Canton Police Officers Participate in Extra Training

Editor’s note: We published this story earlier in the week, but here it is again in case you missed it.

Canton police officers recently participated in training on fair and impartial policing, reports the Hartford Courant.

The training was recommended by the state after a report showed many police departments in Connecticut showed racial and ethnic bias when making traffic stops.

Canton was not one of the 10 departments named, but chose to participate in the training anyway.

The report showed that the percentage of minorities who were stopped for motor vehicle violations by police in the Farmington Valley exceeded that for the population as a whole in those communities.

The training was attended by 30 local and state police officers, including officers from Canton, Avon, Farmington, Simsbury, Windsor, and Granby. The animal control officer for Avon and Canton also attended.

In Canton, the population that is at least 16 years of age is 96.75 percent white, 1.94 percent Hispanic, and 1.31 percent Asian/Pacific Islander.

For the Canton Police Department, 89.54 percent of people stopped were white, 4.14 percent were black, 2.91 percent were Hispanic, .78 percent were American Indian/Alaskan Native, and .62 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander.

Click here to check out the town-by-town data.