More white drivers pulled over? No, just a Connecticut police scam
5 Min Read
Connecticut troopers are under federal investigation for allegedly submitting false traffic stop data, which include 26,000 fake tickets, in an attempt to cover up racism.
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Members of the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Unit on the scene where two police officers were killed, Oct. 13, 2022, in Bristol, Connecticut (AP)
The US Department of Justice has taken over the investigation into claims that hundreds of Connecticut state troopers may have given a racial profiling board false information about thousands of traffic violations, giving the impression that officers were stopping more white people than they actually were, according to the state's top prosecutor.
On Thursday, Chief State's Attorney Patrick Griffin told WTNH-TV that the DOJ urged his agency to halt its inquiry, which Governor Ned Lamont had ordered, because it was conducting its own investigation.
"I agreed with that decision," Griffin said, adding that "DOJ brings the tools and the resources necessary to conduct this investigation, on the one hand."
"On the other, I think that the investigation will be thorough. I think that it will be independent," he added.
Griffin provided The Associated Press with a statement on Friday in which he confirmed the facts.
The impartiality of the inquiry being carried out by Griffin's office, which collaborates with the state police on criminal matters, had come under scrutiny from civil rights organizations.
In addition to the Justice Department probe, Lamont also authorized an independent investigation, which is currently being overseen by former Connecticut US Attorney and current private lawyer Deirdre Daly.
An email requesting comments was not answered by the Justice Department. Both the state police and the US attorney's office in Connecticut declined to comment on the incident on Friday.
The governor's office has not been made aware of any DOJ investigations, according to Adam Joseph, director of Lamont's communications.
Joseph stated they would "welcome any law enforcement investigation in order to get to the bottom of this matter."
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Data analysts with The University of Connecticut said they had a "high degree of confidence" that more than 300 of the 1,300 troopers reviewed provided false and inaccurate data on at least 26,000 -- and as many as 58,500 -- traffic stop infractions between 2014 and 2021. This was stated in an audit that was published in June.
The researchers think that drivers were never actually issued the violations.
According to a 1999 law intended to minimize racial profiling, the allegedly falsified information was entered into a database of all Connecticut police traffic stops, which analysts use to compile reports on the race and ethnicity of motorists stopped by all Connecticut police departments.
According to those records, police have been stopping Black and Hispanic drivers more frequently than other drivers statewide.
The audit found that the allegedly false data tended to identify drivers as white rather than Black or Hispanic, which distorted the data utilized for the reports.
According to civil rights organizations, the false statistics may show that the disproportionate rates are worse than the studies have suggested.
However, analysts noted that they did not attempt to ascertain whether the records were inaccurate because of carelessness or human mistakes or because they were purposely false.
#Racism isn't dead.
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) September 29, 2022
Statistics show that black Americans are more likely to be falsely convicted 7 times more than white #Americans before being exonerated. pic.twitter.com/YJ8g3ANy6T
The auditors found that the fabricated infractions were recorded in the state police's internal database but not sent to the state court system, which handles all statewide traffic infractions. This finding supports the theory that troopers reported stops that never occurred and infractions that were never issued.
The audit was spurred by a Hearst Connecticut Media article from the previous year, which claimed that four state troopers in an eastern Connecticut barracks purposefully produced hundreds of fictitious traffic stop charges to increase their productivity figures.
After internal affairs investigations, one trooper received a 10-day suspension, another received a two-day suspension, and the other two retired before the inquiry was finished.
The disputed data have been investigated by state lawmakers as well. According to James Rovella, the state's commissioner of public safety, state police have received a subpoena from the Office of Inspector General of the US Department of Transportation about data on traffic stops. This agency is investigating if misleading information was used to obtain federal funding.
While the state police union has cautioned against passing judgment too quickly on the allegations, Rovella has stated that he is furious over the false data allegations.
The Justice Department taking over the inquiry was hailed as a positive development by the Connecticut chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. It is requesting that all state police troopers and supervisors who submitted fraudulent information be decertified, which would result in their termination from their positions.
