CT State Police Ticketing Scandal Lawsuit Expands

Looks like the media is getting involved:

A judge granted a motion by the Connecticut Mirror and The Day newspaper of New London to intervene in a lawsuit that could decide whether the Connecticut State Police release the names of troopers who are under investigation for allegedly falsifying or failing to report information on traffic stops.

Superior Court Judge Rupal Shah issued an order on Monday granting the media organizations’ request to participate in the lawsuit, which was initiated by the Connecticut State Police Union in order to prevent the state from disclosing the names and badge numbers of more than a hundred state troopers.

An audit performed by the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project, which collects data detailing the race and ethnicity of people who are pulled over by police in the state, identified roughly 130 current and former state troopers who had a significant number of traffic stops between 2014 and 2021 that could not be corroborated using other data.

The audit suggested those troopers may have either failed to report legitimate traffic stops or made up stops — both of which could throw off the racial profiling data that is used to track the rate at which officers pull over Black and Hispanic drivers in Connecticut.