City council backs ‘dead pool’ firing

Resolution targets detective at center of ‘distasteful’ wager

Hartford’s city council gave its approval to a resolution that called on firing the veteran Hartford police detective who is accused of creating a “dead pool” wager with fellow investigators on the location of the city’s first homicide of 2021.

The council was divided in support for the resolution with a 6-3 vote in favor of Det. Jeffrey Placzek’s termination. Council President Maly D. Rosado, along with members James B. Sanchez and John Q. Gale, voted against the measure, seeking not to question the disciplinary authority of police Chief Jason Thody.

Rosado, ahead of the vote, said she could not support the firing of the detective. “It makes me feel like I failed him,” she said, in comments that also offered support to Thody.

Placzek, among a number of Hartford detectives and commanders under investigation for the text thread in which the wager was proposed, faces a four-month, unpaid suspension and a demotion from his role in the department’s Major Crimes Division under a recommended punishment from Thody.

“I think this resolution sends a clear signal that we aren’t going to roll over. We are no longer going to be subject to this kind of distastefulness. ... Enough is enough,” council Majority Leader Thomas “TJ” Clarke II said.

The council’s debate over the resolution touched on showing support for the police administration and questioning a fractured culture in the department fueled in part by their own decisions.

Details of the wager surfaced earlier this month and were met with swift condemnation from across the city as residents continue to grapple with long-simmering distrust in the department and its officers, not dissimilar to what has been seen across the country as high-profile killings at the hands of police have brought those tensions to the forefront.

The public call for Placzek’s termination follows powerful comments from the council in the wake of the controversy that gambling on the lives of Hartford’s residents, in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, is a breach of an officer’s oath to serve and protect, and undermines