The Farmington Police Department's latest arrest log covers a quiet stretch — 7 a.m. Wednesday to 7 a.m. Thursday — with a single name on it. That single name came with two charges, two incident numbers, and a bond the man did not post.
Philip Michael Doran, 71, of Meriden, was arrested at 3:45 a.m. Thursday at the Farmington Police Department. The log lists Officer John A. Salute as the arresting officer, and it sets a court date of May 14 — the same day as the arrest.
The single name is not the story. The two charges are.
The first is §53a-125b, Larceny in the Sixth Degree — the shoplifting-tier larceny charge, and the one that turns up more than any other across the Farmington logs the Mercury has read this year. Its bond was set at $500. What stands out is the incident number attached to it: 2500013026 — a number that, by the convention these logs follow, marks a case opened in 2025. The shoplifting allegation, in other words, is not new.
The second charge is §53a-173(a)(1), Failure to Appear in the Second Degree. In plain terms, it is the charge for willfully not showing up to court on a pending misdemeanor or motor-vehicle case — and the log labels it precisely: "Re-arrest warrant," a warrant issued to bring someone back before a judge they were supposed to face already. Its incident number is 2600007896, a 2026 file, and its bond was set at $10,000.
The log does not connect the two charges in so many words. It does not have to. A 2025 larceny case and a 2026 re-arrest warrant for missing court, arriving on the same man at the same 3:45 a.m. booking, suggest their own shape.
What the log does say, on both lines, is the same three words: "Held on bond." Doran did not post the $10,500, and that is its own small piece of news. The last several Farmington logs have been a steady run of arrests that ended in release — bond posted, defendant out the door, court date pending. The single-arrest stretch through late April and early May ended that way every time. The nearest arrest before this one to end in detention was the triple failure-to-appear hold at Hein Farm in the May 8–10 log. Doran's makes two.
A few other notes for the record. At 71, Doran is the oldest person to appear on a Farmington arrest log in the run the Mercury has tracked this year. The previous mark was 67 — a Hartford resident logged in mid-April. And Doran is the second Meriden resident to land on these logs; the first, back on April 14, was also charged with Larceny in the Sixth Degree. Meriden to Farmington, twice now, on the same charge.
Officer Salute's name is worth a line of its own. This is his second appearance in the Farmington logs. The first was a DUI arrest on March 21 — a different kind of call entirely. Nearly two months later, he turned up again, this time on a 3:45 a.m. warrant service at the police department. Two arrests, two registers.
Doran is presumed innocent. The shoplifting case and the failure-to-appear warrant are now with the court — Doran's first court date set for May 14, the day of the arrest itself. What the court does from there is not something an arrest log records. The Mercury will follow the docket, slowly, the way it follows everything.
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— Jack Beckett has covered the Farmington police blotter long enough to know that the quietest logs are sometimes the ones worth reading twice. One arrest, two incident numbers, a year between them. He is on his second coffee. The log was one page. ☕
*The Farmington Mercury covers the town nobody else is covering — the police log that is technically public record but that you'd never find unless someone typed it up, the zoning meeting that ran late, the school board vote that decides what your kids learn next year. We publish slowly, deliberately, and without apology. Our motto is "Always last to breaking news," and we mean it: by the time you read this, the dust has settled, the facts are checked, and the incident numbers have been read in full. Find us at farmingtonmercury.com and tell your neighbors. #WeAreFarmington 📰