Rolling Stone reports:
A SINGLE STATE trooper logged 1,350 fraudulent traffic tickets into a Connecticut database meant to detect racial profiling. The finding is key to a damning new audit of the Connecticut State Police, which reveals pervasive trooper malfeasance, including at least 26,000 false tickets logged over seven years, that masked racial bias in the force’s policing. Now, the CSP refuses to discuss the audit — or even reveal if the most-prolific ticket faker still has a badge.
In Connecticut, state troopers log traffic citations in two different and unconnected databases; the first is used by the courts to handle adjudication, paying off the tickets, etc.; the second is used for demographic analysis intended to identify and expose bias in enforcement. There should be a one-to-one match for every citation across the two databases.
Well, it appears that hundreds of Connecticut state troopers have been gaming the system from both ends by:
- Entering nonexistent citations — which disproportionately listed white drivers — into the demographics database without entering them in the judicial database
- Entering real citations — disproportionately involving black drivers — into the judicial database without entering them in the demographics database
The audit reveals that this malfeasance was both broad and deep across the whole of the CSP. The results suggest that more than 300 troopers had “significant discrepancies” in their recordkeeping, resulting in “tens of thousands” of false citations in the demographics database. Furthermore, the audit revealed that more than 500 troopers failed to log more than 16,000 real citations into the demographics database.
The results of this audit make it clear that a serious housecleaning is required (emphasis added):
Amid policy makers’ concerns that the practice could be widespread, the new audit reveals that the fraud went beyond the four bad officers — nearly one-in-four troopers had recorded fake tickets. And the audit’s eye-popping estimate is almost certainly conservative: The audit states that the “number of false records is likely larger,” and reveals a high-end range of close to 60,000 fake citations.
Once this matter is resolved, we’ll have a much clearer picture of the prevalence of racial profiling in the Connecticut State Police — and I don’t think it’s going to be a pretty picture.