HARTFORD – The Judiciary and Public Safety Committees of the Connecticut General Assembly today held a joint forum regarding the revelation that, from 2014 to 2021, hundreds of Connecticut State Police throughout the state reported tens of thousands of fake traffic stops and failed to report thousands of real traffic stops. According to an audit conducted by the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project, State Police, through fake tickets, over-reported stops of white drivers and, through failure to log records, underreported actual stops of drivers of color.
The following is a reaction to today’s hearing from ACLU of Connecticut public policy and advocacy director Claudine Constant:
“The facts are very clear: one or two fake or unreported tickets would have been bad enough. But this was tens of thousands of police submitting fake and inaccurate records throughout the state, amongst hundreds of police officers. This problem was widespread, long-lasting, and it happened because of lack of systemic oversight of police. The question now is how our elected officials are going to respond when police violate an anti-racist law tens of thousands of times for years. We urge swift, transparent, meaningful accountability for all individual police who falsified traffic stop records and for the State Police as a whole, because a problem this big is systemic.”
The ACLU of Connecticut has called on Governor Lamont, POSTC, and the Connecticut General Assembly to:
- conduct an outside, independent investigation that identifies not only the individuals but lack of oversight that allowed police to break the anti-racist law thousands of times;
- decertify all police involved, including those who have retired or are no longer employed by the Connecticut State Police and the supervisors who enabled or allowed false records to flourish;
- mandatory reporting of verbal warnings by police;
- a comprehensive plan for outside, independent oversight of the Connecticut State Police moving forward;
- introduction and passage of legislation to end secondary traffic stops in Connecticut.
