“You’re fucked! How does that sound? Mind your own business next time!”
Those were some of the choice words State Trooper Matthew Spina had for a motorist he stopped on New Haven’s Q Bridge.
Spina made the stop on Monday, after the driver hit 60 in a 40 mile-per-hour zone.
The driver, Kevin Jette, questioned why Spina himself had been speeding and tailing a car.
“Can I just ask you why you’re riding their butt like that and speeding, man?”
Jette turned on the video and left it running, at a propitious angle, as Spina took him out of the car, handcuffed him, rifled through his belongings, and unleashed a torrent of profanity-laced invective.
You can watch the video above. Over 120,000 other people, and counting, already have. (Update Sunday May 24: The video has been removed from Youtube. Above we have embedded a version of the video published in the UK Daily Mail. )
Spina explained that he had been speeding because he was pursuing someone else who was speeding.
“Who the fuck you think you are worried about what I’m doing? Everybody’s got something fucking to say!” he screamed at Jette, whom he ordered to remain seated on the ground while he dumped his prescription marijuana and threw items out of his backpack.
“Shut the fuck up!” Spina yelled.
“Sit the fuck down! Did I tell you to move?”
In between screaming at the driver, Spina noted that he’s looking forward to retiring as a state trooper: “I got 14 months. I can’t fucking wait to be done!:
And he generalized his impression of this driver thusly: “A clue to the public: What a bunch of assholes you are!”
“Don’t you ever,” Spina warned before releasing the driver, “fuck with me again!”
Trooper Matthew Spina: Pandemic defense?
Spina may not be fucking with Jette or any other driver again soon, either. At least not while on duty.
The state police have initiated an internal investigation into the incident and placed the trooper on administrative leave in the meantime, “which does not allow him to interact with the public,” Col. Stavros Mellekas, the state police’s deputy commissioner, reported in a statement released Tuesday afternoon.
The statement sought to put the incident in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We do recognize that all of us everywhere are under extreme stress during this pandemic,” Mellekas stated. “For our troopers, they are dealing with the impact on their personal lives along with workplace stressors of being on the frontline. While not an excuse, we are sensitive to this and also referred the trooper to our employee assistance program. We have also recently launched a resiliency program to help all our employees dealing with this pandemic.”