Three arrests landed in Thursday's Farmington Police Department log, and they do not share an obvious through-line. The first was a warrant served on a 21-year-old Avon woman charged with six offenses including DUI and two counts of motor-vehicle assault. The second was the first narcotics-sale arrest the Mercury has covered in this police-log series — three Title 21a charges debuting at once, led by a Class A felony cocaine-sale count. The third was a 63-year-old Farmington resident charged with breach of peace, brought in by an officer who quietly extended his hold on the series-leading arrest count.
That officer is Michael J. Smith, and the arrest was his seventh appearance in this log series. Michael Angelo Ancona, who lives at 12 Holmes Circle, was taken in at 10:36 a.m. Thursday at 319 New Britain Avenue on a single count of §53a-181 Breach of Peace 2nd Degree, with a $5,000 surety bond. The log notes the underlying call as disorderly conduct. Ancona posted bond and is due in court May 22. He is the eighth Farmington resident to appear in this log series, and at 63 he is the oldest. He is the second Farmington resident Smith has arrested in this series — the first was Dilworthy Mandhlazi on April 14, at his own address on Arwood Road, on a restraining-order charge. The other five Smith arrests went to out-of-towners, including the 9-charge DUI cluster on Scott Swamp Road on March 25 and the 5-charge DUI on the same road last week.
The cocaine arrest came earlier in the morning, at 9:01 a.m., on the 1593 block of Farmington Avenue. Officer Michael A. Meier — making his first appearance in this series — took 38-year-old Johnathon M Martin of Winsted into custody on three controlled-substance charges: §21a-267(a) Use of Drug Paraphernalia; §21a-278(a)(1)(A)(ii) Sale of One-Half Ounce or More of Cocaine or Free-Base Cocaine, the heaviest charge on the warrant and a Class A felony — the most serious narcotics-sale statute in the Connecticut General Statutes; and §21a-279(a)(1) Possession of a Controlled Substance, First Offense, with a $10,000 nonsurety bond. None of these statutes had previously appeared in this log series. Martin posted bond. His court date is May 21.
The Oconnor case is the heaviest charging schedule the Farmington log has produced in the last week — heavier than the single-charge Hinton arrest at 1600 Southeast Road on Monday and heavier than the single-charge Casiano habeas warrant at GA 18 on May 1, each of which produced its own log. Officer Ryan A. DiFusco — making his second appearance in this series, both DUI-related — served a warrant at 11:40 p.m. on 21-year-old Katie May Oconnor of 255 Waterville Road, Avon. The warrant lists six counts. The headline figure is $50,000, attached to §14-218a Traveling Unreasonably Fast — the highest single-line bond on this log. The other five counts carry no listed bond amount: §14-227a Operating a Motor Vehicle Under the Influence of Alcohol or Drugs (surety bond, listed at $0); §53-21 Risk of Injury to Child; §53a-60d Assault 2nd Degree with a Motor Vehicle, charged twice as separate line entries; and §53a-63 Reckless Endangerment 1st Degree.
§53a-60d is a Class D felony. It is the Connecticut statute that applies when a person operates a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol or drugs and causes serious physical injury to another person as a consequence of that operation. The statute appears here for the first time in this log series. The log itself does not narrate the underlying incident — only what is being charged. A warrant arrest, by definition, means the underlying incident pre-dates the warrant; the date the log records is the date of the arrest, not the date of whatever the warrant alleges. Oconnor posted bond. Her court date is May 22.
A few procedural notes worth carrying forward. Officer Smith's run as the series-leading arresting officer continues; his seventh appearance moves him further out from the rest of the field. Officer DiFusco returns to the log after a six-week absence from the series — his first appearance was a March 24 DUI — on a charging schedule that rhymes with that first appearance. Both DiFusco arrests in this series have involved alcohol-impaired driving fact patterns. And §53-21 Risk of Injury to Child has now appeared on five separate Farmington warrants across radically different circumstances: organized retail theft on April 8, domestic assault on April 9, a strangulation arrest on April 24, the Forest Park Drive child-shooting case on April 28, and now the Oconnor warrant. A Connecticut criminal-code statute that did not appear in this series until April 8 has now appeared in five logs in the last month.
All three defendants in Thursday's log are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
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— Jack Beckett has covered the Farmington police log long enough to know the difference between §53a-60 (Assault 2nd, generic) and §53a-60d (the motor-vehicle-DUI variant, with the trailing "d"). He is on his second cup of coffee. The statute citations are correct, and he has read them twice. ☕
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Update, May 11: The May 8–10 weekend log — six-charge Saturday-night pursuit cluster (Velasco-Bouchot), triple FTA at Hein Farm (Dominello), and the Westfarms shoplifting pattern recurs.