. Someone got on the police radio, slowly uttered the word “nigger,” then signed off.
Within hours, Chief Dean Esserman ordered an internal probe. He invited FBI investigators to conduct forensic work when the trail went cold. Meanwhile, the incident led black cops to decry the racial environment at police headquarters, and led the chief to hold numerous lengthy in-house meetings and order extended diversity training for the department.
If some detectives’ hunches prove correct, it will turn out that a 20-year man caused the fuss.
Here’s what happened, according to several people familiar with the investigation:
Detectives met the young man (then 19) in the weeks prior to the Dec. 30 incident. The man followed along a police chase in New Haven and turned on police lights he has on his car. He eventually fled from cops at the scene when they asked him what he was doing there.
Detectives eventually went to his North Branford home and arrested him for the improper use of lights.
Fast forward to the brouhaha over the “N word” utterance. Detectives remembered the young man. They returned to his home to question him. He denied having uttered the word over the police radio that night. But some allegedly fishy behavior during the questioning made him a suspect.
The investigation is ongoing. The police are not positive at this point that they have the guy. And they may not end up having grounds on which to charge him, although the act — by whoever committed it — may fall under federal communications law.
Can we please move on to some real news already??? I've read more updates about this silly "case" than I have any update on any murder case.