Lawmakers cite need for more police accountability
‘The conversation needs to go on,’ state senator says after Hearst CT investigation
Following a Hearst Connecticut Media investigation into troublesome officers moving freely among departments, state lawmakers say they will consider another fix if a new police accountability law does not stem the problem.
“I think the conversation needs to go on,” said state Sen. Will Haskell, D-Westport and a member of the judiciary committee, referring to the 2020 Police Accountability Act which established new hiring rules. “We are fooling ourselves to the extent that one bill solves all of our problems and I look forward to hearing more about it.”
Under reforms passed last year, an officer who resigns or retires during an internal investigation for “malfeasance or serious misconduct” — or is fired for that conduct — cannot be hired by another department unless the officer was later exonerated of the conduct.
But a recent Hearst Connecticut Media investigation found gray areas in Connecticut’s hiring rules and procedures that allowed at least
two Connecticut officers to land new jobs at local police departments despite problematic pasts.
Fairfield police earlier this year hired former Shelton officer Dan Loris after he was fired in 2020 by the Shelton Police Department for ethics and sexual harassment violations and misconduct while on duty.
The Plainville Police Department last year hired Justin Cullen, a former Manchester officer who resigned during an internal investigation into alleged off-duty sexual misconduct. The Plainville job was blocked when the state Police Officer Standards and Training [POST] Council declined to certify Cullen, essentially denying him a license to work in law enforcement.
Ridgefield Police Lt. Craig Worster in 2015 resigned his Connecticut job while under investigation for sexual harassment. Four years later, Worster was hired as police chief in Millinocket, Maine and soon faced an 85-page sexual harassment complaint from the department’s female deputy chief. He was fired in December 2020.
Although Connecticut law has no authority in another state, Worster’s saga is illustrative of what can happen when troubled officers move from department to department. His tenure triggered considerable discussion in Maine about transparency of police disciplinary records and prompted calls to reform the state’s hiring process.
Other cases of officers getting new law enforcement jobs despite troubled pasts have been documented around the country, including in Florida, New York, Ohio and Maine.
Bree Spencer, policing program manager for the national Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said a federally mandated national database of police misconduct is needed to help departments — and the public — ferret out problematic officers.
She said national standards should also be established for what happens after an officer is found to have committed a serious offense, pointing out that hiring practices and officer punishment varies significantly from state to state.
“I think the answer to police misconduct lie in examples we see in other professions; in the medical profession, the practice of law and the military,” Spencer said. “We see a clear infrastructure in place for people who lose their license, that they can disbarred or can’t serve.”
Lawmakers watching
State Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport and co-chairman of the judiciary committee, said portions of the Accountability Act were intended to prevent officers who get in serious trouble at one department from getting a job at another department.
“When we did the accountability legislation, one of the main provisions was to expand the role of the POST Council to decertify any sort of conduct unbecoming of law enforcement,” Stafstrom said. “How effective that is … is still being determined.”
Stafstrom said he will be watching to see how the legislative fix is implemented.
“There have not been a lot of cases to decertify yet, but I have full confidence in the makeup of the POST Council and that they will thoroughly and independently consider decertifications that are brought before them,” Stafstrom said.
In Connecticut and many other states, resigning during an IA investigation ends the process and results in no conclusion or discipline. Experts say that makes it easier for an officer to land another job, especially if the new department does not seek sufficient personnel records.
The Accountability Act requires Connecticut departments to report an officer who resigns or is fired over serious misconduct to the POST Council. The council can consider whether to decertify that officer.
Haskell said wandering officers have long been a problem.
“There is a long history in Connecticut of problem officers finding a job elsewhere,” Haskell said. “[The bill] is meant to ensure they don’t go on to another department. It’s a commonsense thing.”
But Haskell said the new law may prove to just be a first step.
“No one at the table thought it would solve all of our problems,” Haskell said. “I’m quite sure the conversation
needs to continue on how we build a justice system that is reflective of the values we all share.”
“Defies common sense”
Karl Bickel, a former criminal justice professor and policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Justice, said officers who resign during an Internal Affairs investigation should be subjected to a disciplinary hearing anyway — even if they refuse to participate.
“At the hearing, the officer should be afforded all of the rights and privileges they would receive were they still employed as a law enforcement officer,” Bickel wrote in a recent op-ed piece on police misconduct.
“If the officer chooses not to participate, the hearing should be held without them, with the disposition forwarded for action,” he noted.
Bickel also pointed out that the idea of a national database for police misconduct has been talked about for decades.
“It is inexcusable that it has not been embraced by law enforcement leaders, adequately funded and put to use protecting police departments and the communities they serve from rogue cops,” Bickel wrote.
When he was at the federal justice department, Bickel said he helped form the National Decertification Index, a listing of officers who have been decertified. That database has been criticized for being incomplete and omitting misconduct not serious enough to draw decertification.
“It’s not perfect,” Bickel said of the index.
“Five states do not even have a decertification process,” he pointed out. “Congress needs to make participation in the NDI mandatory and require all states to have a decertification process, then tie both requirements to federal funding.”
Spencer from the Leadership Conference said a national discussion over how to handle police misconduct is long overdue.
“We need to have a national conversation and examine our policies,” Spencer said. “It’s not Ok that officers who commit acts of violence [or other misconduct] can leave one department and go to another. It defies logic and common sense. We tend to talk about the most serious cases. But it can be [police] who lie, it can be theft; all kinds of misconduct.”
The Leadership Conference is creating its own database to document excessive use of force by officers. Called Accountable Now, the interactive tool offers information from 14 cities across the country.
But Spencer said the effort is hampered by wide variances in how police departments report data, the types of misconduct they report and their willingness to give out information.
“A huge piece of this is developing a national way of police reporting this information,” Spencer said. “We are missing key data that the public has a right to know. People are experiencing that use of force impacts their lives. There needs to be a federally mandated database.”