EAST HAVEN, CT - Given current events, one might think that liberals going out of their way to protect illegal alien criminals is a fairly new occurrence. One might think that targeting law enforcement officials who are rooting out crime and trying to make our country safer is also a rather new occurrence. Neither of those thoughts is accurate, at least for four former East Haven, Connecticut, police officers, BizPacReview reported.
In 2009, Barack Obama’s Department of Justice needed to find scapegoats to push the narrative that police were bad and illegal aliens were being victimized. That led the DOJ to the East Haven Police Department.
Three years later, four highly-decorated East Haven police officers – Jason Zullo, John Miller, David Cari, and Dennis Spaulding – were indicted, “branded as criminals, their lives and families torn apart,” according to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF).
The four were accused of “conspiring to violate, and violating, the civil rights of members of the East Haven community,” a DOJ press release stated at the time.
For anyone who looked into the allegations, it became overwhelmingly clear that the four officers were indicted for simply doing their job.
Law Enforcement Today spoke to Spaulding, who explained that, as part of his duties, he and some of his fellow officers noticed a large number of unregistered motor vehicles in East Haven, whose operators were involved in gang activity, auto theft, and other illegal activities. The vast majority of those caught up in these crimes were Hispanic.
Spaulding said that there were over 1,500 bogus license plates involved in what he called an organized crime operation, a scheme that involved thousands of illegal aliens and a Philadelphia resident whom he described as the “mastermind” behind the scheme.
So, if you have a report of a crime and all of those involved are of one particular race or ethnicity, common sense dictates that if the suspects are Hispanic, you’re going to focus on Hispanics. Just like if you have someone engaged in strong-armed robberies and the suspect is identified as a white male with blonde hair, you’re not going to focus on black males with a short afro. It’s called utilizing your intelligence and following the evidence.
For the Obama DOJ, however, they claimed that the operations conducted by Spaulding and the other East Haven officers were tantamount to racial profiling.
Spaulding told Law Enforcement Today that the initial investigation by EHPD commenced in late 2007, early 2008, whereby illegal aliens were paying $1,500 for fraudulently obtained registration plates and fake insurance cards. In fact, he said that WTNH-8 investigative reporter Alan Cohen had done a multi-part series outlining the massive fraud the operation had uncovered.
He told LET that between 2008 and 2011, approximately 1,000 arrests of illegal aliens occurred for various offenses, including registration fraud, failure to have a license, no insurance, and possession of fraudulent documents. Spaulding said that over 80 federal ICE detainers were lodged for “high priority” illegal aliens.
Shortly afterward, a series of lawsuits were filed against the police department, protests began to take place, and resistance and interference with arrests started taking place, just as we’ve seen recently across the United States. Community organizers got involved, and immigrants’ rights groups started challenging arrests. Far-left Yale Law School then got involved with a local activist priest and immigration activist, James Manship, and the “racial profiling” accusations started flying.
In April 2008, the New Haven PD released a memo warning officers about fraudulent out-of-state registrations and stating that, over a three-year period, approximately 22% of all motor vehicle crashes in New Haven resulted in a hit-and-run (evading responsibility).
In 2009, things began to escalate, with Manship being arrested at a store while police seized 80 bogus registration plates there.
Spaulding said on May 1, 2009, a newspaper article (source unknown) was published that claimed the EHPD was retaliating by setting up a checkpoint adjacent to a Latino-owned bakery, leaving out the fact that this area is populated by a large concentration of bars and has a high incidence of DWI arrests. Yale Law students showed up at the checkpoint, ostensibly to make a nuisance out of themselves.
Later that year, the FBI began investigating the East Haven Police Department, including the deployment of a legally registered vehicle driving around the city with “Latino passengers” in the vehicle who were, in fact, FBI agents. The “mark” vehicle drove around the city and, despite being occupied by sketchy-looking Hispanics, was never stopped in East Haven, seemingly debunking the accusation that Hispanics were being “racially profiled.”
Moreover, the FBI looked into arrests made by the EHPD and use-of-force allegations filed in a civil lawsuit. The agency found no incidents to charge any officers or move forward. The FBI special agent in charge later testified during grand jury testimony that the case had gone “stale” and the agent destroyed “an approximately 1-inch thick” case file. He said he didn’t know what was contained in the documents.
Spaulding said that in 2009, he opened an investigation into fraudulently obtained Wisconsin license plates obtained by illegal aliens, with all vehicles registered to the same address and fake insurance cards issued to drivers/owners.
Despite the FBI determining earlier in 2009 that there was no reason to believe East Haven police officers engaged in any type of racial profiling or discrimination, the Obama Department of Justice opened a “pattern and practice” investigation into the East Haven Police Department, which received a great deal of pushback from the police union and town officials. The DOJ later requested “all arrest reports, tickets, and motor vehicle summonses, all incident reports, and virtually all police documentation covering a two-year period (2008 and 2009), overwhelming the city and the police department.
Despite the opening of a criminal investigation by the feds, Spaulding continued doing his job, and in January 2010, opened an investigation into fraudulently obtained Washington State vehicle registrations. He said that there were dozens of vehicles registered to illegal aliens with New Haven addresses on registration paperwork. He noted that the state was losing “large sums of money” in registration fees, and towns were losing millions in property taxes due to the bogus registrations.
In October 2010, the Yale Law clinic filed a civil suit against the town of East Haven, ten officers, and ten “unidentified” officers on behalf of “Latinos whom the defendants targeted and harassed on account of their race and ethnicity.”
Amid all the chaos, Officer Spaulding continued investigating registration fraud, this time focusing on South Carolina registrations issued to illegal aliens, where drivers were paying between $600 and $1000, with the same addresses being regularly used. Later that year, Spaulding opened an investigation into widespread fraud involving vehicles using Connecticut combination plates, again fraudulently obtained by illegal aliens.
On December 19, 2011, the Department of Justice released a finding that the East Haven Police Department “engaged in a pattern and practice of discrimination against Latinos in violation of the Constitution and federal law,” alleging that “Latino drivers were disproportionally targeted for traffic stops,” and “a failure to provide limited English proficient Latinos with appropriate language access.”
On January 24, 2012, the “East Haven Four” – Spaulding, Cari, Zullo, and Miller – were all arrested. Tom Perez, then serving as the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, went to New Haven and held a press conference, announcing the indictments, referring to the four decorated officers as “bullies with badges.” All were released on bond the same day.
According to Spaulding, he was “forced” to move out of his East Haven home, and Zullo was likewise “banned” from East Haven. Not sure, but that sounds pretty unconstitutional to LET.
One officer, John Miller, pleaded guilty to one count of excessive force, the arrest of an intoxicated white suspect who fled from police on foot. Miller used a “half-speed jab” to restrain the subject, who, despite being handcuffed, was still resisting and fighting police. The suspect was not injured, although the government claimed he endured “pain,” even if only briefly. Miller, despite agreeing to a plea deal for probation only, received four months in jail.
In September 2012, the DOJ issued a “superseding indictment” that changed the theory and nature of the conspiracy, with “facts removed and replaced.” The chief of police and union leadership were removed from the conspiracy.
In October 2012, the EHPD and DOJ entered a consent decree that “resolve[d] allegations that EHPD engaged in a pattern or practice of use of excessive force and unconstitutional search and seizures.”
Later that month, Jason Zullo, tired of years of media attacks upon his character, pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice for failing to report contact with a motorcycle during a high-speed chase of a dangerous multiple felon, despite there being no damage to either the bike or his cruiser. Zullo said that the prospect of 15 years in jail if he went to trial and the desire to be with his family led him to make the plea. Zullo was sentenced to two years in a federal camp.
In 2013, as if paying back illegal aliens for their criminal actions, the Democrat-led Connecticut legislature voted to give drivers' licenses and registrations to illegal aliens. The legislature later passed “anti-profiling” laws, further tying the hands of police officers and forcing police departments to include the race and ethnicity of every offender pulled over by police.
Spaulding said that when he and Cari’s trials began in September 2013, illegal aliens were given special visas granting them legal status in the U.S. in exchange for testifying against the officers. Illegal aliens were also granted immunity from prosecution for “all known and unknown crimes and felonies” they committed. He said the federal government was well aware of the extensive criminal histories of its witnesses.
Both Spaulding and Cari were found guilty of conspiracy to commit civil rights violations. Cari received 30 months in a federal camp, while Spaulding was initially sentenced to five years in a federal low-security facility. He was released after serving three years, nine months.
LET contacted retired East Haven Sgt. Gary DePalma, who told us that every third car in East Haven had an out-of-state plate and that the department had received “numerous” complaints of DUI and hit-and-run crashes involving those vehicles. He said he believed the case against the four East Haven officers was nothing more than political retribution by the Obama administration and was an attempt to make an example of the four officers.
Law Enforcement Today contacted Jason Johnson, president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, which is trying to obtain a presidential pardon for the “East Haven Four,” who provided the following statement:
"Sgt. John Miller always wanted to be a police officer. In his high school yearbook, he said his dream job was to be a Connecticut State Trooper. Miller was a highly decorated officer at the time he was targeted by the Obama Department of Justice, having earned multiple medals of honor during a distinguished career. Miller was also a peer counselor, counseling police officers who had been involved in gunfire. "
Johnson told LET that, despite the DOJ claiming the four East Haven officers had targeted illegal aliens, it was in fact the individuals in Pennsylvania who were preying on illegal aliens through the fraudulent license plate scheme.
“With more than 1,000 such vehicles being stopped in East Haven alone, the full scope of the scheme was apparent,” Johnson wrote, “illegal immigrants, overwhelmingly Hispanic, were the principal users of the plates and so included virtually all the people arrested.”
Johnson addressed the incident at the bodega with the radical priest.
“Officers Cari and Spaulding located a possible seller of the plates during a routine patrol; they looked through the front windows of a local bodega and saw a display of approximately 80 license plates with price tags on them,” Johnson said.
He said that while Spaulding was boxing up the plates, a customer, later learned to be Manship, became disruptive. Cari saw a metallic object in Manship’s hand, and having survived a shooting, commanded him to explain what he was doing. Manship refused and began struggling with him, at which point Cari realized it was a video camera.
Unfortunately for the four East Haven officers, the bodega incident occurred just as Obama was “launching his undeclared war on the nation’s police departments.”
“At the tip of the spear was Attorney General Eric Holder’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, an ambitious Democrat politician named Tom Perez. He was rewarded with a seat on Obama’s Cabinet, and later, the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.”
Johnson said that using only a handful of citizens’ complaints and stitching together radio chatter among the police officers, Perez believed he had come across a civil rights conspiracy. Thus began Perez’s targeting of the East Haven Four.
All four officers suffered immeasurable damage from Perez’s witch hunt.
Aside from the jail time, “the real punishments happened later.”
“Their careers in ruins, Miller and Cari lost their disability pensions, and, after heavy local publicity, all four were unable to find jobs,” Johnson said. Cari eventually relocated to Florida, while Zullo eventually became certified as a union welder.
Spaulding, meanwhile, saw his wife give birth to their second child only two days before he was found guilty in federal court. He spent the first four years of his daughter’s life in a federal correctional institution.
“The East Haven Four were the victims of an unjust, discriminatory, political prosecution. Their sentences were vastly out of proportion to the nature of their acts,” Johnson said.
Contrast the punishment these four officers received with the sentences handed out to murderers and child rapists. Contrast their punishment with the pardons handed out by President Biden to child molesters and child murderers.
We have seen much about President Trump issuing pardons and/or clemency to patriotic Americans who were screwed over by overzealous political hacks looking to make a name for themselves: for example, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Such was the case of Perez, who was later rewarded with a post in the cabinet of Joe Biden as Senior Advisor to the President.
Hopefully, President Trump will see this and deem it fit to give these four outstanding public servants the closure they all deserve after being screwed for doing their jobs. They were victimized by the Obama Justice Department and deserve to have their slate wiped clean.
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