Police sources said former acting New Bedford Fire Chief Paul Coderre made “fatalistic comments” as he was surrounded by police in a standoff outside a Fairhaven bar Friday night in which Coderre was shot and killed by police.
The investigation is ongoing, but based on Coderre’s comments outside the bar, police said they are looking at whether the former fire chief intended to commit “suicide by cop.”
Coderre, 55, who until 2022 served as acting chief of the New Bedford Fire Department, had been drinking with friends for several hours at the Bayside Lounge in Fairhaven, according to Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn III, speaking at a press conference late Friday night nearby the scene of the shooting.
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Quinn said there was “an altercation” inside the bar that led Coderre to leave the bar. He “was attempting to get into his vehicle when another individual tried to stop him from driving,” Quinn said. “He was intoxicated, got into an argument, may have hit a car [with his fist], and an altercation took place.”
At 5 p.m. Fairhaven Police were dispatched to the Bayside Lounge for reports of an intoxicated male. Police arrived, engaging Coderre in the bar’s parking lot and “learned that he had a weapon,” Quinn said. Dispatch called all units to the scene.
When officers arrived, the firearm was holstered on Coderre’s body, according to radio transcripts reviewed by The Light. “He does not have it [the firearm] in his hand at this time,” one officer said over the radio.
“[Police] attempted to speak to him and deescalate the situation,” Quinn said. Quinn said police used “non-deadly force,” including a taser, to subdue Coderre. Other police sources with knowledge of the incident said that police also used a “BolaWrap,” a nonlethal device that propels a string of wires to restrain a suspect, which missed Coderre and instead hit his vehicle. Police also fired at least one “bean bag round” at Coderre, they said.
“At some point, [Coderre] fired his gun,” Quinn said. A responding officer from the Acushnet Police Department was struck in the leg by a bullet, Quinn said. It is unclear if the bullet that struck the officer was fired by Coderre. “Police returned fire and as a result of that, Paul Coderre died.”
The officer who was shot was rushed to Saint Luke’s hospital, where he was treated and later released.
“This evening’s fatal shooting in Fairhaven was tragic in every sense,” said New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell in a statement Friday night. “I am relieved that the officer who was injured will make a full recovery, and that no one else was seriously hurt.”
Mitchell and Coderre had a fraught relationship. Coderre was mired in a nearly two-year legal dispute with the city of New Bedford. The week before Christmas, the city had filed an appeal that, though it never concluded, had the potential to deprive him of his pension.
Coderre served as the city’s deputy fire chief from 2011 to 2018, when he was appointed acting fire chief.
The mayor fired Coderre in 2022 for “dishonesty and untruthfulness in connection with alleged work-related injuries.” While on leave for disability, the city had hired an investigator to surveil Coderre and captured him on video unloading a 176-pound smoker grill from the bed of his truck — which Mitchell and the city claimed as “inconsistent with his alleged injuries.”
In late November, Coderre won his appeal with the state Civil Service Commission, which ruled that his termination was “unlawful” and “wrongheaded.” The ruling overturned the city’s 2022 decision to fire Coderre. The Civil Service Commission concluded “his unlawful termination in violation of his civil service rights also affects his entitlement to other post-retirement compensation that he was denied as a consequence of the unlawful termination.”
The mayor at the time vowed to appeal the Civil Service Commission’s ruling in Superior Court. “We are going to pursue this case until the end,” Mitchell told NBC10 in December.
The city confirmed Saturday that it filed its appeal in Superior Court the week before Christmas. It is unclear if the city will now continue to pursue the case.
In his final statements Friday night, Quinn expressed appreciation for the responding officers.
“More and more there are these lethal situations that police are confronted with. There are so many guns out on the streets,” he said. “We are going to continue to investigate this. We want to commend the police for dealing with a life and death situation, trying to use non-deadly force until they were left with no alternative.”
Email Will Sennott at wsennott@newbedfordlight.org
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What do the security cameras show?
I haven’t a clue about what actually happened here, but the headline and the lead appear to rely exclusively on anonymous “police sources” speculating about the motivations of the former Fire Chief who was, according to the DA, literally shot and killed by the police.
The shooting seems well justified (assuming an independent investigation confirms the DA’s account of the incident) but running with that heading and lead without a shred of additional evidence beyond an anonymous quote naming suicide as the motive from the institution that literally pulled the trigger doesn’t seem consistent with good journalistic practice.
The fact is that the truth of this case is yet to be fully understood and pushing this narrative through the chosen headline and lead serves only to sensationalize and not to inform in any meaningful sense.
Review the security cameras, if operating. Interview his ‘friends’ with whom he was drinking with. If he was there for hours, then the ‘friends’ know first hand as to how the drama unfolded. He had to be a ‘regular’ at the bar, along with his ‘friends’, because the bar did not shut them down after hours of drinking. I would think his ‘friends’ are fire department related, probably high ranking and retired like him! They are the perfect witnesses! I just hope the names have not been mentioned to protect them from exposure and complicency. As ‘friends’ they should have diffused the incident hours before! Knowledge of the true chain of events can help prevent tradgedys like this from happening in the future.