Unionized captains and lieutenants in the Connecticut State Police have unanimously voted "no confidence" in the commissioner who leads their department.
This is the first time state police commanders have held such a vote, according to the union.
Commissioner James Rovella is accused by the union of failing to speak up against what they say are misrepresentations in an audit of the state police that found thousands of fake traffic stops by troopers might have skewed racial profiling data.
“I take this very seriously. And that is by far an understatement. We’ll isolate those who falsified the records. We’ll also tell those who didn’t that they are doing a good job,” Rovella said in defending his actions to lawmakers during an informational hearing on the fake traffic stop scandal on Wednesday.
That's not enough support from Rovella, said Andrew Matthews, the state police union’s general counsel and a former trooper.
“This is not about fake tickets like the commissioner said. This is about fake statistics,” Matthews told lawmakers.
However, he thanked Rovella’s boss Gov. Ned Lamont for handling the matter better.
“His public comments about this issue have been to ask everyone to reserve judgment until all the facts are known,” he said.
“Commissioner Rovella is the guy to get to the bottom of this,” Lamont said on Thursday.
“Lets not jump to any conclusions about what happened to these tickets. But let's get to the bottom of it and leave no stone unturned, total transparency. That’s what James Rovella will do,” Lamont said in support of his embattled commissioner.
In the meantime, Lamont has hired a former U.S. attorney for Connecticut to conduct an independent review. And federal authorities have started their own investigation of the scandal.
