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Politics & Government

Layoff Notices Sent to 57 State Troopers; Norwalk Prosecutor's Staff Gets Four Layoffs [Update]

A state police spokesman said no cuts in that agency's programs were expected as the result of the cuts, which fell on recent state police academy graduates.

Editor's note: This article has been significantly updated throughout.

The newly hired are the newly fired.

The 57 state troopers who received pink slips yesterday all come from the 121st Training Troop, the state’s newest recruiting class. They graduated from the State Police Academy in Meriden last November. The troopers will be laid off on Aug. 24 if the unions can’t strike a new deal.

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(In a somewhat related development amid the statewide layoff notices, two prosecutors and two clerical positions in state are among those "on the list of layoffs submitted to the governor" by the Office of the Chief State's Attorney, said Mark Dupuis, a spokesman for the office.)

“We were taken aback,” said Andrew Matthews, president of the Connecticut State Police Union. “We’re already 121 troopers short. If they lay these people off we’ll be 213 troopers short.”

Find out what's happening in Norwalkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

According to Connecticut General Statute 29-4 there should be 1248 sworn state police officers. This mandate hasn’t been met since February 2008.

However, when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy ran for office he said he wouldn’t put a price tag on safety, Matthews said. And so the state police union endorsed Malloy, partly on the promise of being able to induct a class of 80 recruits this fall.

The state was under the mandate even before Malloy was elected, said Juliette Manalan, press secretary for Malloy.

Still, Matthews said, the union has a great deal of respect for Malloy and recognizes the fiscal crisis at hand.

Malloy said 6,500 state employees would be laid off across the state since the unions nixed a deal in June that would have slashed $1.6 billion from the state budget.

“You don’t want to be a leader in government or in a union right now,” Matthews said. “I don’t think his intention is to compromise safety, but something will be compromised. You have less troopers doing less protection.”

Manalan said the governor is relying on the expertise of commissioners to move troopers around.

“There is no relationship between the number of troopers and safety,” she said. “The governor would never compromise the safety of the residents.”

Moreover, "this is not where the Governor wanted to be – he worked hard to negotiate an agreement with SEBAC leadership so he could avoid layoffs and cuts to state services," Manalan said.

There are 12 barracks in the state and the officers are the primary law enforcement provider in 82 of 169 Connecticut towns. 

State police supervisors will transfer personnel from other areas to ensure that programs are fully covered, including the resident state trooper program, said Lt. J. Paul Vance, spokesman for the state police. Small and large towns benefit from state police programs, including the Major Crime Squad, which assists local departments on serious crimes. State police troopers also patrol state highways in towns.

But now, with only 1,070 officers to the job—down from 1,283 in 2009—officers will be stretched thin, Matthews said.

“We will be stripped of specialized units as officers are put back on patrol. People will still see officers in uniform, but it’s the things the public doesn’t see everyday that will be diminished,” Matthews said.

Units such as sex offenders, forensics, organized crime, firearms, will all be pared down.

It’s an unsettling at best, said House Minority Leader Larry Cafero, a Republican representing Norwalk in the 142nd House District.

“I’m surprised,” Cafero said. “We depend on these men and these women for our safety.

Vance wouldn’t comment on whether the state police were surprised to be among the very first to be put on notice.

“We simply made arrangements to notify these people yesterday,” Vance said. “We will fill those voids and transfer people as needed to continue to deliver policing to the people of Connecticut.”

Cafero also said he is dismayed the General Assembly voted to allow Malloy to decide where the cuts will be made.

“What really saddened me is that the legislature turned over all these [layoff] decisions to the governor,” Cafero said. “When it’s done by commissioners it’s different. They are nameless and faceless. Not everyone knows who their state representative is, but at least they are accountable.”

In a joint press release issued Thursday, Malloy and Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman said they had hoped to avoid layoffs when they negotiated an agreement months earlier with the state employee union leaders.

“But at this point, with no clear path to reach a ratified agreement with SEBAC, it’s our job to find a way to fill the $1.6 billion hole in the budget and ensure our budget is balanced honestly,” they said in the statement. “Tomorrow we’ll send our full plan to the legislature, including these layoff numbers and additional service and programmatic cuts totaling $1.6 billion.  And then we’ll work as hard as we can to mitigate the impact these layoffs and cuts will have on the people of Connecticut.”

The governor’s office also released a breakdown, by state department, of the 6,500 layoffs that are being made to balance the budget. A PDF of that breakdown, as well as one detailing the layoffs in the state police forces, is attached to this article.

David Gurliacci contributed to this article.

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