A year after chief ’s arrest, cops at a crossroads
Bridgeport force faces contract talks, search for new leader, worries over staffing
BRIDGEPORT — One year ago the police force faced one of the darkest days in its history when then-Chief Armando Perez, after a lengthy law enforcement career capped off with his promotion to top cop, was arrested for cheating to get that job.
Perez subsequently resigned, pleaded guilty and began serving his year-andone-day sentence in federal prison May 23. And the department where he spent 37 years of his life has moved on without him, though with plenty of turmoil.
Acting Police Chief Rebeca Garcia’s leadership has frequently been questioned by critics on and off the force and the union, which
has been working without a contract since July 1, says too many members are fleeing to other municipalities even as a recent recruitment drive drew several hundred fewer applicants than the last hiring push.
Now, current contract negotiations, a looming hunt for a new chief and other developments could make the next few weeks and months even more consequential than when Perez was taken into custody last Sept. 10.
Accreditation
In the short term, the department may be facing some welcome good news. At next Thursday’s meeting of Connecticut’s Police Officer Standards and Training Council, POST’s members are scheduled to vote on whether, following a four year effort, the city’s department has earned accreditation.
“It matters for the same reason ... that when you go to college, you want to go to an accredited college that practices ‘best practices’ (and) doesn’t operate by a whim, making policy by reaction rather than on research,” professor John DeCarlo, director of the University of New Haven’s master’s program in criminal justice, told Hearst Connecticut Media in July. “Accreditation brings to policing an organizational structure, a portable body of best practices and a level of accountability that just does not exist in a nonaccredited police department.”
Achieving such a designation would place Bridgeport’s local law enforcement agency on a short list of just over three dozen other departments around the state that have upgraded policies and procedures to Connecticut’s highest standards.
William Steck, a POST executive, said this week that POST staff have recommended Bridgeport receive accreditation but “the full council has to decide whether or not that’s going to happen.”
While an affirmative vote by the standards council Thursday will be a big win, there are other pending issues that will significantly determine the department’s future, like who will be hired to replace Perez.
Acting chief
Garcia assumed that responsibility less than a year after becoming Perez’s assistant chief in December 2019, and has not had an easy 12 months. Almost immediately after Ganim put her in charge last September some elected officials demanded the mayor either hire other finalists who lost out to Perez in 2018’s chief search or launch a new nationwide hunt for candidates.
Meanwhile a lawsuit challenging the legality of Garcia’s promotion to assistant chief by colleagues who wanted the opportunity to compete for that role is still pending in state Superior Court.
In March the police union voted “no confidence” in Garcia's leadership. Then in June the Bridgeport Guardians — a minority officer organization — called for her removal, alleging Black members in particular were subjected under Garcia to disparate treatment and a hostile work environment.
In August the Guardians called for federal oversight of the department in light of new allegations of racism that occurred under Perez.
Neither Ganim nor Garcia returned requests for comment about the state of the department post-Perez.
Ganim has, at least publicly, mostly ignored the controversies swirling around his acting top cop, but earlier this week his office confirmed “an independent investigator has been assigned to investigate all complaints as filed by the Bridgeport Guardians.”
Rather than launching a new chief search, the administration in April announced it would first seek to replace the department head who was also arrested last Sept. 10 for conspiring to help Perez cheat — then Personnel Director David Dunn, who similarly resigned, pleaded guilty but received a shorter, fourmonth prison sentence.
The city recently began advertising for a new personnel head. The application deadline is Sept. 20.
City Councilman Matthew McCarthy, who cochairs the contracts committee which votes on mayoral hires, has for months been urging Ganim to launch a chief search and hire an outsider rather than, as was the case with Perez and Garcia, promoting from within.
“I think having a permanent chief from outside of the department — maybe even outside of Connecticut — will be the best step toward righting the ship,” McCarthy reiterated this week. “Fresh eyes. Fresh face. There’s no favoritism. They’ll come in and just, hopefully, make changes.”
McCarthy said he is particularly alarmed by the number of officers who have departed this year under Garcia.
“It’s a public crisis right now,” he said.
Decreasing headcount
This week Police Union President Sgt. Brad Seeley told Hearst that 39 officers have left the force since January — 16 retired and 23 transferred to other municipalities.
“We are currently trying to get the city to pay attention to the growing staffing crisis within the police department,” Seeley said in a statement. “That was one of the issues our members raised when they concluded the no-confidence (vote) that passed . ... We are now down to approximately 335 officers.”
The city did not respond to a request to corroborate the union’s data. Garcia in July stated the optimum manpower is 426 officers and as of June 30 she had 349 men and women under her command.
Ganim’s administration in April launched a recruitment drive to fill around 60 positions, but as reported earlier this summer, the effort fell short of previous years: 419 candidates applied compared with 1,013 six years ago.
As of July 1 the union has been working without a contract. Seeley declined to comment on specifics of the ongoing negotiations but said making the benefits offered Bridgeport officers more competitive should be a priority.
“We are losing dedicated officers to neighboring towns that offer significantly more affordable benefits, competitive pay and retiree health insurance,” he said. “This is a threat to maintaining community safety. The city and department needs to take the situation seriously.”
Garcia has previously acknowledged being told in exit interviews that health insurance costs were a concern, and has explored requiring future recruits remain on the job in Bridgeport for around five years.
Requiring not just police but all municipal employees to contribute more to their healthcare was a costsaving priority for former Mayor Bill Finch, whom Ganim defeated in the 2015 Democratic mayoral primary in part with the help of the police union at the time.
Councilman Scott Burns, a co-chairman of that body’s budget committee, said this week, “We absolutely have to look at it (healthcare) if we are losing younger officers.” But he also acknowledged the competing concern of rolling back Finch’s effort, which was aimed at saving taxpayers money.
“We’ve got to look at the whole picture and get a grip on what’s going on there,” Burns said.
The council had intended to take a more proactive role in the negotiating process, submitting recommended contract changes to municipal negotiators ahead of time, rather than waiting for the sides to reach a deal and submit it to the legislative body for a vote.
But McCarthy said that effort “has gone nowhere,” citing concerns that, under the state Freedom of Information Act, any discussions might have to be public, undermining the Ganim administration’s negotiating tactics.
Social services
However Burns and Council President Aidee Nieves co-chaired the police reform task force of representatives from Ganim’s staff and community leaders that in April issued a report suggesting several ways of reforming the force to hold officers more accountable and improve community relations.
Some of the recommendations in that document — disciplinary changes, modifications to overtime and civilian-izing some jobs — were expected to be considered by the Ganim administration as it pursues a new union pact.
Also the city is slowly moving ahead with fulfilling another of the task force’s proposals to create a civilian social services unit that use trained counselors to respond to certain calls, freeing officers to focus on crimes and public safety.
An aggressive timeline had that unit up-and-running by now. Burns this week said the job descriptions are being finalized and should soon be made public.
“A fairly simple example — a guy who has a habitual substance issue. You don’t need to send a cop there to devote an hour, two hours, whatever to that same person, time over time over time,” Burns said. “You send the social services person and that loosens up the manpower demands a little bit.”