Audit Of Connecticut Traffic Tickets Sparks New Investigation

CONNECTICUT — Fallout from an audit of traffic tickets handed out by state law enforcement agents is prompting Gov. Ned Lamont to call in third-party investigators.

The initial investigation indicated that troopers ticketed fewer minority motorists than they actually did.

Speaking with reporters in an unrelated news conference Wednesday, the governor vowed the state would "have an independent investigation to make sure this never happens again." He said he expects to name the third-party company to conduct the inquiry shortly.

The audit highlighted the discrepancies between the state's racial profiling database and the one maintained by the Centralized Infractions Bureau in the Judicial Branch, which is the state's official court record. Among the tasks for the independent investigators will be determining if the differences in the data sets were intentional.

"Based on the methodology used to determine traffic stop matches across databases, there is a high likelihood that at least 25,966 traffic stop records in the racial profiling database are false," according to the report (p. 29). The date range is between 2014 and 2021.

Lamont urged residents not to rush to any judgement and wait for the findings of the new investigators' deeper dive: "There's no indication that was purposeful. A lot of it may have been inadvertent. We've got to look into that.”

The report was released last week by the state-funded Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project. The group's mission is to implement Connecticut’s Alvin W. Penn Racial Profiling Law which prohibits law enforcement agencies from detaining or searching any motorist on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, age, gender, or sexual orientation.

The Penn law, enacted by the state General Assembly in 1999, also requires all public agencies in Connecticut with the authority to enforce traffic laws to collect traffic stops data and report the data to the state.

There's a lot at stake for local law enforcement. The legislation also authorizes the Office of Policy Management to order the withholding of state funds to police departments which fail to comply. Falsifying tickets could result in officers losing their state licenses to work in their profession, according to the report.

The audit was prompted by a 2022 Hearst Media article that exposed how four Troop E State Police troopers created hundreds of fake traffic tickets to court favors from supervisors.

The Hearst story was "extremely concerning" to the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project Advisory Board, which "wanted to determine the extent to which any racial profiling records fabricated by these troopers or possibly others may have introduced unreliability in the data being used to analyze the state police generally and individual troop barracks."

The advisory board was further concerned that it was never notified by the Connecticut State Police of the potentially false records, according to the report.

"The integrity of our police is paramount," Lamont said. "We've got to make sure people have confidence there."