HARTFORD — Despite the recent closure of the criminal investigation into a “collective” effort to falsify traffic stop data, the Connecticut State Police ticketing scandal remains exactly that — a scandal. The ACLU of Connecticut is disappointed in the governor and state legislature’s inaction on police transparency and accountability issues, especially in light of obvious systemic problems.
Although Governor Lamont said there was no “conscious” effort to falsify ticketing data — with the exception of “six or seven” troopers — the ACLU of Connecticut wants to make it clear that “unconscious” police record making is in no way acceptable. Also, “six or seven troopers” is entirely too many public servants operating in bad faith and falsifying data that affects outcomes in court cases, which in turn affect the lives of many families in Connecticut.
“It doesn’t substantially matter that the criminal investigation is not moving forward,” said David McGuire, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut. “Internal tweaks to the police record keeping process are welcome, but not permanent. This is effectively the fox guarding the hen house. Police should be required to be accurate in their record making and record keeping, and it’s dismaying that police do not hold themselves accountable.”
“If police don’t police themselves, this requires significant changes on the legislative level and much more attention from the governor. The falsified records were often troopers going out of their way to characterize egregious infractions. Police should have no room for mistakes. Courts have relied on veracity of information that police provide for more than 100 years to reckon with the civil rights and liberties of those accused of breaking the law. There should no room for error or false records.”
For more information on the Connecticut State Police falsifying and inaccurately reporting traffic stop records, visit here.
