HARTFORD — Al Mayo, a Black man wearing a Black Lives Matter flag as a cape, asked people gathered outside Hartford City Hall on Saturday to imagine citizens like themselves betting on where the next police officer would be shot.
He and other protesters said a Hartford detective’s “dead pool” wager, the flip side of that rhetorical question with a much different answer, is just more proof of the police department’s disrespect and callous view of the citizens they are supposed to serve and protect.
Det. Jeffrey Placzek faces demotion and a four-month unpaid suspension for a text inviting fellow investigators and two court officials to bet on the location of Hartford’s first murder of 2021.