- An independent investigator has released a report showing that data entry errors are the primary cause of inaccurate racial profiling data on traffic stops by Connecticut State Police.
- The seven officers whose data had discrepancies were referred to State Police Internal Affairs for further investigation.
- We found no evidence to suggest that officers engaged in misconduct with the specific intent of manipulating racial profiling data.
Inaccurate racial profiling data on traffic stops conducted by the Connecticut State Police is primarily due to data entry errors and other incidents, according to an independent investigator’s report released Thursday. It was not a deliberate effort to submit information about the matter.
Investigators referred seven officers with discrepant data to the state police for further investigation, while another 74 were found to be “unlikely” to have committed any wrongdoing, according to the report. That’s what it means. He also said there is no evidence that officers engaged in any wrongdoing with the specific intent of distorting the state police’s racial profiling data.
An outside investigation found that an audit last year found that dozens of officers may have submitted false or inaccurate information on thousands of traffic stops that would never have occurred in the state’s anti-racial profiling system. Governor Ned Lamont issued the order after being identified. The data makes it appear as if officers were catching more white motorists than they actually were, auditors said.
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An audit by data analysts at the University of Connecticut led to the firing of the state public safety commissioner and state police commander. The audit called into question the accuracy of regular reports on the race and ethnicity of drivers stopped by police across the state, finding that police disproportionately stopped Black and Hispanic drivers. .
A Connecticut State Police Major Crimes Unit vehicle photographed on October 13, 2022 in Bristol, Connecticut. Inaccurate racial profiling data on traffic stops conducted by state police are primarily the result of data entry errors, not the officers’ intentional intent to commit a crime. An independent investigator’s report says they submitted inaccurate information. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)
An outside panel led by former federal prosecutor Deirdre Daley said it found “significant failures” by state police to report accurate data due to inadvertent errors, but the scope of the potential misconduct was unclear. It said it was much smaller than the audit suggested. The report said many of the problems were due to poor training among soldiers and failures in leadership.
Daley’s team referred six police officers and one constable to state police internal affairs investigators because the number of traffic stops they reported appeared to be higher than the number actually conducted. The report said it found no evidence of wrongdoing, but could not determine the reason for the overreporting.
The report also revealed that state police leadership plans to refer five to eight more officers to internal affairs, citing data issues.
Ronnell Higgins, the state’s new public safety commissioner, said all officers cited for internal affairs have been removed from traffic enforcement duties. If wrongdoing is proven, he could be fired and his law enforcement certification could be revoked.
“The fact that even one police officer is referred to an internal affairs investigation for allegedly falsifying traffic stop data is concerning to me, and to all of the police officers who work in the field every day. It’s alarming, and we’re not going to tolerate that,” Higgins said at a news conference with Lamont at the state Capitol in Hartford.
“If there was overreporting, a lot of it was just to increase productivity; they were doing more than that,” Lamont said of executives’ references to internal affairs. I think there is a feeling that it was.”
In an audit released last June, UW analysts found that the number of traffic violations entered by state police into a state database that tracks the race and ethnicity of drivers is lower than the number of traffic violations in states that handle all traffic. He said he found that the number of cases was higher than that reported to the court system. Quote.
Analysts say that from 2014 to 2021, officers lied or misrepresented traffic stops in their database for at least 25,966 and possibly more than 58,000 traffic stops that may have never occurred. It reported that it had a “high degree of confidence” that it had submitted inaccurate citation information.
The audit said it identified significant discrepancies between traffic stop information submitted to the database and the court system for 130 officers. Since the audit, state police have cleared nearly 90 of 130 officers after reviewing the data, according to a new report. That review is ongoing.
But analysts at UW noted that they had not investigated whether the suspect data was intentionally falsified or the result of carelessness or human error.
The audit comes after Hearst Connecticut Media reports that four state troopers at a barracks in eastern Connecticut intentionally created hundreds of fake traffic stop tickets to boost productivity numbers. stimulated by. As a result of the internal affairs investigation, one police officer was suspended for 10 days, the other for two days, and the remaining two resigned before the investigation was completed.
The state police union has criticized the university’s audit since the announcement, saying there wasn’t enough investigation to determine why there was a data error.
Andrew Matthews, the union’s general secretary and a former member, said the new report “feels like a vindication of the union leadership.” He said UW’s audit “unduly tarnished the agency’s reputation and negatively impacted public confidence in law enforcement.”
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Ticket data is also being reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Transportation.
Ken Barone, one of Yukon’s analysts, said the new report largely confirms last year’s audit findings.
“We were very clear,” Barone said in a phone interview Thursday. “Our report states that the records are likely to be false or inaccurate, and we found no information that would change our conclusions. We have confirmed that some of the data is This is information that explains why it is accurate.”
Lamont and Higgins said a number of steps have already been taken to ensure data is entered accurately, including installing computers on every police cruiser, training officers and supervisors, and auditing data. He said that it was
