Report Lists Top Reasons Why Farmington Police Pull Motorists Over

Editor’s Note: We ran this previously, but wanted to bring it back in case you missed it.

Farmington Police are pretty balanced when it comes to enforcing all types of motor vehicle laws.

A recent report by the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project looked at traffic stop data across Connecticut police departments for a 12 month period that ended on Sept. 30, 2014.

The reason why a Farmington officer is likely to pull you over includes: 16.2 percent for speed-related, 18.6 percent for cell phone use, 9.1 percent for defective lights, 13.4 percent for a moving violation, 15.3 percent for registration, 4.1 percent for seatbelt, 10.9 percent for a traffic control signal.

“The wide range of violations is indicative of a well-rounded approach to enforcing a variety of traffic issues with speeding and cell phone use being the highest,” said Lt. Colin Ryan, police spokesman. “We have our fair share of fatal crashes in Farmington and we have always emphasized enforcing the motor vehicle violations that are likely to cause motor vehicle accidents.”

In about 47 percent of the stops a motorist received an infraction and about 39 percent received a verbal warning. About 6 percent of stops resulted in a misdemeanor summons and 3 percent in a written warning.

There were 107 searches during the 4,525 stops conducted by Farmington Police during the report time, or a 2.36 percent search rate. This put Farmington in the middle of the pack for search rate among departments throughout the state.

Farmington was 10th on the list for highest arrest rates during a motor vehicle stop at 2.2 percent. The state average is less than one percent, but Farmington is a far cry away from New London where 7.3 percent of stops result in an arrest.

“Arrests following traffic stops happen for a variety of reasons with DUI being the most frequent,” Ryan said. “Farmington PD has, and always will enforce the DUI laws rigorously.”