A PROUD BADGE IN HARTFORD IS TARNISHED LIKE SO MANY

HARTFORD, Oct. 4 - For six years, Gregory J. DePietro was not just an
ordinary cop. Working the toughest neighborhoods, he was considered an
example of what was right with Hartford's embattled police force, hauling
in some of this city's most violent drug suspects at a time when several
colleagues were being indicted, tried and sent to prison for committing
outrageous felonies on the job.

Nowadays, Greg DePietro is still no ordinary cop, but for all the wrong
reasons.

In admissions that have stunned police officials here, Officer DePietro
said that he and other Hartford officers had stolen weapons and jewelry
from suspects and crime scenes, flushed drug evidence down the toilet,
filched department property and fudged departmental reports during his
years on the force.

On Thursday, after a 10-month internal investigation, he resigned rather
than face the likely prospect of being fired.

For the Hartford Police Department and Chief Bruce P. Marquis, a former
F.B.I. agent brought in from Texas two years ago to turn around a force
stung by one high-profile embarrassment after another, Officer DePietro's
revelations, reported by The Hartford Courant on Tuesday, are a humbling
reminder of the work left to be done.

But what struck many here as downright bizarre was the way in which he
confessed them: during a job interview last December with the West Hartford
Police Department.

His revelations came out during his second interview, as he sat with a West
Hartford detective, police officials said. Officer DePietro later told
investigators from his own department that he had decided to come clean to
avoid being caught lying about his past during the polygraph test that the
West Hartford police administer to all job candidates.

"I'm a very sensitive person," he told Hartford police investigators,
according to an internal report quoted by The Courant. "I was trying to be
so specific for this interview because of the fact that I was going to be
wired to a lie-detector machine."

Moreover, responding to 130 yes-or-no questions given to him by the West
Hartford detective, Officer DePietro affirmatively answered numerous
questions about whether he had lied or stolen, and admitted that he had
kept knives and narcotics seized from criminal suspects, the report said.

On one occasion, Officer DePietro told West Hartford officials, a partner
had stolen a shotgun he had found in the back of an abandoned vehicle, the
report said. Another time, the officer said, he was among a group of
Hartford officers who flushed what appeared to be cocaine down a
station-house toilet because they did not have time to book the three
suspects they had taken the package from, the report said.

This is not what his bosses expected from Officer DePietro, 31, who won a
statewide award in 1998 for bravery. And this is not what the Hartford
police were hoping to hear after years of scandal.

"This is just devastating," said Sgt. Maura Hammick, a Hartford police
spokeswoman. "You feel very betrayed. Honestly, I wondered what police
department he was working for." Chief Marquis was traveling out of state
and could not be reached for comment, she said.

Since 1998, seven officers or former officers have been convicted on
federal charges that they coerced city prostitutes into performing sex acts
in police cars, sometimes while the officers were on duty.

Before that, a nationally recognized expert hired by the city concluded, in
a meticulous audit of the department, that it was "dysfunctional" and
lacking the policies, personnel and discipline needed to serve a city this
size adequately.

The department is still investigating Mr. DePietro's charges implicating
more than a dozen of his former colleagues, Sergeant Hammick said. But not
all officers are convinced he did everything he confessed to. "A lot of
things were taken out of context and hyperbolized," said Sgt. Mike Wood,
the president of the police union in Hartford.

The West Hartford police chief, James J. Strillacci, said in an interview
today that no one really knows what compelled Officer DePietro, a seasoned
policeman, suddenly to admit a laundry list of potential crimes. "It was
possible that he was so immersed in a culture that allowed such things,
that he thought he wouldn't get caught," he said.

Asked if Mr. DePietro could ever find another job at a police department,
Chief Strillacci said, "I would think the news stories about him make him
pretty much unemployable in law enforcement. Some people are just too dumb
to be police officers."