Top State Police Officer, Who Oversaw Sandy Hook Investigation, Resigns

State Police Col. Danny Stebbins, who oversaw the department’s investigation into the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, has told his top officers that he will be retiring at the end of June.

Stebbins has been the top state police officer since Gov. Dannel P. Malloy appointed him in January 2010, but he has come under criticism from the union for pushing for the consolidation of dispatch services. He also drew the ire of many legislators when, at a conference in New Orleans, he revealed some details of the Sandy Hook shootings that the victims’ families had not yet been told.

But while the agency’s investigation into the Newtown shooting, in which Adam Lanza killed 26 people, including 20 first-graders, dominated Stebbins’ tenure, the consolidation issue caused him bigger problems.

The plan called for reducing the number of dispatch centers from 11 to five and creating regional centers instead of having dispatchers in every troop. The plan also originally called for some rural barracks to be unstaffed during off-peak hours.

The plan, which has taken effect, is intended to save money, but overtime costs and concerns that some rural areas of the state would be left without proper coverage dogged the plan from the beginning.

In June 2012, the state police union took the drastic step of issuing a vote of vote of no confidence in Stebbins and in Reuben Bradford, then the commissioner of the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, who was appointed at the same time as Stebbins.

The union vote was near unanimous as 760 (out of 794 ballots cast) sworn troopers and sergeants registered no-confidence in Stebbins. Besides the dispatch issue, the union also criticized the consolidation of Troop H in Hartford with Troop W at Bradley International Airport and attempts to circumvent a state law requiring a minimum of 1,248 state troopers.

Bradford resigned in December of 2013 and was replaced by Dora B. Schriro, who is the first woman commissioner for the state police.

Reacting to Stebbins’ decision to retire, Union President Andy Matthews said on Thursday, “We wish him well in his future endeavors and we look forward to working with Commissioner Schriro and whoever she selects as the next Colonel with the common ground of improving public safety as well as the safety of our troopers.”

One of Schriro’s first acts was to order an investigation into the regional dispatch system and whether it works and is cost-effective. Amid that review, Schriro already has tweaked the system, ordering that all 11 barracks be staffed around the clock with at least one trooper.

Schriro also started a pilot program in which non-emergency calls coming into regional centers inSouthbury and Danielson would be rerouted to the individual barracks automatically. All 911 calls will still be handled out of the regional centers.

The dispatch dispute quieted down following the massacre at Sandy Hook, in which the state police were named the lead investigative agency. The department spent more than a year investigating the shooting and Lanza before releasing its report in late December 2013.

Stebbins drew criticism after he attended a police chiefs conference in New Orleans last March. During a presentation at the conference, Stebbins revealed details about Lanza that had not been made public, including that Lanza had kept a 7-foot by 4-foot spreadsheet of mass murders with details such as the number of people killed and the guns used by each killer.

One of the police chiefs leaked those details to the New York Daily News, setting off a firestorm of criticism against Stebbins from state lawmakers, who were upset that state police had shared little about their investigation with them, and from Malloy, who was angry that Stebbins had revealed details of the murderer that the victims’ families had not been told.

Malloy ordered state officials to release more information about the investigation after Stebbins appearance in New Orleans. Eventually, the governor’s office asked state police to stop attending conferences and talking about the Sandy Hook shooting while the report was still not done.