A rigged search for a police chief, an FBI informant and a city with a history of corruption: the story of the latest dishonest dealing in Bridgeport

It is not unusual in Connecticut for a city to scour the nation for the perfect candidate for a top job, only to announce later that the city’s high-priced personnel consultant had discovered the perfect candidate was right here at home all the time.

It happened in Bridgeport during the city’s search for a new police chief. But this time, the FBI had an informant on the inside. What has been revealed so far in court — by the informant, as well as email and telephone records — goes a long way toward unraveling a remarkable coincidence: how the winner of an exhaustive national search turned out to be an old friend of the mayor.

Confidential examination materials prepared by the consultant were stolen by the city’s longtime personnel director, who slipped them to then acting Bridgeport Police Chief Armando J. Perez, the 35-year department veteran and mayoral pal who got the job. Perez, in turn, ordered two subordinates to secretly collaborate and complete his exams — a captain he had suspended for sending racially offensive text messages and the head of the Internal Affairs bureau who was responsible for investigating the racist remarks.

Rigging the selection process turned out to be half the battle. Before incoming mayor Joseph P. Ganim could appoint Perez as the new chief, arrangements had to be made to get rid of the old chief, who had just been signed to a five-year contract worth about $132,000 a year by the outgoing mayor, William Finch.

Federal prosecutors arrested Perez and Dunn, who admitted the allegations against them last week when pleading guilty to conspiring to defraud the city and lying to FBI agents. Both men — Perez is 64 and Dunn is 73 — face prison sentences in the 18 to 24 month range under federal sentencing guidelines.

Ganim had been a target, too. He had expressed the hope that Perez would finish among the top three candidates. When that happened, he exercised his authority under the city charter to appoint Perez from among the finalists. During the ensuing investigation, Ganim agreed to an interview with federal law enforcement and was told afterward he would not be charged.

The mayor may not be in legal jeopardy, but the scandal generated by the Perez arrest threatens his remarkable political comeback following an earlier run-in with the FBI almost two decades ago — a run-in that also featured Perez.

A spokeswoman said Ganim “understands that political rivals will always twist the truth to get publicity; it comes with the job.”

Ganim and Perez share a colorful piece of Bridgeport history, and Ganim’s political opponents — already suspicious about Perez’s appointment as chief — view his arrest as a potential weapon.

“From the beginning, we knew something wasn’t right. We knew the process was being rigged in Perez’s favor. We just didn’t have proof,” the civic group Bridgeport Generation Now warned.

Over five terms as Bridgeport mayor in the 1990s, Ganim became a wildly popular political figure and an almost certain Democratic nominee for governor. That ended in 2001, when federal prosecutors produced a mind-boggling corruption indictment that accused him of trading city contracts for nearly a half-million dollars in cash, jewels, expensive wine, custom clothes and other luxury items, while shaking down businessmen for another half-million in pledges for a gubernatorial campaign.

A federal judge sent Ganim to prison for seven years after a sensational trial that not only exposed Ganim’s thirst for the finer things in life, but put Perez in the middle of one of the more extravagant payoffs. For much of Ganim’s first five terms, Perez was his official city driver.

Perez was dragged into the trial as a reluctant prosecution witness and questioned about an afternoon when Ganim collected thousands of dollars of investment grade wine. On the return trip to Ganim’s home in a city-owned Lincoln, Perez said, the mayor asked him to store four cases at his house. Perez put it in his basement and said he didn’t find the request odd.

“He mentioned to me that he didn’t want his wife to know how much he spent on wine,” Perez said. “To me, it was reasonable. I wouldn’t want my wife to know.”

A month later, Perez said, the mayor called with instructions to run over to his house with a half-case each of Chateau Lafite Rothschild ’93, Far Niente ’95 and Grand Vin de Chateau Latour ’93.

Perez said he didn’t know anything was amiss. Even if he had seen Ganim breaking the law, Perez said, he might not have turned him in.

“It’s no secret that I loved the mayor,” Perez said. “I wouldn’t have called the FBI or anything like that. ... If I had seen him do anything wrong, I would have gone to my supervisor and said ... ‘I can’t work for the mayor anymore.’”

When he was released from prison, Ganim accomplished something the experts dismissed in advance as a political pipe dream. He opened up a second-chance campaign at a church on the city’s tough, east side and ran his way back into mayor’s office in November 2015.

Perez, who had risen to a senior position in the police department, was back at his side, often at campaign appearances. Perez organized support for the ex-convict candidate in the police department and, a former city hall insider said, kept Ganim informed about sensitive police matters.

It was widely expected that Ganim would appoint him chief. But outgoing Mayor Bill Finch upset the plan. As Finch prepared to leave office in November 2015, just days before Ganim was to be sworn in, he extended then-Chief Joseph Gaudett’s contract by five years.

Finch’s snub kept Perez out of the chief’s office, but not for long. Ganim’s solution, according to a city official who watched, was to effectively bench Gaudett by hiring a consultant to run the police department from city hall. Gaudett surrendered by late February 2016, taking an offer from Ganim of a position as communications consultant to the Bridgeport Emergency Operations Center. He would be paid roughly the same salary under a three-year contract with options for two, one-year extensions.

Within days, Ganim made Perez acting chief of a department with about 400 sworn officers and a $100 million budget.

It wasn’t until two years later, in February 2018, that Ganim instructed Dunn to initiate a national search that would remove “acting” from Perez’s title. Dunn was to begin an open and competitive “examination” that would provide the mayor with the three highest scoring finalists within 150 days.

Dunn hired a personnel consultant to run the city’s candidate search. The consultant was to report developments to Dunn and provide him with advance copies of materials, such as test questions. The consultant devised a four-part process: a review of candidate résumés and cover letters, a written exam made up of a questionnaire and two essay questions, an oral exam conducted by the consultant over the telephone and an interview by a five-person panel.

In a detailed affidavit filed in court, the FBI’s case agent asserts that Dunn rigged almost every step of the selection process to favor Perez.

On Dunn’s instructions, the consultant eliminated requirements that would have knocked Perez out of the contest: a college degree and residency within Bridgeport. Dunn also arranged to award additional points for Perez’s years of law enforcement experience and tenure as an acting chief. Throughout it all, Dunn was slipping Perez advance copies of test questions and prodding him by email to meet deadlines.

Perez, for his part, arranged meetings in the chief’s office with the two subordinates he instructed to draft his resume, complete his written tests and coach him on the orals.

Inconveniently, Perez had to issue an order prohibiting the officer he had suspended for inappropriate text messages from entering police headquarters. Instead, Perez arranged a new meeting at the suspended officer’s home. When Perez learned that the suspended officer had left some test materials at police headquarters, he gave him advice on how to sneak in and retrieve them without being detected.

By that point, the suspended officer was cooperating with FBI agents, recording conversations with Perez and photographing stolen test materials.

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