(IntegrityPress.org) – State Police Troopers in Connecticut have possibly fabricated over 26,000 parking tickets. An internal investigation showed that tickets were falsified due to quotas for the reporting program collecting racial data for the state. The faked statistics indicate fewer parking infractions for black and Hispanic motorists, dishonestly bloating the number for white drivers.
An earlier investigation on July 19 by the Hearst Connecticut Media Group revealed that in 2018, four members of the state police had created hundreds of false tickets to increase their chances of professional advantages and gain. This investigation then led to the larger one, revealing that out of more than 800,000 infractions that were given by over 1,000 state troopers, more than 25,000 of them were found to have been given to people who had no evidence of even existing.
Racial data of offenders must be submitted in a database because of the Alvin W Penn profiling act of 1999, in which all officers must submit the personal information of people they pull over in a traffic stop. This information includes the reason for the stop, ethnicity, and gender.
As the fabrication of reports falls under Connecticut’s Police accountability law, any troopers who are proven to have taken part in these fake citations are risking immediate decertification of their officers’ licenses. However, two of the four troopers from the initial investigation by Hearst Group had retired before they had to face any punishment, and the other two only received short suspensions, with one officer remaining employed with the state police. The retired troopers also will still receive their pensions.
Stavros Mellekas, colonel of the state police, stated that the initial findings in 2018 had happened before the police accountability law was passed, implying that nothing like this will be tolerated by officers in the state going forward. In this recent case of the 25,000 fabricated parking tickets, it is still yet to be decided what repercussions await those involved.
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