BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - Acting Police Chief Armando “A.J.” Perez’s week began with the release of a video showing a female cop repeatedly punching the head of a teenager held down by her colleagues in blue.
That officer - Christina Arroyo - is among a handful of Bridgeport’s Finest who since spring have made headlines for allegedly using excessive force, beginning with the rookie who shot and killed 15-year-old Jayson Negron on May 9.
Thursday morning saw a cop exchange gunfire with a robbery suspect - an incident that took up much of Perez’s day.
Then on Friday the chief met for an hour in his office with some community and religious leaders who are frustrated with his leadership and the slow pace of promised reforms.
And when that meeting was over, Perez’s guests got stuck for 45 minutes in the police headquarters’ new elevator.
“He was waiting and apologizing when we got off,” said one of those visitors, Rev. Cass Shaw, head of the Council of Churches of Greater Bridgeport. “He was lovely about it.”
“Lovely.” ’’A good guy.” ’’A very nice man.” ’’Fair.” Those are just some of the descriptions people like Shaw, NAACP President George Mintz and state Rep. Christopher Rosario, who all admit concerns with Perez’s leadership, used to describe him.
The criticism is that Perez has been ineffective in making the policy changes that community leaders have demanded in the wake of bad behavior on the part of a few of the men and women serving under him.
“I think he’s trying hard … to change a very entrenched culture,” Shaw said. “And I’m not convinced that he has the temperament or the kind of personalty and demeanor to really move things forward.”
“He tries to be responsive to everyone,” said Mintz.
Community leaders want more and better of Perez’s department; the City Council and Perez’s close friend, Mayor Joe Ganim, do too, but also want it to cost less; and the chief is also well-liked by Police Union President Sgt. Chuck Paris.
“But as I remember my mother telling me, you can try to answer everybody, but what’s going to happen is you’re going to get nothing accomplished,” Mintz said. “He tries to deal with too many issues, and he ends up not getting a lot done.”
For example, since Officer James Boulay killed Negron - the case is being investigated by the state police - the Council of Churches, the NAACP and other groups and individuals have called for Perez to purchase uniform cameras and increase training to de-escalate potentially violent situations.
Perez did not respond to requests for an interview, but there appears to have been little to no progress on either front. Meanwhile in the ensuing months Hearst Connecticut Media has reported on three other cops removed from duty over allegations of excessive force.
Sgt. Paul Scillia and Officer Thomas Lattanzio were placed on paid leave in October after they and more than a dozen fellow officers converged on a 12-year-old’s birthday party at a Colorado Avenue home in response to a noise complaint. According to the police report, the officers were confronted by a number of adults. A video of the incident showed one unidentified officer yell, “Arrest everyone” and some officers tackling a man dressed as Superman and dragging a Wonder Woman to a patrol car.
Perez told Hearst at the time, “We have to be able to interact with the public better.”
Then last weekend a video surfaced of Arroyo repeatedly hitting 18-year-old Aaron Kearney, recent captain of Harding High School’s football team, following a minor traffic accident last Friday night. Arroyo said the suspect, who is black, was actively resisting arrest and she feared he had a concealed firearm.
Perez subsequently announced he would purchase, at minimum, police cruiser dashboard cameras, taking advantage of a pool of state funds to reimburse municipalities for dashboard and body cameras. That money has been in place since not long after the Negron shooting, and community leaders had thought Perez would have been further along in acquiring the cameras.
“We did press releases on it and an email in light of the Negron shooting,” said Rosario, who with other state legislators met with Perez to discuss the Arroyo tape. “You guys (Perez and his staff) have known this money’s available.”
March will mark Perez’s two-year anniversary as acting chief. He was promoted in 2015 by the just re-elected Ganim, who initially ran the city in the 1990s. Perez campaigned hard to return his old boss to City Hall.
The two are so close that there is a framed photo of Ganim displayed with those of Perez’s family behind the chief’s desk.
Still, as recently reported, the mayor has not moved to make Perez the permanent top cop with a contract. That would require launching a search, as was done recently when Ganim gave Acting Fire Chief Richard Thode a five year contract.
Rosario said he wants Perez to deal with his “unfinished business” first: “As much as I respect him, a lot of these things are happening under his watch. And if you’re the head of a Fortune 500 company and your stock’s dropping, the weight’s on you. … There’s a trend of misconduct. He has to deal with it.”
City Councilman-elect Marcus Brown wants Ganim to initiate a search to see who else might apply besides Perez: “I’m not 100 percent sure if he is the most qualified person to be there.”
There are plenty of city officials who have faith in Perez. Councilwoman Eneida Martinez, a vocal critic of Arroyo’s actions, said the chief is faced with “cleaning up a mess of nonsense” that should have been addressed by predecessors. For example, ex-Police Chief Joseph Gaudett had announced in 2015 under then-Mayor Bill Finch that he wanted to purchase uniform cameras.
“Since he was sworn in he has been doing good in the community,” Martinez said. “Perhaps, if he had more support from the administration, the mayor, he could probably do better.”
Daniel Roach, who helped run Ganim’s comeback campaign and now works as a mayoral aide in the administration, is a longtime member of Bridgeport’s appointed Police Commission.
“Overall the chief scores some high marks,” Roach said. “He works well not only with the officers, but the public.”
And state Sen. Ed Gomes, part of the group that met with Perez Friday, said afterward: “I don’t have any beef with the chief.”
Perez has also been under pressure because, while able to help Ganim keep a campaign promise and reduce homicides last year, that number has since spiked from 10 in 2016 to 22 in 2017.
Of those, 17 have been solved, according to Capt. Roderick Porter, who runs the detective bureau. Porter said the homicide unit has done exceptional work to investigate and solve the city’s murders.
Porter also said that the department is creating a shooting task force with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to provide more thorough investigations into non-fatal shootings and their connections with illegal guns.
Porter said the department’s robbery unit has been proactive and made several arrests.
As this past week proved, regardless of one’s opinion of Perez and his performance, the job of an urban police chief is not easy.
And Police Commissioner Thomas Lyons noted that, while Ganim did pay for three new classes of cadets, the police department is still at less than full strength. Perez has said he would like a complement of 450 officers. The department with the new recruits is expected to have 413 officers come March, but as many as 40 are anticipated to retire in 2018.
“And he’s dealing with a budget where they’re watching overtime money,” Lyons said. “There’s issues in every corner of the city. I think he’s doing just fine.”
Shaw agreed Perez’s “plate is very full.” But, she said, the chief needs to do a better job delegating responsibilities, demanding accountability and being more aggressive in pushing for the resources his department needs and the public demands.
“If he gets frustrated, I wish that he would show his frustration more and get some allies to help make the changes that are needed,” Shaw said. “He’s a really good guy. But good guys finish last sometimes.”
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Information from: Connecticut Post, http://www.connpost.com
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