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Police violence and racism must not be protected – not by practice, not by law, and not by contract provisions bargained away by government negotiators who are supposed to represent the public.

After more than one year of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, the ACLU of Connecticut released a statewide study of police union contracts. “Bargained Away: How Local and State Governments in Connecticut Have Bargained Away Police Accountability,” focuses on the role that provisions in municipal and state police contracts play in shielding police employees from meaningful discipline when they harm people, lock towns into guaranteed year-over-year investments in policing, prevent transparency and accountability for police overall, and at times conflict with state laws. The report also includes recommended actions for municipal and state-level policymakers.

Below, you'll find a copy of that report. You'll also find all of the police contracts (also known as police collective bargaining agreements) that the ACLU of Connecticut was able to gather after multiple Freedom of Information requests to 102 police agencies in the state, including municipal, state-level, and special agency police.

To help navigate those contracts, you'll also find a chart outlining the status of the contracts. Some of the contracts below, for instance, are expired, which could indicate either that the police agency did not respond to FOI requests or that the agency was still negotiating at the time of our request. According to the most recent contracts that we were able to gather, at least 21 localities have police contracts set to expire in June 2020.

Date

Friday, June 26, 2020 - 12:30pm

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In public opinion polling conducted for the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut’s campaign for Smart Justice, Connecticut voters showed strong support for criminal justice reform across the ideological and political spectrum. 

The research, conducted by Benenson Strategy Group between September 5 and September 10, included 507 telephone interviews with registered Connecticut voters across the state who indicated they were likely to vote in the 2018 gubernatorial election. Thirty-five percent of participants identified as conservative, 34 percent as liberal, and 29 percent as moderate. Respondents were asked about their views on the size of Connecticut’s prison system, the purpose of the criminal justice system, treatment of people returning to society after incarceration, how to respond to drug addiction within the context of the criminal justice system, the existing Earned Risk Reduction Credit program, and what types of policy positions voters seek from their elected officials. 

Date

Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - 10:00am

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ACLU of Connecticut / ACLU-CT Smart Justice outline of state of Connecticut and "People. Not Prisons."

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Police agencies in Connecticut routinely make it difficult for members of the public to file complaints of police misconduct, according to this 2017 report by the ACLU of Connecticut, a follow-up to our 2012 report on the same topic.

Drawn from online research and telephone surveys, “Earning Trust: Addressing Police Misconduct Complaints in Connecticut,” shows that many police agencies in the state fail to clearly post their complaint policies and forms online, refuse to accept anonymous complaints, and include threats of prosecution in their complaint intake protocols. In some cases, these obstacles violate state law and statewide police policy. Together, these barriers to transparency can undermine public trust in law enforcement.

To see how your police department performed in the ACLU-CT's survey, download our executive summary, full report, or the table of survey responses below.

Date

Thursday, January 26, 2017 - 12:00am

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Policing Open Government

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