In 2009, under President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Civil Rights Division Chief Tom Perez, the Department of Justice launched a sweeping investigation into the East Haven Police Department in Connecticut. Rather than pursuing civil remedies or reforms, DOJ officials made the calculated decision to criminally prosecute four decorated East Haven officers — Jason Zullo, John Miller, David Cari, and Dennis Spaulding.

These men were not corrupt. They were not rogue actors. They were committed, decorated professionals engaged in the unglamorous work of enforcing the law in a community plagued by fraudulent vehicle registrations, gang activity, and illegal enterprises. Yet because many of those arrested happened to be undocumented immigrants, the DOJ sought to brand the entire department as racist and discriminatory.

When the Town of East Haven resisted a DOJ-mandated consent decree that would have placed its police department under long-term federal control, the prosecutions escalated. Ordinary enforcement actions and split-second decisions were twisted into supposed “civil rights violations.” Routine arrests were recast as criminal conspiracies. Federal prosecutors did not pursue these cases because the officers’ conduct was outside the bounds of the law — they pursued them to make an example and to send a chilling message nationwide: enforce the law in immigrant communities, and you risk prison.

The result was predictable. Four officers with long records of bravery and service were branded as criminals, their lives and families torn apart. The prosecutions were not about justice; they were about politics. They were about advancing a narrative, silencing law enforcement, and intimidating police departments into submission.

This case should never have been brought. It remains one of the most glaring examples of political prosecution in modern American law enforcement history. The convictions of the East Haven Four represent a miscarriage of justice that must be reversed.