3 September—You may have been issued a traffic ticket by a state trooper and may not even know about it. The good news is, you won’t have to pay a fine because, according to the Connecticut State Police commander, no drivers were actually issued fake tickets; troopers only entered phony ticket data in the computers.

The bad news? Everything else, more shame on the Connecticut State Police.

The latest public scandal centering around phantom traffic tickets is from the Troop E barracks in Montville in the aptly named Quiet Corner, involving four troopers who got away with it. As usual. Evidently starting in 2016 and going through 2018, Timothy Bentley, Noah Gouveia, Kevin Moore, and Daniel Richter created several hundred—the actual number is impossible to pin down—totally fake tickets to make it look like they were more productive than they actually were.

Why? Well you may ask. Not because of the notorious monthly quotas, which are said to be illegal in Connecticut. Rather, increased productivity earned the buggers brownie points, which got them benefits like positive evaluations, “special work vehicles,” better assignments, promotions, and pay raises. So who needs quotas?

You’d figure increased productivity in traffic citations would have involved generating revenue for the state, one of the more important functions and responsibilities of the state police. So what the hell was going on with those ghost stops? Why did it take so long for the scam to be discovered?

The special work vehicles awarded to two of the culpable troopers, by the way, were unmarked Dodge Chargers—the same model car Sgt. Catherine Koeppel was driving when she hit and ran in July. (And who knows what’s going on with that probable whitewash?)

According to people who know what they’re talking about, the four state cops should have faced criminal charges for committing felonies, as has happened in the past—even in Connecticut. Any surprise that the Chief State’s Attorney’s office can’t find any record of receiving a referral from the state police? So two of the guilty cops avoided punishment, retired, and are now receiving $70,000 pensions; and the other two were suspended, one for two days, the other for 10 days, and transferred to new units.

One of the suspended and transferred troopers was later arrested on workers’ compensation fraud charges for running his moonlight business while out of his police job on disability. While his case is pending, that crook remains on the job, being paid over $110,000. And you just know he’ll walk away with perhaps a misdemeanor conviction, his full pension, and no time up the river.

Remember when cops were the good guys?