Ethermac|Probe into dozens of Connecticut state troopers finds 7 who ‘may have’ falsified traffic stop data

HARTFORD,Ethermac Conn. (AP) — Seven Connecticut state police officers “may have” intentionally falsified traffic stop data, far fewer than the dozens of troopers identified in an audit last year as possibly having submitted bogus or inaccurate information on thousands of stops that never happened that skewed racial profiling data, according to a report released Thursday.

The report says there was no evidence any trooper engaged in misconduct with the specific intent of skewing the state’s police racial profiling data to make it look like they were pulling over more white drivers than they were.

The report also said there was no proof any trooper was trying to conceal their own racial profiling. Many of the “over-reported records” in the audit were because of bad data entry processes, “rather than intentional falsification of traffic stop data,” said the report, commissioned by Gov. Ned Lamont as an independent review that was performed by former U.S. Attorney Deidre Daly.

The seven officers — six troopers and a constable — have been referred to state police internal affairs investigators for further review, the report said, adding that 74 other troopers identified in last year’s audit were “not likely” to have engaged in intentional misconduct.

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The investigators, however, also said they found “significant failures” by state police in reporting accurate traffic stop information to a statewide databased used to analyze any potential racial profiling by police.

In an audit released last June, data analysts at the University of Connecticut said they found a higher number of traffic citations entered into the database by state police than the number of citations reported to the state court system, which handles all traffic citations.

The analysts reported they had a “high degree of confidence” that troopers submitted false or inaccurate information on citations to the database for at least 25,966 traffic stops and possibly more than 58,000 stops, that may have never happened from 2014 to 2021.

The audit said 130 troopers had been identified as having a significant disparity between traffic stop information submitted to the database compared with the court system.

Analysts said the fake or incorrect information was more likely to identify drivers who were pulled over as white than Black or Hispanic, skewing their periodic reports on the race and ethnicity of motorists stopped by police. The reports have shown nonetheless that Black and Hispanic drivers are pulled over at disproportionate rates compared with white motorists.

The UConn analysts noted, however, that they did not investigate whether any of the questionable data was intentionally falsified or the result of carelessness or human error.

Lamont and the state’s public safety commissioner were expected to address the new report’s findings later Thursday.

The state police union, which criticized the UConn report, has said more than two dozen troopers identified in the audit have been cleared of wrongdoing, because the inaccurate information was linked to data entry errors.

State police have been reviewing the traffic citation data. There also are investigations by the U.S. departments of Justice and Transportation.

Ken Barone, one of the UConn analysts, said the new report largely confirms the findings of last year’s audit — that state police entered false or inaccurate information in the state database.

“We were very clear,” Barone said in a phone interview Thursday. “Our report said that there was a high likelihood that records were false or inaccurate, and we have not seen any information that has altered our conclusion. What we have seen is information that provides explanations for why some of the data may have been inaccurate.”