DOJ investigating alleged racial profiling among Connecticut troopers

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into an audit alleging that Connecticut state troopers have been submitting false information to a racial profiling database to hide the ethnicity of motorists they pulled over.

Connecticut Chief State's Attorney Patrick Griffin told WTNH-TV that the DOJ had asked the state of Connecticut to suspend its own investigation in favor of a federal probe, noting that he "agreed with that decision." The state investigation had been spurned by an audit released this past June, which alleged that Connecticut state troopers sent at least 26,000 falsified traffic tickets to the state's Racial Profiling Prohibition Project. This made it appear that troopers were stopping significantly more white drivers than they actually were, the audit said.

"It was found that there were troopers with discrepancies between the racial profiling database and the [ticketing] database where more records were reported to the racial profiling database," the audit said. It was concluded that "at least some of the traffic stop records in the racial profiling database were falsely reported."

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One trooper alone logged at least 1,350 false tickets, Rolling Stone reported. In all, the data found that the 26,000 alleged false reports went back as far as 2014.

Connecticut has been dealing with racial disparity issues in its police force for a number of years. However, a 2020 report found that the gap in traffic stops between white and minority drivers had been shrinking in the state, and officials have long stressed that "while the data may show disproportionate percentages of traffic stops involving minorities, it is not proof officers are committing racial profiling," The Associated Press reported.

Following the audit, the Connecticut State Police issued a vote of no confidence in their commissioner, James Rovella. "The acts of a few are not by all," Rovella has claimed in regard to the scandal.