Former Connecticut Cop Given Prison Sentence After Arresting Priest Who Was Recording Him

Reason

Former Connecticut cop David Cari, who was filmed by a priest as he harassed an Ecuadorian immigrant in 2009, has been given a 30-month prison sentence after having been convicted of civil rights abuses.

From Photography is Not a Crime:

An East Haven cop who claimed he was in fear for his life when he arrested a priest for video recording him as he bullied an Ecuadorian immigrant in a convenience store was sentenced to 30 months in prison Tuesday, indicating that justice prevails every once in a while.

Even if the cop was allowed to retire with a full pension.

The 2009 incident, which went viral, opened a federal investigation against David Cari and several other officers, revealing that they were engaging in an ongoing harassment campaign against the immigrants living in that community.

But it was only because Father James Manship filed a federal complaint after his charges were dropped two weeks after his arrest.

And it was only because it was all caught on video.

The New Haven Register reports that audio from the footage shot by Rev. James Manship discredited Cari's arrest report:

Lima Church in Fair Haven and the man whose 26-second video shotwhile inside an East Haven general store proved to be the most crucial piece of evidence in the government's case against Cari.

"Never did I think that video would get us to where we are today," he said outside the courthouse, after Thompson handed down Cari's 30-month sentence.

But it was precisely the audio of Manship's February 2009 video that proved to discredit the arrest report Cari filed when he slapped handcuffs on the priest for filming him and Spaulding in the process of ordering employees at the Hispanic-owned My Country Store to remove more than 70 license plates mounted on the back wall.

Reason's Jacob Sullum wrote about the case and the harassment suffered by East Haven's Latino residents in January 2012.  

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Comments

[Looney Tune]

This is a very good analysis of the new libertarianism.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

The nigger-haters hate us, so we're... good!

[Aloysious]

I was going to ask if this was *American*. I guess so.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

You just have to go there and read some of the comments to see how unhinged these racists are. Shit like this:

ThomasER916 tma_sierrahills
? 19 hours ago

?

I would hand nothing over. If we left we should leave a scorched earth behind us. Destroy the water and power. The government would spend so much effort to repair for a dumb, lazy, worthless clutter of races they will lose more than they put in. Meanwhile, we rebuild, repair, and regroup. The purpose of the scorched earth is to tell them "This was never yours! You never built this!"

Look at South Africa or Detroit. They're identical. The Negro never built anything, nor do they have to ability to maintain it. It took decades to fall into pure squalor. Scorched earth would turn it into squalor over night and they'd never recover without us. The clutter and confusion would make them vulnerable to coordinated attacks on their supplies.

Give them nothing!

[Hugh Akston]

Kinda sad, actually. Everybody thinks we're racists except for the actual racists.

[Episiarch]

I thought you were a species-ist, Hugh. You hate all subhumans, like Warty.

[Hugh Akston]

I consider Warty more inhuman than subhuman, and I only hate him for what he did to my large intestine.

[Episiarch]

Yeah, when he said to me that you had to have a colon transplant, I winced. Then I laughed, but come on, you understand, right?

[Harvard]

I never would have guessed he was that well endowed.

[Cytotoxic]

Oh look one of the Nazi meth-clanners survived Heisenberg's trunk-gun attack and started a blog.

[Duke]

I tried skimming through a few articles on that site. Easily the most inane, confusing junk I've ever tried to not read. Who are those guys? Marxists, neo-Nazis? I couldn't tell from the garbled nonsense on the pages.

[Fist of Etiquette]

And that's why you always erase video evidence.

[pan fried wylie]

PROCEDURE WAS NOT FOLLOWED.

Throw the book at him!

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Yeah, I'm sure his brothers in blue are taking note and hammering it into the newer guys: always "accidentally" destroy the recording device in the course of "pacifying" the suspect.

If that is not possible, refer the matter to the officers in charge of storing the evidence, who just might find that the video footage was somehow deleted.

[The Last American Hero]

Did it have a time stamp? Because those are very difficult to fake.

[Episiarch]

For the benefit of the court, would you please explain "time coding."

[Steve G]

This? This, get's prison? Beat a homeless guy to death...nothing. Shoot an unarmed motorist in need of assistance 10 times...nothing. But a wrongful arrest gets prison???

[Ornithorhynchus]

Wrongful arrest of a PRIEST.

[Dweebston]

Yeah, reading the article I wondered whether the officer was convicted for common thuggery, for bringing himself and his profession into disrepute, for violating the civil rights of a law-abiding citizen, or because the victim in all this belongs to a class of people the Feds consider protected. I'm betting on the latter: the officer's actions may have been racially motivated, but the prosecutor's certainly were.

Oh, well. Gift horses and all that.

[Homple]

An Hispanic immigrant was involved, making it a civil rights case of the sort that the Department of Holder is happy to prosecute.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I've read two other stories on this and I still can't get a handle on what the video showed, other than apparently the now convicted felon altered the arrest report.

[Episiarch]

He molested the priest. Said it was "payback" for his altar boy days.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I was an altar boy. You're being insensitive. But I guess altar boys are the last group you can make fun of with impunity.

[Episiarch]

Altar boys, the Dutch, and your mom.

[BigT]

Alas, I, too was an altar boy. Never made the transition to altered boy, however.

[Harvard]

So, why do you still sing alto vibratto?

[RishJoMo]

Hope Bubba shows him a good time.

http://www.AnonWork.tk

[croaker]

I hope he gets a gang rape from the cell block welcome wagon.

[Homple]

This was a federal case, so the local cops had no means of intimidating a jury and the prosecutor was not their special friend.