White Hartford Police detective who confronted Black students ...

[left-of-center2012]

White Hartford Police detective who confronted Black students raising money for high school football team receives 10-day suspension.

The Hartford Police Department has suspended a white detective for 10 days without pay for confronting two Black Conard High School students who were knocking on doors in West Hartford to raise money for their football team last August. Taariq Lewinston and Antonio Gordon, wearing their team jerseys, were knocking on doors around 9 p.m. on Aug. 26, 2019, when a white SUV slowly passed them, made a U-turn and drove toward them, according to a Hartford police investigation report.

Detective Phil Borkowski, who was armed, approached the students and asked them what they were doing in the neighborhood. His wife, Kimberly Borkowski, also a Hartford police detective, who is Asian, had called him after the young men knocked on the Borkowskis’ door a few minutes earlier, according to the report. In response, Phil Borkowski and another Hartford detective, Josh Lewis — both of whom were on duty in Hartford assisting with a parole compliance check — drove with a parole officer, Jennifer Sullivan, to West Hartford to confront the students.

Lewinston and Gordon told an Internal Affairs investigator in Sept. 3 interviews that they told Borkowski they were selling Chieftain cards, which include local restaurant discounts. Lewinston said Borkowski “kind of yelled” at him because they had knocked on his door and his wife was “terrified.”

“Had this been two white boys, they would not have gone through that,” Keesha Answer, Lewinston’s mother added. “The wife would have opened their door, or when the detective saw that they had the Chieftan cards in their hands, with their Chieftain uniforms on, he would have probably purchased a card from them and just gone away.”

https://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-br-suspension-west-hartford-incident-20200716-v4rrexosr5d4zgm4itgf23prla-story.html