CT police officer pardoned, back on the force, raising concerns
Bridgeport officer resumes job he lost years earlier after off-duty domestic violence arrest
A Bridgeport police officer last year quietly received a pardon for criminal convictions, allowing him to regain his job patrolling city streets despite reservations from members of a state oversight board.
In 2013, after just two years on the force, Officer Paul Cari had his gun and badge stripped and was relegated to an administrative role at the Bridgeport Police Department following his arrest for an offduty domestic violence incident. Authorities alleged at the time that Cari repeatedly punched a man he found at his ex-girlfriend’s house, hit him in the head with a vase, and shoved her.
In 2015, Cari pleaded no contest and was convicted on charges of threatening and breach of peace, according to court records obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media Group. For years, the convictions prevented him from working as a sworn law enforcement officer.
But in October 2020, a three-member panel of the Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles granted Cari an “absolute pardon” for those convictions, records show.
Then, in May, Cari obtained recertification – the license to be a police officer – from the state Police Officers Standards and Training Council, records show.
Mike Lawlor, a POST Council member, said because the pardon erased Cari’s prior crimes, the POST Council had no choice but to recertify him as an officer.
“Everyone felt extremely uncomfortable doing this,” Lawlor said.
“This is the kind of thing that makes people scratch their heads and wonder what the standards really are for police officers,” added Lawlor, who also works as a criminal justice professor at the University of New Haven. “Ordinary citizens will look at this and say, ‘I don’t believe it.’”
Cari did not respond to a request for comment placed through his attorney, Elliott Spector, who represented him before the POST
Council.
Carleton Giles, the chair of the pardon board panel who granted Cari’s pardon, declined to comment this week. Giles, a retired police officer who served 33 years with the Norwalk Police Department, also refused to release additional information about Cari’s pardon.
Richard Sparaco, executive director of the state pardon board, did not respond to a request for comment.
Bridgeport police and city officials declined to comment.
Lawlor said Bridgeport police helped Cari in the years since his arrest by getting multiple extensions to delay his recertification. That allowed him to keep his job as an administrator until he was pardoned, and once pardoned, it allowed him to avoid going through the police academy again after becoming recertified as an officer.
When Cari applied for the pardon, he had the backing of a once-powerful, now-disgraced official: former Bridgeport Police Chief Armando Perez, records show.
In April 2020, Perez wrote a letter urging the board to grant Cari’s pardon, according to a copy of the pardon application, which Heart Connecticut Media obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Several months later – and one month before the pardon board approved Cari’s request – Perez was arrested on federal charges for cheating on his police chief examination. Perez pleaded guilty to those charges and is now in prison.
Dan Barrett, legal director for the Connecticut chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he does not know of another case in which an officer received a pardon to regain a police job in Connecticut.
“I also have not run across a situation where they kept the guy on the payroll for years,” Barrett said. “This sounds like a rare situation. I suspect it’s kind of an elaborate job preservation scheme.”
Cari is indeed back on the force and exercising police powers. He made at least one arrest in October, according to a Bridgeport police log published on the city’s website.
Lawlor questioned Bridgeport’s decision to put Cari back on active duty.
“Consider the liability if they put him back on the streets and something happens,” Lawlor said. “How is this guy going to testify in court? It makes everyone look bad. Domestic violence is a serious problem and especially among police officers.”
Barrett raised similar concerns. “What if he goes to bunch of domestic violence calls.”
The domestic violence incident
In 2013, officers from Cari’s own department arrested him following the domestic violence incident, police said at the time, according to a report in the Connecticut Post soon after his arrest.
Cari, then 43 years old, contended he hit another man in self-defense, police said.
Authorities said he was released from custody after posting a $5,000 bond and placed on administrative duty at the police department – a role that continued until he regained his right to serve as a police officer.
Archived court records obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media show that in April 2015 Cari pleaded no contest to one count of threatening in the second degree, a Class A, or the most serious type of, misdemeanor; he also pleaded no contest to three counts of second-degree breach of peace, which were each Class B, or the second-most serious type of, misdemeanor.
Cari was sentenced to two years of probation along with a suspended sentence of 1 year and six months in jail, the court records show.
The pardon
In June 2020, Cari applied for a pardon for his convictions, according to a copy of his application obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media.
Cari wrote on his application he needed a pardon so he could continue working at the Bridgeport department.
A pardon erases past crimes from a person’s record and restores their right to possess a firearm, which is a requirement to be a police officer.
“Seven years later, I am still on administrative duty due to a disqualifying misdemeanor,” Cari wrote in the application.
“Even though the Bridgeport Police Department wanted to keep me on as an officer with [the] same assignments, the state will eventually need to disqualify me as an officer because of the consequences of having the disqualifying misdemeanor,” Cari’s application said.
Numerous pages of information regarding the charges against Cari, including his conviction, were redacted from the copy of the application the pardon board released.
Initially, the pardon board declined to release any records, saying in response to a Freedom of Information request, they possessed no “responsive documents.” After subsequent questioning, officials relented, saying some of the documents requested were in “storage” and retrieved them.
In portions of his pardon application, Cari expressed remorse. He said his actions were out of character; he had learned his lesson.
“Honestly, it was an isolated incident,” Cari wrote. “In my entire life, I never did anything like this before or after that day.”
Cari added: “I never intended to hurt or impact anyone I ever met and now I did. Not only did I fail as an officer to uphold the law, I failed as a man for not showing compassion to [redacted]. I can’t make excuses for how I acted.”
Perez, the then-Bridgeport police chief who’s now behind bars, supported Cari’s pardon. Perez said he’d known Cari well for more than 14 years and had encouraged him to join Bridgeport Police.
“On the night of Paul’s incident in 2013, I was shocked to hear of the allegations made against Paul which is totally out of character of the man I know,” Perez wrote in an April 2020 letter.
He said an internal investigation into the incident “was also completed and with a multitude of inconsistencies only a verbal warning was warranted.”
“Unfortunately, it has come to a point now where Paul Cari is in jeopardy of losing his career as an administrator in the police department, due to not being able to meet POST Certifications,” Perez said.
“Losing Paul Cari would not [only] be an enormous loss for the department, but most of all it would be a huge loss for the community he serves,” Perez added.
Other city officers also urged the board to pardon Cari.
Connecticut’s pardons board is an autonomous body consisting of 10 seats for full-time members, including a chair, as well as up to five additional parttime seats, according to the board records.
But, according to state law, pardon decisions are made by panels of just three board members.
Minutes from the Oct. 7, 2020, hearing in which Cari received his pardon show a three-member panel – Giles, Joy Chance and Michael Pohl – voted unanimously to approve his application. There is no additional information in the minutes explaining the panel’s decision.
The pardon board has sole authority to rule on pardons.
“The Board of Pardons and Paroles has the discretion to grant or deny any pardon application at any time,” according to the board’s website.
“The Board decides whether or not to grant a pardon, based on – among other things – the rehabilitation of the offender applicant, the severity of the offense, the impact on the victim and the victim’s input, past criminal history and how much time has passed since the commission of the most recent offense, and whether the public interest is served by erasing a criminal record,” the board said on its website.
In Connecticut, a person convicted of a misdemeanor must wait three years before applying for a pardon. The process involves submitting police reports for arrests that resulted in convictions as well as undergoing a thorough background investigation and a phone interview.
State data show the board has issued more pardons, and approved a significantly larger share of applications, in recent years.
Connecticut is one of 17 states that frequently issue pardons, according to the Restoration of Rights Project, a coalition that includes criminal defense lawyers, public defenders and prosecutors.
The recertification
Once Cari had his pardon, he turned to the POST Council to get recertified as an officer.
Minutes of POST Council discussions in May show the council’s lawyer, Attorney Colin Milne, advised members they had no grounds to deny Cari’s request.
“The pardon removed his criminal convictions; there are no factors which prevent him from being recertified. He has met all the conditions to be certified by the council,” Milne said.
Bridgeport Police Lt. Paul Grech represented the department and spoke in favor of Cari’s recertification, the minutes show.
“Officer Cari is not just professional, but he has matured, respects people and treats people with respect,” Grech said. “Officer Cari is well rounded, does charity work and works with schools and never once asks for anything in exchange.”
Grech added Cari is “an officer we want on the front line.”
Spector, Cari’s attorney, told the council they could not reject the application, according to the minutes.
“No employer may require an employee to disclose the existence of any arrest, criminal charge or convictions,” Spector said.
“Paul Cari has received a gun permit and is certainly qualified to carry a gun in Connecticut,” Spector added, according to the minutes. “To refuse his request would be a disservice for the police department and the entire community.”
The minutes show the council discussed writing new rules to, in the future, bar individuals from being certified as officers if they’ve been pardoned.
But no such rules existed at the time, and the council approved Cari’s recertification.
The exact vote is not recorded in the minutes, though they note four members abstained from voting, including Milford Police Chief Keith Mello, the POST Council chair. Mello did not return calls seeking comment.
According to Lawlor, in the years between Cari’s convictions and his recertification, Bridgeport successfully obtained numerous extensions for his recertification, which is supposed to be completed every three years along with certain training.
Extensions are typically granted to injured officers or officers otherwise unable to serve. If their certification expires, officers must recomplete the police academy.
Milne said the council should create a policy for extension requests “to determine if they should be granting them in certain circumstances,” the minutes show.
Lawlor said the 2020 Police Accountability Act established that officers convicted of certain crimes, such as excessive force or violent acts, cannot be recertified.
“The same conduct today would result in not being certified again,” Lawlor said.