Bridgeport, CT – The Bridgeport Police Union has taken a decisive step toward a vote of no confidence in Police Chief Roderick Porter, citing a department in crisis under his leadership. According to Union President Michael Salemme III, the union’s executive board voted 51-5 to bring the issue to its full membership.
“The membership has nothing to lose—Chief Porter already destroyed the department and now has to have two assistant chiefs try to restore the damage he did,” said Salemme. “The citizens only see an hour on social media, once a week, through ‘Porter’s Corner,’ which is masking the toxic work environment.”
Salemme has previously accused Porter of fostering a culture of retaliation, mismanaging promotions, and creating policies that have led to increased officer fatigue and sick leave. He also claims that under Porter’s leadership, taxpayer dollars have been wasted on unnecessary grievances, outsourced investigations, and lawsuits.
In response to past criticism, Chief Porter has dismissed the allegations as “baseless” and an attempt to misinform the public. Despite his claims, union leadership maintains that morale is at an all-time low and that officers are afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation.
The upcoming full union vote will determine the formal stance of the department’s officers on Chief Porter’s leadership.
Today’s Vehicle Fire is in the parking garage of Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport. Firefighters arrived on scene and found and put out the car fire. There is no additional information at this time.
Report of another garage fire. This one’s at Margaret Circle in Stratford. Firefighters arrived on scene to find a fire in the corner of the garage that was quickly put out.
On March 7, 2025 at about 10:30 P.M., the Ansonia Police Department received multiple calls reporting shots fired from in or around 84 Franklin Street. A witness reported seeing a gun pointed out a window at the location and fired towards the rear of the house into the woods. Officers made contact with the owner/resident, another occupant of the home and shell casings were located outside the home. A search warrant was obtained for the home and located during the search were two handguns, a shotgun, three BB guns, and ammunition for the handguns and shotgun.
Ryan Ortiz, age 39, the owner of the home is a convicted felon for Illegal Sale of Firearm in New York. He was arrested for five counts Criminal Possession of Firearms and Ammunition and two counts of Criminal Possession of a Pistol, held on a $250,000.00 bond to be arraigned in Derby Superior Court March 10, 2025
The investigation is ongoing to determine who fired the gun and additional charges are anticipated.
All arrestees are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
At around 4:00 a.m. on Sunday, the Bridgeport Fire Department responded to Lecoq Cuisine at 35 Union Avenue for an industrial accident. An employee’s hand had become trapped between two rollers inside a machine. Rescue 5 successfully freed the worker after the company’s maintenance team de-energized the machine before firefighters arrived. The employee was transported to Bridgeport Hospital, and OSHA has been notified of the incident.
(Hartford, CT) – Attorney General William Tong issued testimony today in support of S.B. 1284, An Act Concerning the Illegal Use of Certain Vehicles and Street Takeovers, which would enable municipalities to seize certain motor vehicles and increase penalties for those engaged in illegal street takeovers. Attorney General Tong has previously called for increased penalties for reckless driving, including temporary forfeiture of vehicles.
“There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t see someone driving recklessly on our roads and highways on my commute up to Hartford. From excessive speeding and reckless lane changes to distracted and intoxicated driving, this brazen lawlessness puts all of us at risk and cannot be tolerated,” Attorney General Tong states in his testimony.
Full testimony copied below.
Testimony in Support of
S.B. No. 1284, An Act Concerning The Illegal Use Of Certain Vehicles And Street Takeovers
Judiciary Committee
Friday, March 7th, 2025
Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony in support of S.B. No. 1284 which aims to improve the safety of our roads and hold accountable those who endanger our lives through their reckless and lawless misbehavior.
There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t see someone driving recklessly on our roads and highways on my commute up to Hartford. From excessive speeding and reckless lane changes to distracted and intoxicated driving, this brazen lawlessness puts all of us at risk and cannot be tolerated. Street takeovers are the extreme celebration of this dangerous driving culture, where large groups of individuals flood entire roads with reckless speeding and weaving. This is not merely a disruption—this puts every other road user at risk, from drivers to pedestrians and cyclists and nearby neighbors.
We must do more to protect the safety of our roads, and I believe this bill is a step in the right direction. By enabling municipalities to instate ordinances related to street takeovers and give them the tools to seize, sell, or destroy certain types of motor vehicles and institute fines will increase accountability for those actively engaging in this type of behavior. I would urge the Committee to go a step further and subject extreme reckless drivers—those who exceed one-hundred miles per hour—to the temporary forfeiture of their vehicles.
For the reasons above, the Office of the Attorney General recommends that the Committee favorably report S.B. No. 1284.
FAIRFIELD, Conn. (March 4, 2025) — Fairfield University’s College of Arts and Sciences Master of Fine Arts program will host a lecture by Reverend Lynn Casteel Harper, essayist, minister, and chaplain, on Monday, March 17 at 7:30 p.m. at the Quick Center for the Arts. The event is free and open to the public.
Harper’s On Vanishing: Mortality, Dementia, and What it Means to Disappear is a New York Times Book Editors’ Choice selection that weaves together intimate reflections on her own family’s history with dementia. She also draws on her work as a pastor and nursing home chaplain, as well as scientific, medical, and historical perspectives on the disease. During the event, she will converse with National Book Award-winning author and Fairfield Professor Phil Klay.
In addition to being a New York Times Editors’ Choice, On Vanishing was a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection for 2021 and was featured on the Gold Foundation’s 2021 Reading List for Compassionate Clinicians. Harper’s works have appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Salon, The Paris Review, North American Review, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR’s Think, The Sun Magazine, and more. She is a recipient of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant and was awarded the 2017 Orison Anthology Award in Nonfiction.
This evening at Fairfield with Reverend Lynn Casteel Harper is part of the Inspired Writers Series, which serves as a companion to the MFA in Creative Writing program, offering engaging discussions with top authors. Designed to inform, inspire, and entertain, the series provides invaluable insight for writers while welcoming all participants into thought-provoking literary conversations.
Register to attend the March 17 event with Reverend Lynn Casteel Harper at quickcenter.com. This event is free and open to the public.
Bridgeport police responded to Ash Street after a woman was seen running outside, yelling for help, and knocking on a resident’s door, claiming she had been shot. Emergency responders, including AMR and the Bridgeport Fire Department, arrived at the scene and found no visible injuries, but the woman was still taken to a local hospital for evaluation. No further details are available at this time.
(Hartford, CT) — Attorney General William Tong and a coalition of 22 other attorneys general today won a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration to block its illegal policy that would freeze funding for essential federal agency grants, loans, and other financial assistance programs. Judge John J. McConnell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island today granted the preliminary injunction after Attorney General Tong and the coalition sued the Trump administration to stop the funding freeze.
“This is a major early victory, signaling the strength of our case and the brazen lawlessness of Trump’s overreaching executive order. Let’s not forget what Donald Trump did on January 27—this was a blanket freeze on trillions of dollars of federal funding, hitting every corner of our government. This was no idle threat. On the day we sued, Head Start funding was down. Medicaid funding was frozen. We sued immediately, and the court orders we have secured are what is now standing in the way of Donald Trump defunding our police, our highways, energy assistance, and our schools. This fight is far from over, but we are prepared to stay in court for as long as it takes to protect Connecticut families and Connecticut jobs,” said Attorney General Tong.
The administration’s funding freeze policy, issued through an array of actions, including a January 27 memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), illegally withheld trillions of dollars in federal funds for states and other entities like nonprofit organizations and community health centers. The policy caused immediate chaos and uncertainty for millions of Americans who rely on state programs that receive these federal funds.
Attorney General Tong and the coalition sued the administration over the freeze on January 28, and on January 31, the court granted the attorneys general’s request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the freeze’s implementation until further order from the court. On February 7, Attorney General Tong and the coalition filed motions for enforcement and a preliminary injunction to stop the illegal freeze and preserve federal funding that families, communities, and states rely on. On February 8, the court granted the motion for enforcement, ordering the administration to immediately comply with the TRO and stop freezing federal funds. On February 28, Attorney General Tong and the coalition filed a second motion for enforcement seeking to stop the Trump administration from freezing hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to the states from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Today, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island granted Attorney General Tong and the coalition’s request for a preliminary injunction, halting the implementation of the administration’s policy. The Court concluded that the states had demonstrated a high likelihood of success on their claims that the actions making up the funding freeze policy were unlawful. In today’s order, the Court also required the administration to provide evidence of their compliance with regard to unfreezing FEMA funds by March 14 and to alert all agencies about the Court’s order.
The lawsuit is led by the attorneys general of California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. Joining the lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.
