Following a Wednesday morning news conference called by Republicans to criticize two bills before the Judiciary Committee as anti-police, one of the committee’s co-chairs announced plans to amend one of the bills that singles out police officers.
However he also said they don’t plan to reject or change the second bill, which would redefine secondary traffic violations and prohibit officers from using them as a reason for a traffic stop.
Judiciary Committee co-chair Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, stepped out of Wednesday’s public hearing briefly to tell reporters that he expects the committee to change the language in House Bill 5055 to include any person who falsifies information on a police report, rather than specifying only police officers.
The bill – which was proposed by the Lamont administration following the State Police ticketing scandal last year – would make it a Class D felony when a police officer “intentionally makes a false written statement or enters false information or data in a law enforcement record which such person does not believe to be true and which statement or entry is intended to mislead a public servant in the performance of such public servant’s official function.”
During the news conference, Rep. Greg Howard, a Stonington Republican who is a ranking member on the Public Safety and Security Committee and also is a police detective, decried the language in the bill for failing to mention any of the other civilians who are routinely involved in handling information from traffic stops.
“They [police] tell me they feel like they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t,” Howard said. “They say there’s a legislature in the state of Connecticut that supports criminals, excuses criminals, and continuously attacks law enforcement.”
Howard said that the language in the bill should have applied to all persons who interact with police reports, and shouldn’t single out police officers.
“We can hold police officers to a high standard. I’m right there with you. But why are we narrowing it down to one group of people and then asking them to keep their morale up?” Howard said.
Prompted by Howard’s criticism, Stafstrom said he would try to change the language in the governor’s bill.
“We will amend that bill coming out of this committee to make clear that the issue is not just if a police officer falsifies a record, but certainly if a records clerk does it, or if a civilian employee does it, they should be held to the same accountability and standard,” Stafstrom said.
Howard and other Republicans said that the state is facing a “crisis” regarding recruitment and retention of new police officers. These new bills, Republicans argue, are not helping the situation.
Judiciary Committee co-chair Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, said that police are not being attacked, but are instead being held to a high standard.
“It’s not attacking police to say when you break a law you should pay for that crime,” he said.
Morale, Motivation, And Redefining Secondary Traffic Stops
The committee also heard testimony on House Bill 5324, which Republicans say will prevent police officers from doing an aspect of their job.
The bill would prohibit police from referencing any of several secondary violations as a reason for a traffic stop, such as a broken tail light, missing mirrors, unlit license plates, or a dark window tint, among other things.
Winfield told reporters that he won’t reject the bill outright.
“I think this is how we should move forward,” he said. “There is a conversation that I’m willing to have about some aspects of it, sure. But to stop the bill, that isn’t an intention of mine.”
But Republicans have a different perception of the efficacy of those traffic stops. They said the bill will make residents less safe.
Rep. Paul Cicarella, R-North Haven, said secondary traffic stops for minor violations are used by police to monitor and investigate more serious crimes.
“They need to stop vehicles. That’s one of the main ways of getting drugs or guns off the street,” Cicarella said.
Stafstrom said the Judiciary Committee, through the bill, is hoping to refocus police officers on more serious traffic violations.
“We don’t want officers focused on whether or not someone’s window tint is too dark, or whether someone has a headlight that might have burnt out and is on the way to the dealership to get it fixed,” he said.
Stafstrom added that he found it curious that Republicans were focusing on legislation that, to his mind, would make the state safer. Secondary stops, he said, take time away from officers’ pursuit of more serious violations.
“That officer is off the street for a period of time while they investigate that, and a period of time in which they’re not pulling over a speeding car or someone or blowing through a stop sign or passing a parked school bus,” Stafstrom said.
Republicans disagreed about the state of safety on Connecticut’s highways, and Howard cited the reported 360 highway incident deaths in 2022, and the 322 in 2023.
“We’ve been saying since 2021 that a reduction in enforcement is going to lead to catastrophic events and a crisis on our roads and now we are here,” he said.
Howard said that before 2020, State Police were doing “north of 200,000 stops a year,” but that dropped to about 100,000 in 2023 and then 75,000 in 2022. He added that departments in the state had lost a lot of officers in the past couple years. Recent news reports put the number of active state troopers in Connecticut at 931, whereas the recommended state minimum is 1,248 – putting the CSP 317 troopers short of their recommended ranks.
It’s worth noting that state law prohibits the use of quotas for traffic stops. Howard said officers are human, and based on the lack of a required quota, they need motivation to be effective.
Stafstrom acknowledged that part of the idea behind redefining secondary traffic stops is the personnel shortage that is affecting police departments throughout the country.
“It’s no secret we have an officer shortage, not just here in Connecticut, but across the nation,” he said.
Winfield said that part of that shortage is related to the current perception of police departments, and added that the state is working to raise the standard for those positions.
Stafstrom said 10 officers were decertified last year for different acts of misconduct, and 30 more decertification cases are currently pending.
Howard pointed out earlier that at one time hundreds of applications would come in for one police officer job. Today, he said, that number is reversed and the pool of job candidates is far less diverse. The problem, according to Howard and other Republicans, is that officers don’t feel appreciated or supported.
“So you look at that and say, okay, not only do we not have enough officers, but we’re taking anybody who’s coming forward that can pass the test. What kind of effect is that going to have?” Howard said, adding that Washington, D.C. policy makers have come full circle.
“They’ve passed a bunch of anti-police stuff, and what are they doing now? They’re going to Newton’s Third Law, equal and opposite reactions,” Howard said. “They’re going the exact opposite way. They’re going, in my opinion, over the top to try to correct this issue. And we’re going to keep going back and forth until somebody stands up and says enough is enough, and we need to get common sense about this, stay in the middle and make this assertion. We can have a law enforcement [force], a police force in the United States of America that is transparent and accountable when they are wrong and empowered and supported when they are right.”
