Thomas Breen Photo
SWAN outreach worker Elida Paiz at rally calling for Gamarra’s arrest.
Gary Gamarra, who tried to get his job back as a New Haven cop after allegedly raping at least one Fair Haven sex worker he met on the job, will not be able to work for any police department in Connecticut following a vote taken Thursday.
The vote was taken Thursday morning at a meeting of the state’s Police Officer Standards and Training Council, known as POST.
The council, which includes chiefs of police and other law-enforcement representatives, voted unanimously at the meeting to revoke the police officer certification of the New Haven cop, Gary Gamarra.
That means Gamarra can’t work as a police officer anywhere in Connecticut.
The votes send a signal that “that sort of misconduct will not be tolerated. You will lose your privilege to serve as a police officer in the state of Connecticut,” Council member Ronnell Higgins told the Independent after the vote. “The public has spoken: We take our jobs very seriously.”
Higgins, Yale’s police chief, chaired the certification committee that reviewed Gamarra’s case before the full Council’s vote.
He summarized the committee’s findings in a Nov. 8 memo.
The memo noted that the Internal Affairs Division of the New Haven Police Department had previously investigated the allegations against Gamarra, who became a cop on Sept. 23, 2017. Click here to read a previous article detailing the findings of that IA investigation.
It found that Gamarra “betrayed the public trust by knowingly soliciting a sex worker off-duty after having direct contact with her in his official duties as a police officer, and knowing and admittedly lying to Internal Affairs Investigators” about it.
“Investigators further found that Officer Gamarra’s actions constituted a use of his position as a police officer to have power over citizens of New Haven and obtain inappropriate benefits from his status as a police officer that he was not otherwise entitled to receive,” Higgins wrote.
Gamarra “lied multiple times during his interview with Internal Affairs. By his own admission officer Gamarra made plans while he was on-duty to pick up the complainant after he completed his shift, at which time he had sexual intercourse with her. The investigation found that this encounter began while Officer Gamarra was acting in his official capacity as a police officer, and that his on-duty conduct had a direct nexus to his off-duty conduct.”
Presented with those findings last December by then-Chief Otoniel Reyes, Gamarra agreed to resign from the force. Reyes planned to seek Gamarra’s dismissal otherwise.
Then he unsuccessfully tried to get back on the force, claiming he had been coerced to resign. Read about that effort here.
Meanwhile, POST took up the question of whether to revoke Gamarra’s state certification.
At first Gamarra asked for a hearing to contest the move. He hired Attorney Norm Pattis to represent him.
POST held an “informal conference” on Sept. 8, after which Pattis “advised that [Gamarra] would not contest a revocation of his police officer certification,” according to Higgins’ report. Gamarra himself “verbally acknowledged” the same position at an Oct. 7 follow-up meeting, and put that statement in an Oct. 13 letter.
Gamarra did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.
Update: Pattis, his attorney, objected to the use of the word “rape” in connection with this case: “There was not and never will be a criminal prosecution over what was at most a libidinal error in judgment.”
Gamarra did speak about the incident with the Independent for the original story about the case last December.
“I felt they were coming at me hard,” he said of why he had sex with the sex worker, claiming it was consensual. “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.”
The original police IA investigation was aided by Beatrice Codianni, who organizes sex workers through the Sex Workers and Allies Network (SWAN). She brought the allegation to the attention of the police. Then she brought two sex workers to the department to talk about being forced to have nonconsensual sex with the officer.
“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 at the time. She said they eventually agreed to cooperate because they trust the then-head of internal affairs, David Zannelli. They remembered Zannelli from when he served as Fair Haven’s district manager.
The state’s attorney office commenced an investigation to see whether it could compile evidence to support bringing criminal charges against Gamarra. That has not happened to date. Click here to read about a SWAN protest this past April seeking a criminal prosecution. (The state’s attorney’s office had no comment Thursday about the status of any investigation.)
It turns out that the Police Commission had been warned against hiring Gamarra, in a background check report.
Gamarra’s background check took place in 2016.
A report about that states that Gamarra’s girlfriend obtained a protective order against him in 2013.
His explanation, as recorded in the report: “[T]he applicant stated he suspected his girlfriend was cheating on him. [He] drove to a residence … to confirm his suspicions,” then started banging on the window when he saw her inside with another man.
Police were called, and arrested Gamarra. The case was eventually nolled “after his girlfriend told the prosecutor that he was not a violent person,” the report stated. “As a result of the applicant’s arrest, a protective order was issued against him listing his girlfriend as the protective party.”
The report also states that in a background interview, Gamarra “omitted” mention of the fact that at 18 “he had sexual intercourse” with a 15-year-old girlfriend. He discussed that fact during a subsequent polygraph examination.
In that examination, the polygrapher noticed Gamarra “display[ing] significant and consistent physiological reactions when he was questioned about undetected crimes against a person.”
“Also the applicant had inconclusive results about his involvement with illegal drugs and falsifying or omitting information in the test booklet. The reactions observed by the polygrapher are indicative of deception and the application was recommended to be retested,” the report stated. He did better on the second test.
The report cited conversations with Gamarra’s two references from when he worked as a cashier at Shoprite a year before becoming a cop: “Both indicated that the applicant was immature at the time of his employment. Also, [one reference] stated the applicant was defensive when receiving constructive criticism.”
The report went to the Board of Police Commissioners in time for its Sept. 13, 2016 meeting, at which it would vote on whether or not to hire Gamarra.
Commissioner Stephen Garcia moved to remove Gamarra from the hiring list. Garcia, Anthony Dawson and Greg Smith then voted in favor of that motion — to remove Gamarra from the list, according to the meeting minutes. But three other commissioners, Kevin Diaz, Evelise Ribiero, and Donald Walker, voted not. That means the motion failed. That meant Gamarra remained on the list, got his badge, and eventually began patrolling Fair Haven and having sex with at least one sex worker (and allegedly at least one more) in his car.