Crime
Officers say he focused safes and money registers at eating places and companies in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
GLASTONBURY, Conn. (AP) — A former Connecticut police officer is suspected of being a serial burglar and committing 30 or extra thefts in three states, together with the group he had patrolled till just lately.
A newly unsealed warrant says former Glastonbury Police Officer Patrick Hemingway is believed to have focused safes and money registers at eating places and companies in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The warrant, cited in a number of information experiences and launched Thursday, says surveillance movies present a suspect probably resembling the previous officer.
Hemingway, 37, was charged final month with pc crimes and making a false assertion. A decide at his arraignment mentioned extra fees had been anticipated.
In a single surveillance video, a tall male carrying a masks, gloves and a hooded sweatshirt is seen holding a flashlight “in a tactical method.” The suspect can also be holding “a coiled, corded object to his left ear” that resembles the transportable police radios utilized by the Glastonbury Police Division, the warrant mentioned.
“Lock-picking instruments” had been utilized in a few of the burglaries, in accordance with the warrant. Hemingway left behind a bag that included a lock-picking device package when he resigned Sept. 1 from the Glastonbury Police Division, the warrant mentioned. Cellphone knowledge and pictures of a automobile resembling one owned by Hemingway’s spouse and noticed at a number of break-ins are additionally cited within the warrant.
Because the housebreaking a part of the investigation continues, Hemingway is being held on a $1 million bond. His lawyer argued in court docket that the bond was too excessive.
“I’ve seen homicide circumstances the place the bond is that prime,” James E. Sulick mentioned.
“I need to withhold any remark till I’ve had an opportunity to evaluation issues with my consumer,” Sulick mentioned Saturday. “And I simply haven’t been ready to do this but.”
Hemingway was initially arrested as a fugitive from justice on Sept. 22 at a New Jersey airport the place Sulick mentioned he was learning to turn out to be a business pilot. He was extradited to Connecticut. The warrant for the pc crime, signed when Hemingway was in New Jersey, stems from allegations he misused a police database 80 occasions. In response to the warrant, Hemingway made 28 queries about his personal automobile from Feb. 26, 2019, in addition to 19 queries about his spouse’s automobile from April 11, 2022, to Aug. 23, plus different queries.
“A potential rationalization for Patrick operating such info so steadily would have been to find out if he was being investigated by police,” the warrant mentioned.
Final month, the Glastonbury Police Division issued a information launch saying that they had been alerted to the chance {that a} former officer was an individual of curiosity in a current housebreaking and had contacted the Connecticut State Police Main Crimes unit as a result of the investigation concerned a number of jurisdictions. The officer was not named and the division mentioned it could not remark additional.