From State Senator Herron Gaston:
Today, state Senator Herron Keyon Gaston (D-Bridgeport), Chair of the Public Safety Committee and member of Connecticut’s Legislative Black and Puerto Rican Caucus, is releasing a statement following a recent presentation of an audit that found there is a high likelihood Connecticut State Police Troopers falsified thousands of traffic tickets.
“As chair of the Public Safety Committee, it is my due diligence to make sure drivers around our state are protected against unfair practices and have equal protection under the law,” said Sen. Gaston. “I will make it my mission to ensure equity and fairness for all Connecticut drivers behind the wheel. This audit presents a real challenge for our state, and my colleagues and I will work to find a solution. As we continue to conduct a thorough review of the audit, I am reaching out to community members while collaborating with law enforcement as we assess what actions will be taken from here.”
The Public Safety Committee and Judiciary Committee are set to have a meeting on July 26 to discuss and determine how to implement a future system where this will not happen in Connecticut again.
Co-Chair
This statement seems a little premature. How could you call for reform before you prove anything?
Senator Gaston has all the proof he needs.
Telling police officers how to conduct business is like asking an unrepentant felon to write Sunday’s
sermon.
Ok, this is an addendum to my first comment. After researching this issue in other publications, my understanding of what’s going on here is more complete. There evidently is a problem here but obviously more investigating needs to be done to form a more complete picture of the situation. Governer Lamont, the State’s Attorney General and the Connecticut State Police are conducting an investigation. I’d like to know who implemented this flawed system in the first place. Everyone knows that you don’t let the fox guard the henhouse. Asking State Troopers to police themselves and potentially incriminate themselves or even just appear to incriminate themselves was probably not the best system of oversight. In this day and age of high tech everything, it seems rather elementary to be able to create a computer program that can duplicate what State Troopers are now doing manually.
Oversight of elected and/or employed government officials like State Troopers is critical. Is that contested by anyone in this case? The study is complete. Careers have ended. And now the public is informed?
From reading several days’ worth of articles, the results of an audit over a period of years has revealed the presence of significant false or fraudulent paperwork. That takes time to complete, but gives the public no benefit when employees are producing such reports during work hours, and provides false results to a study to determine whether discrimination is taking place in practice and process of State Police action.
Generally specific oversight over all public resources including independent audits rather than self-audits should be the norm, and OPEN, ACCOUNTABLE, and HONEST reporting to the public on a regular basis in TRANSPARENT fashion is called for. How do you build public trust if the only news reported are failures?
Note the National news reports at the moment featuring former President Trump’s campaign call for less regulation and more executive power? Based on his four years in office where his lies and misstatements were legion so often that they went unchallenged until charges, with facts made evident for all to see and consider, have been lodged against him. Shouldn’t he be attending to his personal priorities at this moment? Defending himself with facts and reasoning, if he can do so, to maintain his liberty to speak freely and seek future office credibly? Why not run on his record?
Are so many folks seeking to consider him a victim, or is he merely comfortable continuing to act the injured party? Is he not a hypocrite of the highest order when he has been so hard on military or police personnel who are injured or captured in the line of duty? As an aggressive presence on the political scene, calling out his enemies and proposing ways to deal with them in the future, how do we let him become a”battle victim”? Is this courageous behavior for a rational national candidate? Time will tell.
Senator Gaston’s call for meetings to discuss reforming the State Police system of imputing data, related to traffic citations is definitely premature. All the facts should be gathered before any substantive meetings with constituents begin to formulate solutions. If I were Mr. Gaston, I would try to refrain from seeming too impetuous at the opportunity, of taking it to the police.