During the years 2014–2022, CT State Police officers Kevin Moore, Daniel Richter, Timothy Bentley, and Noah Gouveia were found guilty of handing out over thousands of falsified tickets, mainly to black and Hispanic drivers. Their reasoning is that they wanted to appear more busy. They also wanted to increase their pay, possibly gain promotions, and even get better jobs in general.
A report that had been released by state auditors on June 28th showed a group of CT State Police troopers were wrongly giving out tickets. In the report, it was revealed that the officers gave out over tens of thousands of traffic stop tickets. It seemed to be more geared towards black and Hispanic drivers.
From 2014 to 2021, over 800,000 infractions were relayed by around 1,300 troopers. This was motivated by the fact that they wanted to try and cheat their way to show they were “doing their job.” After the investigation was released, the scandal resulted in a legislative hearing, a federal investigation, and a lawsuit.
After interviewing a fellow Hall Resource Officer, Nicholas Sanford, he told us how he was perplexed about the situation. “Integrity as a police officer is of the utmost importance. If you lose your integrity, how can you truthfully swear to reports in which you write?” He commented about how, due to them falsifying a large amount of their traffic reports, their words can no longer be trusted.
Officer Sanford also commented on whether he believed this issue would affect the West Hartford Police Department, saying that he doesn’t think it’ll affect the department, but he does think there will be state-wide changes to how
they collect their data.
After interviewing a young student driver, Owen Cambell, who is a senior at Hall, spoke about his experience of receiving a ticket from an officer. He explained to us how he got his ticket: “I got my ticket in early summer because of overnight street park
ing.” He didn’t seem to be bothered by it because it was just a parking ticket, but when we explained the ticket scandal to him, he was shocked. When asked about his feelings about his beliefs in the state police, he said, “It will not change my belief in our state police because I have trust that this has or will be dealt with.”
I also talked to another student driver, Alex Shehi, who has been driving for two years and has yet to receive his first ticket. He said this about the police and the situation: “It kind of just feels scary because they’re everywhere. They’re around us because they’re supposed to protect us.”
His feelings are most likely how a majority of young drivers feel about the police department after hearing about this scandal. Although issues were resolved eventually, the public’s trust most likely will not be the same.
The reason for doing this was that they wanted to appear more productive. While Moore and Richter were given a 10-day and 2-day suspension, Bentley and Gouveia retired before they could receive any disciplinary action. The reason for them doing this was to avoid punishment.
