Conflicting stories on chief’s traffic incident

“He’s going like a bat out of hell.” That what’s an anonymous driver on Route 154 near Haddam on the afternoon of May 31 told a 911 police dispatcher when he observed a Chevrolet Tahoe careening at high speed in front of him. The calm, public-spirited driver narrated the prelude to what became a story of how power and influence work in Hartford’s government.

The driver of the Tahoe was Jason Thody, Hartford’s police chief. Thody offered conflicting versions of the incident and its immediate aftermath. Kevin Brookman, a sharp-eyed chronicler of Hartford police, first reported late last month the inconsistencies in Thody’s accounts on his “We the People” website. Luke Bronin, Hartford’s secondterm Democratic mayor, has emerged as Thody’s primary defender.

Thody blames it all on distracted driving. But mature drivers know from experience that if using one’s phone behind the wheel caused the extended erratic, high-speed driving the witness described, our roads would host a daily carnage of drivers, passengers and pedestrians.

Something doesn’t add up. Thody has been an elusive witness to his own behavior before. In 2010, he was involved in an off-duty bar fight. He told an investigator “that he could not recall anything that happened after he was hit in the nose and lost consciousness, and could not deny or admit to fighting or pushing” another officer. Today, Thody is Bronin’s chief of police, and his behavior suggests that he’s trying to conceal something.

Thody was driving from Chester, where he keeps a boat, to his second home in Haddam on May 31. The witness, whose account is the best evidence we have of those few minutes, tells of watching an SUV hit a guardrail, continue to drive at a high rate of speed and nearly strike a motorcyclist. He told dispatchers he believed the driver was intoxicated. Prosecutors declined to press charges in the matter.

Thody has given different accounts of when he examined the guardrail he struck and took pictures of the scene. The conflicts in his stories are not minor. Thody said he returned to the scene an hour and a half after the incident, after going to Hartford to monitor a protest over the death of George Floyd. In one version, he stopped by his house after the crash. In another version, he didn’t mention stopping by his house. In one version, he hit the guardrail before going to his house. In another version, it was after.

Why the confusion?

Bronin, who dismissed the accident as a “minor incident” before the 911 call was released, has adopted his own narrative. “From the standpoint of an observer who sees a car swipe a guardrail, distracted driving and driving under the influence probably look similar,” Bronin said. “But we have no reason whatsoever to believe he was under the influence, and every reason to believe, as he has fully acknowledged, that he was driving distractedly while using his phone to conduct city business.”

On the contrary, Thody has given us reasons to question whether he was driving under the influence of alcohol. He failed to stop at the scene of the one-vehicle accident and reportedly continued to drive erratically at a high rate of speed. The state police responded to the call without the urgency it merited, for reasons that are not clear. If Thody had stopped and waited for police to arrive, as he should have, we’d have answers to these questions. A police chief should know that — and should hold himself to a higher standard.

Thody’s shifting explanations and Bronin’s rigid defense of him in the face of damaging facts will make life in Hartford more difficult for front-line officers. No matter what version of the story you adopt, there is one consistent conclusion: The police chief is being treated in a manner that others would not. His behavior will not bring him the punishment or scrutiny others would face under similar circumstances. You, I or a Hartford patrol officer would not have received the aggressive support of the mayor