Bridgeport Residents Rally Behind Police Chief Roderick Porter as Union Calls for His Removal

The short version: Bridgeport residents took to the streets in support of Police Chief Roderick Porter, holding a rally and march backing the city's top cop even as the police union, AFSCME Council 4, and the Bridgeport Guardians call for his removal. The public show of community support — organized ahead of a Saturday morning march — stands in sharp contrast to the no-confidence vote and roughly 20 state complaints and six federal lawsuits the union has lined up against the chief. Mayor Joe Ganim, the man who hired Porter in late 2022, says he still has faith in him.

The rally matters because it redraws the battle lines around the most embattled police chief in Connecticut. On one side is the department's rank and file: the Bridgeport Police Union (AFSCME Local 1159), its parent AFSCME Council 4, and the Bridgeport Guardians, the organization representing the department's minority officers. Union president Michael Salemme III has accused Porter of retaliation, discrimination, coercion, abuse of authority, interference with investigations, violations of due process and collective bargaining rights, whistleblower retaliation, and creating a hostile work environment. In a news conference carried by News 12 Connecticut, Salemme said approximately 20 complaints are pending with the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, alongside six federal lawsuits — and he called on the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the EEOC to get involved. "I stand before everyone pleading for help," Salemme said. "We have everything documented from the beginning of the misconduct, and we will bring it all forward to whoever needs it."

On the other side are the residents who live with the policing, and the mayor they elected. The community march, backed publicly by City Councilwoman Mary McBride-Lee, was organized as a direct answer to the union's campaign: a show of numbers from the neighborhoods, not the roll-call room. As News 12 Connecticut put it in its statewide roundup over the weekend, "a growing debate continues over Bridgeport Police Chief Roderick Porter as supporters and critics clash over his leadership." The chief himself has been blunt about what he thinks is really driving the campaign against him. Speaking to local media, Porter said his critics are upset, in his words, "because I stopped the gravy train" — a reference to overtime and assignment practices he has tightened since taking the job.

This is not a new fight. It has been building, by the union's own account, for about three years — roughly the length of Porter's tenure. Last year the union held a formal vote of no confidence in the chief. Of the roughly 180 members who cast ballots, 152 voted no confidence and only 27 supported him; one ballot was disqualified. The vote was a landmark in its scale — Salemme said at the time he had never seen that many members turn out for a union vote of any kind. The groups have also faulted Mayor Ganim's administration, saying officers raised concerns for years without meaningful action.

Ganim, for now, is not moving. Asked last month whether he continues to have faith in the chief he hired in late 2022, the mayor answered, "Yes, I do." He pointed to what he called "pretty clear" results where it matters to the public: the city's low crime statistics. Bridgeport experienced a historically low violent crime rate in 2025 — numbers the city had not seen since the early 1960s. For the mayor, that record is the counterweight to the union's grievances.

At the same time, the administration is not pretending the dispute will resolve itself. Ganim announced the city will hire the nationwide law firm Jackson Lewis to examine complaints from a group of officers alleging unfair treatment and, in some cases, discrimination in discipline and promotions. The outside review was actually on the table back in January, when the municipal law department planned to engage the firm and then called it off; it is now back on. In other words: the chief keeps his job, and an outside firm gets to investigate the people trying to take it.

Porter's résumé is not in dispute. He is a 36-year veteran of law enforcement, 30 of those years inside the Bridgeport Police Department, a retired Bridgeport captain who is Black, a graduate of the FBI National Academy, and a fellow of the Police Executive Research Forum at Harvard. The question the city is now litigating — in court filings, in complaint queues, and on the street — is whether that long service has been followed by a tenure of strong, reforming leadership or one of retaliatory management. The union and the Guardians, whose president Carlos Pabon Jr. said the organization is "calling for a Department of Justice review of the department's internal policies and practices," have made their answer clear: Porter should be placed on administrative leave while the allegations are independently investigated. Pabon framed it as beyond faction: "This is not about race. This is not about politics or personal agendas. This is about fairness, accountability and doing the right thing. Our officers deserve better, our community deserves better."

The rally answers that call with a different constituency. Police unions speak for their members; a residents' march speaks for the people who call 911. In Bridgeport, those voices are now in open disagreement — the department's officers say the chief's leadership is unacceptable, and a visible slice of the city says it supports him anyway. AFSCME Council 4's executive director Jody Barr summed up the union's view at the news conference: "What's happening in this department right now is unacceptable. Officers have raised serious concerns about Chief Porter's leadership and untruthfulness, and those concerns haven't gone away. They've only gotten worse." The residents who marched are effectively saying the opposite about the department's direction under Porter — and pointing to the crime numbers as their evidence.

What happens next runs on two tracks. The legal track: roughly 20 CHRO complaints, six federal lawsuits, and whatever the Jackson Lewis review produces. The political track: a mayor who has tied himself to his chief, a council with members openly taking sides — McBride-Lee at the rally, others quieter — and a union leadership that has asked federal authorities to step in. Federal involvement would change the stakes entirely; a DOJ or EEOC review of a municipal department's internal practices has a way of outliving the tenure of whoever sparked it.

There is also the question the rally itself raised: whose voice counts most in the fate of a police chief? In most American cities, the answer is a messy hybrid — the mayor hires and fires, the union negotiates and complains, and the public, which experiences policing directly, mostly watches. Bridgeport's residents decided not to just watch. Whether the march changes anything inside City Hall is unclear; Ganim was already standing by Porter before anyone took to the street. But it does something else: it makes it harder to tell this story as a simple labor dispute. A no-confidence vote by 152 officers is a labor story. A community marching for the same chief the union wants gone is a story about what a city wants from its police — and who gets to decide.

Previously's Connecticut desk is following the Bridgeport dispute and the outside review of the department. Read our earlier reporting on a Las Vegas police investigation.