Bridgeport’s former mayor tried to prevent Perez promotion

BRIDGEPORT — Five years ago, in one of his final decisions before leaving office, former Mayor Bill Finch allegedly tried to block successor Joe Ganim’s plan to promote then-Police Captain Armando Perez to top cop.

In a dramatic and controversial move, Finch extended then-police chief Joseph Gaudett’s contract for five years.

Ganim ultimately undid that maneuver and made Perez acting chief in 2016, then permanent head of the department with his own five-year contract in 2018 following a national search.

Last week, Perez and Personnel Director David Dunn were arrested by federal authorities for allegedly rigging the 2018 search, and both men resigned.

“I hate to say, ‘I told you so,’ ” Finch said in a rare interview this week, adding he always felt Perez — who has been charged with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and lying to the FBI—had“very poor judgment” and was ethical ly challenged.

Finch lost the 2015 Democratic primary to then exMayor Ganim, who ran Bridgeport from 1991 until he was convicted in 2003 of racketeering and bribery charges and served seven years in federal prison.

Worried Ganim would install his close friend as chief of police after he won the general election, Finch — just days before the beaten incumbent left City Hall and Ganim was sworn in — extended Gaudett’s contract, against the mayor-elect’s publicly stated wishes.

Finch at the time simply credited his decision to Gaudett being a “trustworthy leader.”

Perez joined the police department in 1983 and, by the late 1990s, was working behind-the-wheel for Ganim. It was while carrying out those responsibilities as mayoral driver in 1998 that Perez, as he testified during Ganim’s 2003 federal corruption trial, loaded boxes of expensive wines into the trunk of Ganim’s car — wine that later became evidence in the mayor’s pay-to-play corruption trial.

According to Perez, Ganim

had asked him to store wine at the former’s home. Perez admitted under oath he relocated some of the bottles to his cousin’s after becoming aware the wine was part of the FBI probe.

“I stored it there because this story came out in the paper, and I said, ‘I think I’m holding the wine,’ ” Perez testified. “I didn’t want to be sitting here in front of you guys today, but here I am.”

Perez had said he never saw Ganim commit a crime but would have removed himself from the job rather than call the FBI on his friend: “There is no secret, I love the mayor.”

Finch said it was clear to him from the 2003 court testimony that Perez “let his personal feelings and personal loyalties to Mr. Ganim cloud his judgment and it made him, to me, not a leader within the Bridgeport Police Department.

“We had to take the slings and arrows but wanted Joe Gaudett to continue because I knew Joe Gaudett was honest,” Finch said this week. “I personally said, ‘We’re going to put that stake on the other side of enemy territory and make it stick.’ ”

Ganim and the police union, which had been at odds with Gaudett over overtime and other issues, at the time portrayed the contract extension as that of a sore loser taking a last-minute cheap shot.

Ganim had accused Finch of acting “reckless.”

After some tense weeks between Ganim and Gaudett, during which the mayor fired Gaudett’s assistant chief — another Finch hire — and gave Perez added responsibilities, the pair in early 2016 struck a deal. Gaudett agreed to retire and be rehired as a private emergency management consultant with a threeyear contract, avoiding any litigation over his Finchbacked five-year deal. The mayor then installed Perez as acting chief.

Gaudett, who resigned from his consulting job in April 2019 to become Stamford’s 911 director, did not return requests for comment for this story.

It was Gaudett who, in 2014, made Perez head of the detective bureau — a move Finch this week claimed to have opposed for the same reasons he had not wanted Perez in charge of the force.

But Gaudett at the time said of Perez, “I have no doubt that (he) is up to the challenge. I’ve known A.J. (Perez) for three decades. He has led the narcotics unit the last five years and done outstanding work. The detective bureau is in good hands.”

Ganim has not been accused of a crime and Sept. 12 denied any involvement in 2018’s allegedly corrupted search for a permanent police chief. But according to the investigation complaint, Dunn told a panelist on a search committee responsible for ranking the applicants that “the mayor wanted Perez to be ‘in the top three’ ” — meaning one of a trio of finalists forwarded to Ganim for selection.

The Connecticut Post this week asked the mayor whether he regrets putting Perez in charge. Ganim did not respond to that but did accuse Finch of playing politics “with what is a difficult time for all of us in Bridgeport.”

“Apparently Finch still cannot get over the fact that he was thrown out of office by the voters five years ago after being a disaster as mayor,” Ganim said. He also cited some other documented decisions the Finch administration made in its final days in office, including last minute raises for the outgoing mayor and his staff that Ganim unsuccessfully tried to reverse, and a taxpayer funded meal Team Finch enjoyed at Ralph ‘n’ Rich’s Italian restaurant downtown.

Finch this week did not join with some others in the community — including state Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, who unsuccessfully ran against Ganim last year — in calling on the mayor to resign over Perez and Dunn.

“I did everything I could to prevent him from being mayor. I’d love to see someone else as mayor,” Finch said. “We have to follow the rule of law and try based not on innuendo but facts. If the facts lead to the mayor being culpable, it would be wise for him to resign. But we don’t know that and what we really need to do is find out. We have to find the truth.”