Study finds Connecticut best state to be a police officer – Hartford Courant

Connecticut is the top state in the nation to be a police officer, according to a study by a group of academic experts for the website WalletHub.

One longtime police union leader, however, called the findings “meaningless.”

The financial information site compared the 50 states and District of Columbia “across 30 key indicators of police friendliness,” including income and benefits, training, police deaths per 1,000 officers and crime rates, according to a description of the survey (wallethub.com/edu/best-states-to-be-a-cop/34669).

The findings meshed with recent requests from Connecticut police chiefs to hire out-of-state officers, Michael Lawlor, a member of the state Police Officers Training and Standards Council, said Monday. At its meeting last week, the panel approved 15 requests to grant “comparative certification,” meaning out-of-state officers that the chiefs wanted to hire met Connecticut’s standards, Lawlor, also a professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven, said.

In his personal, professional opinion, Lawlor said, “What you’re seeing is the good cops want to come to Connecticut.”

But veteran Manchester police officer and union leader Lt. John Rossetti said “data can be skewed any way the collector wants based on categories they chose to track.

“So I think it’s meaningless,” Rossetti said of the WalletHub study. “Policing across the country and in Connecticut is suffering due to the policy makers’ inability to lead and make effective laws and policies current with the systematic problems the country is experiencing, and Connecticut specifically. Look across Connecticut with the towns’ inability to attract and retain quality employees.”

Rossetti and other officers vehemently opposed what is now the state’s police accountability law, which was passed in 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The law mandated that all officers wear body cameras, banned chokeholds in most cases, created a new independent inspector general to investigate officers’ deadly use of force, restricted vehicle searches and expanded municipal civilian review boards statewide, among other provisions.

“The police accountability bill recently passed by the legislature will not only better protect the public’s constitutional rights, but also protects our law enforcement officers with a number of reforms, including improvements to recruitment, training, ongoing mental health screening and continued immunity from personal liability when acting in good faith as part of their job,” House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, said at the time.

Many police officers, however, have said the law will hobble proactive policing and expose officers to financial ruin and hostile scrutiny from clueless review panels. The most controversial provision included changes to what’s known as qualified immunity, making it easier for people to file lawsuits against officers, departments and towns. Supporters of the law have noted that officers would only be held liable for “malicious, wanton or willful” acts, but police say they have no trust in the process and fear baseless complaints will succeed. Union leaders and department command staff have said more colleagues planned to leave the profession because of the law.

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A survey released in June last year by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a national independent research organization, found that law enforcement agencies reported an overall 18% increase in the resignation rate in 2020-21, compared to 2019-20. The reduction in hiring, however, was relatively modest, with a 5% overall decrease in the hiring rate among responding departments. Smaller agencies actually saw an increase in hiring, while larger departments experienced dramatic reductions, PERF reported.

The survey, however, also found a 45% increase in the retirement rate. In smaller departments, a small number of retirements may result in a high percentage increase in the retirement rate, but even in the largest agencies, with 500 or more officers, the retirement rate increased by 27%, according to PERF.

Median pay for a police officer in the U.S. is $66,020 per year, or $31.74 per hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment of police officers and detectives is projected to grow 7% from 2020-30, about as fast as the average for all occupations, according to the agency.

The WalletHub study considered income and benefits along with rates of violent crime and property crime. In 2020, Connecticut’s overall violent crime rate per 100,000 people was 181.6, a decrease from 184.6 in 2019, the FBI reported. Only Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont had lower rates. Nationally, the property crime rate declined 8% to 1,958.2 offenses per 100,000 people. Connecticut’s rate, however, rose from 1,432 in 2019 to 1,565.1, higher than 14 other states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Hampshire and New Jersey.

The study also considered training requirements around de-escalation, mental health, substance abuse and behavioral disorders. Eastern Connecticut State University Police Chief Steven Tavares, a retired Bristol police captain, said WalletHub’s top ranking “indicates the efforts aimed to put the best trained officers into the community to work with the community are paying off.”

“I’m pleased to see this number one ranking and hope this news will draw more people of all backgrounds, but especially Black and brown members of our communities, to consider a career as a law enforcement officer in Connecticut,” Tavares said.

Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jl**********@co*****.com