⏩ Crackdown on protest brings more heat to Bridgeport police.

BRIDGEPORT — As the city’s police department faced new allegations Friday of overreaction, local lawmakers questioned whether previously promised reforms were just rhetoric.

“We’re reassured by the city attorneys and ... by Chief (Armando) Perez that deescalation training is happening and moving forward wonderfully,” City Councilman Kyle Langan said. “But we consistently see the pattern continues.”

Langan drove downtown to police headquarters Thursday evening to join protestors outside following the arrests of 11 people at a demonstration commemorating the 2017 shooting death of Jayson Negron, 15, who was killed by a rookie cop.

“None of the mourners last night had weapons,” Langan said. “The only people with weapons were the police who came out in force. Who’s escalating that situation?”

State Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, who is running against fellow Democrat Mayor Joe Ganim, was in the crowd outside of police headquarters.

“I’m disappointed in how the police handled it,” Moore said, adding she tried to phone Perez around 11 p.m. and Ganim around midnight, hoping one or both might speak with the protestors.

“The mayor was unresponsive and so was Chief Perez,” Moore said. “I’m disappointed and pretty much disgusted with both of them. It was a missed opportunity to fix some stuff. It would have been an opportunity to heal.”

There have been precious few such opportunities, with the police department and Perez buffeted by controversies that further damage relations with the community.

Last month, for example, Officer Christina Arroyo was suspended 90 days for repeatedly punching a teenager in the head during a minor traffic accident in 2017.

Even as Thursday night’s events were unfolding, in Perez’s third-floor office, members of the appointed Police Commission were continuing closed-door disciplinary hearings resulting from an Internal Affairs probe that found 17 officers violated various department policies when breaking up a 2017 party.

Commission Chairman Daniel Roach did not want to comment Friday on the response to the Negron protest in case it comes before that board. But Roach said, “It is concerning.”

To others, as well.

“I think certainly these (officers) have a very tough job to do. But the department right now is under a lot of stress and, rightly, a lot of scrutiny based on a series of incidents over the last several years,” state Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, a co-chairman of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee. “With respect to last night and maybe some of the other incidents we’ve seen ... I wonder how much thought is going into how to de-escalate tension and how to defuse some of the public sentiment or concern that is out there right now.”

Perez’s critics have argued he is not fit to be chief. Ganim added fuel to that perception late last month when he announced the hiring of a $25,000 consultant — former Philadelphia Police Commissioner and ex-Washington, D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey — to help make improvements to the department.

Asked whether Perez’s management — Ganim first made him to acting chief three years ago — is to blame for the issues surrounding Bridgeport’s Finest, Stafstrom said, “I tend to think it’s bigger than him . ... But there certainly is a pattern of these incidents over the last several years.”

In 2013, for example, the department under Chief Joseph Gaudett and Mayor Bill Finch faced similar questions about training when a video of a 2011 arrest at Beardsley Park surfaced showing officers kicking and stomping on a suspect who had been subdued with a stun gun.

Stafstrom took issue with the arrest Thursday night of a Hearst Connecticut Media reporter who was covering the Negron event. That journalist, Tara O’Neill, was released without being charged.

“I don’t think a police department should arrest somebody who identifies themselves as a journalist,” Stafstrom said. “There are any number of ways in which that situation could have been handled without putting her in cuffs.”

State Rep. Charlie Stallworth, D-Bridgeport, helped, with Perez and other allies, elect Ganim in 2015. But this year Stallworth launched his own campaign for mayor.

Stallworth said the police department’s response to Thursday night’s protest displayed “a deep lack of insensitivity.”

“We need a police department that’s part of our community, not one out arresting people for protesting for right,” Stallworth said.

Perez’s supporters, Ganim included, have said his long career with the department, which began in 1983, and the resultant deep connections to the community make him an ideal chief.

But Stallworth argued Bridgeport police still do not do enough to bring the officers together with the people they are supposed to serve and protect.

“Until we have a real true sense of community policing — not just on paper, not just conversation, but a real, true sense in which police and community are working in conjunction — we’re going to have these things (happen),” Stallworth said.

“The chief and the mayor need to sit down with some of those people (at the Negron event),” Moore said. “It shouldn’t be a shouting match. Sit down and talk about what happened. This is an open wound.”