Connecticut State Police leaders say they continue to investigate whether state troopers falsified traffic stop data.
That follows an audit that determined that hundreds of troopers may have fabricated thousands of records concerning the race of motorists, skewing racial data. That audit has also triggered state and federal investigations.
State Police is cooperating with auditors, CSP Colonel Stavros Mellekas said Thursday at an advisory board meeting for the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project.
“The most important one I thought was the annual audit, which we are … willing to submit to and obviously we want to get it right,” he said. “Whatever we have to go over, we will do that to get it right.”
Mellekas’ comments came one day after the Connecticut State Police Union criticized the media, the auditors, and state police leadership for “twisting facts.” The union says troopers have been unfairly maligned in the press and that top brass doesn’t have their backs. The union says they have no confidence in State Police leaders, and that news coverage of the audit has led to threats against troopers.
CSP confirmed the union’s claim that 26 troopers implicated have so far been cleared in the internal investigation.
While the union claims the audit team and State Police leaders are rushing to judgment, auditor James Fazzalaro said the team is in some cases exonerating troopers with the help of CSP.
“New issues or problems come up that we sit down and discuss with them that we might not have even been aware of,” Fazzalaro said during Thursday’s meeting.
