This story by Aaron Calvin first appeared in the Stowe Reporter on March 16.
Stowe police officer Benjamin Cavarretta quietly left the department last month amid an investigation into the now former senior patrolman.
Lamoille County State’s Attorney Todd Shove confirmed that Cavarretta was disciplined by the Stowe Police Department and his office will wait for the results of the department’s ongoing investigation before deciding whether to issue a Giglio letter against the officer.
Also known as a Brady letter, a Giglio letter is filed by a prosecutor when an officer’s conduct is called into question, and it can impugn their integrity as a law enforcement official.
In the meantime, Shove said he would consider Cavarretta-involved criminal charges on a “case by case basis” and respond as appropriate.
There may be a stack of outstanding cases to be considered.
A review of nearly 40 cases arraigned in Lamoille County court involving the Stowe Police Department since last September showed that 23 of those cases involved driving under the influence or negligent driving; Cavarretta was the arresting officer in 13 of those cases.
Of the 13, two have been dismissed, nine are currently ongoing and two cases ended in guilty pleas.
Stowe Police Chief Donald Hull and Town Manager Charles Safford both declined to comment on Cavarretta, citing an inability to discuss personnel matters.
Cavarretta made his last traffic stop as a Stowe police officer last December and received his last paycheck from the town in February. His name was removed from the department’s website and there was no public acknowledgement of his departure.
Road patrol
From York, Maine, Cavarretta, 36, came to Stowe in 2019 already a semi-seasoned veteran, with stints in the Lamoille County Sheriff’s Department, Hardwick Police Department and, most recently, the Berlin Police Department.
Cavarretta played a pivotal role not just in his own department but for law enforcement agencies across the region. As a certified drug-recognition expert, he was called upon by other officers and agencies to identify controlled substances in criminal cases and produce credible testimony for the courts. He last assisted the sheriff’s department with drug recognition just weeks before his final traffic stop as a Stowe officer.
“Ben is highly skilled in motor vehicle enforcement, specifically the impairment aspect, to include alcohol and drugs. He is currently the only drug-recognition expert within the department. We are extremely fortunate to have an officer that is not only trained as a DRE but also is passionate about keeping the public safe while traveling on our roadways,” Det. Lt. Fred Whitcomb told the Stowe Reporter in 2020.
In his four years with the department, Cavarretta was the department’s designated road warrior, a night-shift patrol officer with an emphasis on “motor vehicle enforcement with a heavy concentration on impaired drivers,” he said in 2020.
Cavarretta consistently made more traffic stops than his colleagues. Even in his final days, in an approximately 24-hour period in late November last year, he conducted 16 traffic stops; only four such stops were made by the department’s other officers during that period.
Most of these traffic stops did not result in an arrest or citation, but Cavarretta was always clear about his primary goal: getting intoxicated drivers off the streets.
When previously asked about why he stayed in Stowe, Cavarretta said that it was partially to “make a dent in the ongoing and increasing problem of drugged driving” and expand his role as an “impaired driving enforcer through traffic stops, education and training.”
Curious case
The traffic stops that ended with Cavarretta arresting an allegedly intoxicated driver over the last six months were as diverse as Stowe’s drivers — from a driver of a blue Porsche lighting up a breathalyzer while their passenger threw a tantrum to closing time bar patrons swerving slightly one moment before finding themselves in handcuffs in the next.
But Cavarretta’s most recent case to see arraignment may be the most remarkable.
On Nov. 2, the former Stowe officer pulled over Perry Mason, 54, from Colchester, after he was clocked going over 50 mph in a 25 mph zone.
Mason possesses a long rap sheet filled with crimes that range from petty to serious, including a prison stint for felony trespass, simple assault, unlawful mischief and petit larceny after he attempted to rob a Marshfield home and, when confronted, punched the homeowner in the face and fled.
Cavarretta claimed in his court testimony that Mason had “watery eyes,” an indicator he often relied on as supporting evidence for impairment, and a “low raspy voice.” He asked Mason and his passenger if they had anything in the vehicle that they “weren’t supposed to have.”
Mason admitted to having suboxone, a drug used in opiate addiction treatment that Vermont became the first state in the nation to legalize in 2021. Cavarretta alleged that Mason got argumentative and exhibited “mood swings” following his question.
Mason then submitted to Cavarretta’s usual array of roadside sobriety tests and exhibited signs of both sobriety and intoxication, depending on the test. Cavarretta decided this, along with his “watery eyes,” was enough to arrest Mason and charge him with driving under the influence.
A motion for dismissal filed by Mason’s lawyer, Andrew Schmidt, in his ongoing court case tells a different story. According to Schmidt, every observation and test conducted after Cavarretta asked, “What do you have in the car you shouldn’t have?” should be disregarded based on what can be observed on the police officer’s body camera footage from that night.
Cavarretta interrogated Mason and his companion on their criminal histories and whether they were violating their parole, which they both denied. The officer asked dispatch to run a check on their parole status and asked them to send a K-9 unit to investigate, the motion said, a move that Cavarretta does not mention in his own testimony.
When Mason questioned the officer as to why he was being interrogated, Cavarretta replied: “You’re on my timeframe now … You don’t get to run this show. I’m running the show.”
Schmidt contended in the motion that the sobriety test indicators and “watery eyes” cited by Cavarretta in Mason’s arrest was not justification for expanding the drug search. Cavarretta arrested Mason even though the dog’s search turned up nothing.
After the search, Cavarretta can allegedly be heard on camera saying, “It was worth a shot.”
Schmidt has alleged that, based on the body camera evidence, Cavarretta violated Mason’s constitutional rights by expanding the traffic stop into a search for drugs despite a clear lack of justifying evidence.