Report: Troopers may have falsified at least 25K tickets

By Jaden Edison The Connecticut Mirror

Connecticut State Police troopers may have falsified tens of thousands of traffic stop records submitted to the state’s racial profiling data reporting program, potentially skewing the numbers to reflect more infractions for white drivers and less for Black and Hispanic motorists.

The revelation was made in a report released June 28 following an investigation last year by Hearst Connecticut Media Group revealing that in 2018 four state troopers had fabricated hundreds of traffic stop tickets for professional gain.

The report was the result of a comprehensive audit by the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project in the months after the investigation was published.

Auditors reviewed more than 800,000 infractions submitted by 1,301 troopers, stretching from 2014 to 2021.

The inquiry showed that the overreporting and underreporting of traffic infractions went far beyond the four troopers first identified by internal affairs investigations and subsequent reporting.

The researchers were unable to corroborate 25,966 stops submitted to the racial profiling database while indicating that the number of falsified records could possibly exceed 58,000.

Overreported traffic infractions by state troopers were more likely to involve whitenon Hispanic drivers while the underreported violations were more likely to include Black or Hispanic motorists, the report states. More than 7,400 traffic stop records were falsified by constables, researchers said, though they likely had minimal impact on the state’s annual analysis of traffic data given that constables contribute less than 5% of all stops reported by state police.

“Identifying statistically significant discrepancies can be evidence of wrongdoing but a formal investigation would need to confirm that, and that is beyond the scope of our audit,” the report says. “When we identify records as ‘false’ it is because they fail to meet any of the thresholds we established to try and link them to a real record, no matter how tenu ous that linkage might have been.”

Falsified data would have af fected the ability to analyze the information, researchers said, and likely downplayed the extent of the racial disparities currently reflected in traffic stop numbers.

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It also could have violated the state’s police accountability law, which notes the falsification of reports and violations of the Alvin W. Penn Racial Profiling Prohibition Act as grounds for decertification of an officer’s license.

In a virtual meeting on June 28, where members of the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project shared the report’s findings with their advisory board, State Police Colonel Stavros

Mellekas noted that the number of falsified records declined after 2018, following changes within the agency after the internal affairs investigations. He also said that no state resident received a fake ticket. Rather, troopers and constables were making up traffic stops that didn’t happen and making up demographic information for the profiling system.

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