State police sergeant resigns amid new probe
Official: Officer’s ‘truthfulness’ the focus of investigation
A Connecticut State Police sergeant who injured a woman and her daughter in a Southbury crash two years ago resigned this week amid a second internal affairs investigation into his work with a timemanagement system, a state spokesman said Friday.
Sgt. John McDonald, who was on administrative duty since the September 2019 crash, resigned Thursday after a second investigation examined the “truthfulness related to the management of a computer software system,” a state police spokesman said.
“There was no financial loss to the state at all, no theft, just truthfulness,” said Brian Foley, a spokesman for state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection Commissioner James Rovella.
Robert Britt, an attorney who represented McDonald in court for his driving under the influence charge, did not respond to a phone message and email seeking comment about his client’s resignation.
State police said McDonald submitted a letter of resignation on Thursday, more than two years after the crash. Following his resignation, the agency
began the steps to decertify McDonald through the Police Officer Standards and Training Council, which would prevent him from working as a police officer with another agency.
Hearst Connecticut Media has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the files in both internal affairs investigations.
A state law enacted in 2008 requires the Attorney General’s office to seek a reduction or revocation of the pensions of state and local officials convicted of certain crimes. But the statute specifically relates to corruption-related crimes such as embezzling funds or bribery.
“The benefits that (McDonald) will be applying for are contractually obligated and the exact same benefits he would have received had we terminated him,” Foley said Friday.
However, McDonald will receive a “fraction of what a retired trooper would get,” Foley said.
While a sergeant with the Western District Major Crime Squad, McDonald attended another officer’s retirement party at an Oxford brewery with other state troopers on Sept. 25, 2019.
Video from inside the brewery showed McDonald arrived around 2 p.m. that day and consumed eight drinks inside the building.
According to a warrant for his arrest, McDonald drove his state police vehicle through a stop sign at the intersection of Route 188 and Airport Road less than a mile from the brewery, colliding with a car containing a woman and her daughter, around 7:30 p.m. that night. The force of the T-bone crash sent both cars into the nearby woods.
In May, McDonald pleaded nolo contendere to two counts of second-degree reckless endangerment, meaning he neither admitted nor denied the charge.
A judge also accepted McDonald’s application for a pre-trial alcohol education program, which will result in the DUI charge against him being dropped if he completes the program. Though the judge in the case entered a finding of guilty, it can’t be used against him in a civil lawsuit filed by the woman and daughter in the other car.
Their civil suit is ongoing, according to online court records, and is scheduled for a remote hearing on Monday.