Borough officer put on leave following arrest

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Naugatuck police Officer Thomas Grant was put on paid administrative leave this week following his arrest on Wednesday. -CONTRIBUTED

NAUGATUCK — A borough police officer is facing criminal charges following a domestic incident with his girlfriend.

Officer Thomas Grant, 38, of 32 May St. was arrested on a warrant Wednesday.

Grant’s live-in girlfriend reported he punched her, pulled a chunk of her hair out and threatened to kill the two of them during a drunken argument.

Grant has served in the department for nine years as a patrolman and a dispatcher and earned the Life Saving Award last January after he and a fellow officer helped to save the life of a Naugatuck man who was having a heart attack.

Grant had been drinking Monday afternoon when he asked his girlfriend to take a bath with him and she refused, according to a sworn affidavit. Grant began yelling and insulting the girlfriend, using racial slurs at one point, according to the affidavit. Grant, following his girlfriend into the bedroom, told her she had put him in debt and ruined his life, according to the warrant.

While Grant’s girlfriend was lying on the bed, he “came after her,” the document states. She raised her hands and feet to block him and he began punching, eventually hitting her right calf, which was bruised two days later, according to police. Grant also pulled a chunk of his girlfriend’s hair out before he calmed down, she told police.

The next day, Grant began drinking beer at 3:30 p.m., according to the warrant. Grant and his girlfriend began fighting “because he thought her kids felt they were not good enough for his kids,” she told police.

He “made comments saying he has nothing to look forward to, he should shoot himself, blow his brains out, and that he should kill her,” she told police.

A friend of Grant’s died of a drug overdose a few weeks ago, his girlfriend told police. “Since then Grant has been acting weird and mean, and blaming himself that it should have been himself who died,” her statement reads.

Grant then left for the night. His girlfriend called him repeatedly and he kept threatening suicide, according to the warrant. Grant came back the next day, said he had spent the night at a Frederick Street house with a woman who was a friend, and he was going to a different friend’s house to shower. When he never showed up for the shower, his girlfriend called police, who found him at the Frederick Street house.

Grant told police his girlfriend was lying and he had not threatened to hurt himself or anyone else. A superior, Sgt. Ronald Hunt, took his gun away, according to the warrant.

He was committed to Waterbury Hospital after his arrest and appeared Thursday in Waterbury Superior Court, where he was charged with disorderly conduct, assault in the third degree and threatening in the second degree. Grant was also given a restraining order.

The names of Grant’s girlfriend and her children were redacted from the warrant to protect their identities.

This incident is not the first time Grant has been arrested in relation to a domestic issue.

In 2007 Grant was charged with third-degree assault and disorderly conduct after being involved in a domestic incident at his home while he had been drinking.

Two years later, Grant was suspended for 20 days without pay following a drunken altercation at a sports bar on Rubber Avenue. At the time, Chief of Police Christopher Edson threatened to fire Grant if he violated the department’s alcohol policies again.

A release issued by the Naugatuck Police Department stated Grant has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation.

1 COMMENT

  1. OMG,I hope that poor woman and her kids are o.k..I counsel women that have been abused and it is awful what these women go through afterward. Honestly,that’s what happens to these cops,they see so much b.s.and go berserk just like our troops.I have run into a couple with serious Napoleon complexes .I read this was not the first arrest,and they kept him on the Force???? The Naugatuck police dept is getting just like Milford Police dept. HMMMMMMM wonder why?( I know why!!) Loose cannon cops with NOTHING better to do but beat his wife because his friend overdosed?? My kids died I did not beat on anybody, Maybe they all need to play some golf or something,there are smarmy things going on with the police PAY ATTNTION PEOPLE!!