Matthew Feeney
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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