A Connecticut Department of Correction worker has been arrested by state police and accused of using his DOC badge to impersonate a police officer in Mansfield last Wednesday.
David Wright, 58, of Ashford was taken into custody by Connecticut State Police last Thursday and charged with impersonating a police officer, second-degree threatening and second-degree breach of peace. He was released without having to post bail and is expected to face a judge in Rockville Superior Court on Tuesday.
A DOC spokesperson on Thursday said Wright, a correction officer at the Brooklyn Correctional Institution, has been employed with the DOC since January 2008. He was placed on paid administrative leave this week pending an internal DOC investigation, the spokesperson said.
State police on Thursday released the arrest warrant affidavit in the case, which indicates a Mansfield woman and a man from New York who was visiting were driving around her hometown last Wednesday when they stopped at a stop sign in the area of Mansfield City Road to look up directions to a nearby farm. A motorist in a Mercury Mountaineer approached the intersection when the pair waved him on to proceed through the intersection ahead of them, the affidavit said.
When the motorist in the Mountaineer turned left and passed the victims, the driver yelled something derogatory toward the New York man, who then followed the motorist to determine if there was an issue, the affidavit said. At this point, the Mountaineer driver — later identified as Wright — flashed a badge and told the pair he was a police officer, according to the affidavit.
Wright, the affidavit continued, began screaming and telling the New York man he would taser and shoot him and threatened to arrest and handcuff him. The woman in the car said the man was speaking so incomprehensibly that she could barely make out what he was saying, telling troopers he “genuinely seemed insane,” the affidavit said.
The woman also told troopers Wright made an odd reference to previously arresting people and handcuffing them for so long that their “toes would burn,” according to the affidavit. He also alluded to illegally poaching hawks, the document continued.
“I did not understand any of this and realized that something was definitely not right here,” the woman wrote in her statement to the state police.
The pair told troopers Wright calmed down after they expressed their respect for law enforcement, after which he invited them to his house for a beer and gave them his name and phone number, the affidavit said.
When troopers went to Wright’s Ashford home, he conceded that he flashed his Connecticut Department of Correction badge during the exchange, but he denied ever representing himself as a police officer and said he clearly told them he was a “C.O.,” the affidavit said. He also denied making any threats.
Wright told troopers he believed the two people he had a confrontation with were drunk, though state police noted in the affidavit that they did not appear intoxicated. State police also noted that neither Wright nor any other individuals made any reports about an erratic driver or intoxicated motorist matching the description of the pair.
