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Codianni: Connected sex workers with investigators.
A Fair Haven cop has resigned amid allegations that he coerced a sex worker to have intercourse with him on repeated occasions.
The resignation followed a months-long internal investigation. The investigation was sparked by an allegation that a Fair Haven officer was forcing a Fair Haven sex worker to have sex with him. Both on and off duty, he would allegedly find the woman, tell her to get in his car, and order her to have sex with him.
A second sex worker made similar allegations.
Alerted to the allegations, Police Chief Otoniel Reyes ordered an internal investigation. The investigation took months because of difficulties finding cooperating witnesses.
“We cast a net” to try to identify the officer involved, Reyes said. The investigation eventually led to a specific officer, according to Reyes; he said no other officers were involved.
The officer, Gary Gamarra, resigned last week.
A criminal investigation is underway. Reyes said he couldn’t speak about specifics of an ongoing investigation.
“We knew it was critical to identify this individual, even though we [started] with limited information,” Reyes said. “We felt strongly there was substance to the allegations. We had an obligation to uncover it. This is one individual that violated the public’s trust and dishonored the badge. There’s absolutely no tolerance for any officer that will break the law.”
Reyes said that if the officer hadn’t resigned, he would have called for a special session of the Board of Police Commissioners to move to fire him. (The officer would have had the right to appeal, which could have cost the city thousands of dollars and dragged on for months.)
With his resignation, Gamarra loses his state certification, which he would need to obtain employment with another department. The resignation does not protect him from potential criminal charges.
Reached by phone Wednesday, Gamarra declined to discuss the specifics of the allegations.
Gamarra, who’s 27, said he felt pressured to resign last Thursday. “I felt they were coming at me hard,” he said. “I broke down. I was nervous. I was incoherent. I’m probably going to go through therapy. I’ve been depressed.”
He said that he has been going through a tough time in his personal life, including dealing with the death of an aunt from colon cancer.
“People make mistakes,” Gamarra said. “The fact that I made a mistake, whether it was good or bad, I’ve been a cop in Fair Haven for four years. I’ve always done the job the best way I can. In uniform, I always treated everybody with respect. Even outside of uniform. I try to do my best. I was always raised with, ‘You are able to give a second chance, for forgiveness.”
Beatrice Codianni, who organizes sex workers through the Sex Workers and Allies Network (SWAN), said she originally brought the allegations to the police department’s attention. She said she accompanied the women to their interviews with police investigators.
She said they didn’t want to come forward at first.
“They said they were forced to have sex. They were really, really distraught and scared. They didn’t want to say anything because they thought there would be repercussions,” Codianni said. She said they eventually agreed to cooperate because they trust the head of internal affairs, Lt. David Zannelli. They remembered Zannelli from when he served as Fair Haven’s district manager. “He was always up front with them, never harassed them, was always respectful,” Codianni said. She welcomed the news about the officer’s resignation.