Rolling Stone, July 2023
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.
These fake tickets, to be clear, did not result in fines or court dates for Connecticut drivers. Under the law, state troopers are required to log tickets from their traffic stops into parallel systems: One that is connected to the state’s judicial branch, and triggers adjudication; and a second database that records the demographic data of stopped drivers, and is intended to expose — and, ideally, curb — bias in traffic enforcement.
