Town Settles Ferrara Estate Civil Rights Case For $500,000

EAST HAVEN, CT — The estate of former East Haven Police officer Vincent Ferrara, whose cooperation with federal investigators led to four fellow officers’ arrests and convictions for charges including excessive force during arrests, conducting unconstitutional searches and seizures, and filing false police reports, was awarded a $500,000 settlement following negotiations with the town.

Ferrara said he was retaliated against by the police department and then Mayor Joe Maturo for talking to the FBI. He died after a battle with an aggressive brain cancer in May of 2019.

Ferrara had been a sworn officer since 2007 when in 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division began an investigation of police misconduct, violations of constitutional rights and discrimination, including racial profiling, illegal searches and excessive force by the police department. The investigation focused on allegations that some officers “engaged in bias policing, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and the use of excessive force,” court documents read.

In December of 2011, at the end of the civil investigation, the DOJ Civil Rights Division sent a letter to Maturo saying it found the police department “engages in a pattern or practice of systematically discriminating against Latinos in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Also, the DOJ said it found that some officers “created a hostile and intimidating environment” for cops that cooperated with federal investigators including publicly calling cooperating officers “rats” and worse.

“Despite the DOJ Civil Rights Division notifying (then East Haven Police) Chief Gallo that they would keep confidential the names of individuals who cooperated with the investigation, the DOJ found that ‘Chief Gallo had warned staff that DOJ had agreed to provide him with the names of individuals who cooperated with the investigation …(and) investigators were told by EHPD officers that they could not guarantee their safety during ride-alongs with officers,” court documents read.

Ferrara witnessed “misconduct and violations of rights by EHPD officers” and told federal investigators. As a result, “command and rank and file officers harassed, intimidated and ostracized” Ferrara and the “retaliation continued unabated.”

In the lawsuit filed by Ferrara’s estate, instances of retaliation were recounted and included a 2011 police union meeting where officers and union leaders confronted Ferrara “surrounding him and questioning him in an attempt to intimidate and dissuade him from providing information to the FBI” and was “confronted by an EHPD officer and union member who in a threatening manner told him, ‘We know you are talking to the feds…’ and some cops put a cartoon poster on Ferrara’s locker that showed “gangsters holding a blow dryer to a snowman and stating, ‘You know what we do to snitches.’” New cops were told to “watch out for Ferrara.”

Stunningly, one of the officers who would later be convicted “put a gun to (Ferrars’s) chest in an attempt to intimidate him from cooperating,” the court records show.

That officer, after leaving prison, was named to a position in the police union, according to court documents. (Read the entire complaint below.)

Why The Town Settled The Case

New Town Attorney Mike Luzzi under the Joseph A. Carfora mayoral administration explained why the town settled the years-long Ferrara lawsuit against the town saying it is “one of a number of pending matters that this administration inherited from the Maturo Administration.”

Luzzi said he spoke to Hugh Keefe, the lawyer handling the 2017 Ferrara lawsuit against the town. He said the “Ferrara case was of the highest priority” mostly due to the timing of settlement conferences, motion deadlines and a pre-trial evidentiary review with the trial judge.

“It was clear from the very beginning” that the “Ferrara case presented troubling, challenging, and concerning issues that created exposure for our community.” Luzzi did a “ thorough review” with Keefe and after being given a “comprehensive evaluation of the risks and potential exposures involved, including the possibility of having to pay for the plaintiff’s attorney’s fees” and “future legal costs to the town of continuing to defend this matter-- it became clearer that this matter needed to be resolved short of trial.”

Keefe’s recommendation was to settle: “Based on that and my complete review of this matter, I accepted Attorney Keefe’s recommendation to resolve this case short of trial.”

Ferrara v East Haven by Ellyn Santiago on Scribd

>

The Federal Case Against East Haven Police

According to the DOJ, court documents and statements made in court on the case investigated by the New York Office of the FBI, East Haven Police Sergeant John Miller and officers David Cari, Dennis Spaulding and Jason Zullo were charged with civil rights offenses.

All four were convicted.

According to the DOJ's case, evidence presented during the trial of Cari and Spaulding, in February 2009 they illegally searched a car parked outside of a Latino-owned grocery store.

Inside the store, Cari then arrested a Catholic priest, an advocate for Latinos, on false pretenses. The officers then conducted an illegal search of the back room of the store in an effort to unlawfully seize the store’s video recording equipment.

In the days following the arrest, Cari drafted various false versions of an arrest report to cover up the false arrest of the religious leader.

“David Cari was entrusted to protect the people of East Haven,” U.S. Attorney Daly said in 2014. “Instead, he violated that trust by arresting a priest when there was no basis to do so and attempting to cover up that illegal arrest with a false police report.”

In 2013, a federal jury found Cari guilty of one count of conspiracy against rights, one count of deprivation of rights for making an arrest without probable cause, and one count of obstruction of a federal investigation for preparing a false report to justify the false arrest. He was sentenced to serve 30 months in federal prison.

Spaulding was also found guilty of the same offenses, as well as use of unreasonable force by a law enforcement officer.

In 2012, Zullo pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction stemming from his filing of a false police report in order to prevent a possible excessive force investigation. He got two years in prison.

That same year, Miller pleaded guilty to one count of violating an individual’s civil rights by using unreasonable force during the course of an arrest.

At the time, the DOJ said Cari’s “sentence is appropriate as corrupt law enforcement causes great harm to the integrity of the legal system. It is always a sad day when a police officer is sentenced to prison as the vast majority of officers in East Haven and in this country serve honorably and bravely.”

The FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge said at the time that “There is a basic trust the public has in those who are sworn to enforce the law – they are there to keep the public safe, not promote their own agenda,” adding he hoped the community would be able to “rebuild the trust they have with their police department.”