Ablaze at Troop H. Chair set on fire in parking lot to mark dispatcher’s retirement.

State police troopers and others at Troop H in Hartford marked the retirement of a dispatcher on the last day of 2024 by setting a chair on fire in the parking lot.

The dispatcher, according to spokesman Rick Green, purchased the chair herself. On her final day, colleagues took the chair into the parking lot, appear to have applied an accelerant and lit the fire. The reckless event was memorialized by a photo as state law enforcement officials looked on.

The state does have a law prohibiting open burning without a permit, but that is for other people. Furniture often contains hazardous chemicals. Reckless burning is a class D felony. Small fires, as we have been reminded in the last week, can grow into horrifically destructive ones.

This seems to a civilian a reckless and pointless act, but people with the power to arrest take a different view.

Published January 14, 2025.