By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor

The litigation that pushed for intellectually disabled students to spend more time with their non-disabled peers in schools statewide is over.
The plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit known as the “P.J. case” have decided against taking their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, said attorney David Shaw of Bloomfield, who represented “P.J.,” or Patrick Jordan of West Hartford, and the other plaintiffs.
“A lot of it is due to the expense,” Shaw said. “It is expensive for parents to try to fight a case like this.”
The P.J. plaintiffs had claimed the state wasn’t doing enough to meet the five goals for intellectually disabled students that both sides agreed upon when the parties reached a settlement, which was approved in 2002.
In December 2013, the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the decision of U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny.
The only remaining legal remedy for the plaintiffs would have been to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Read the full story here.  

Check out our special education blog here, and our Facebook page here.

Driving while texting (photo illustration). Catherine Avalone — The Middletown Press


By Viktoria Sundqvist
Middletown Press
More than 32,000 tickets for driving while using a cellphone were issued across Connecticut in 2013, generating more than $2 million in revenue for the state. The violation represented about 8 percent of the 414,837 total traffic tickets written last year.
Connecticut has about 2.5 million active driver’s licenses, so cellphone infractions were issued on average to about 1 in 77 drivers in 2013.
An analysis of the 16,000 tickets issued by local police departments (the rest were issued by state police or departments that did not provide information), using data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, shows that enforcement can differ wildly from town to town, and time of year. Men are ticketed slightly more than women, and the racial breakdown of tickets closely matches Connecticut’s statewide Census demographics, with 84.6 percent going to white drivers compared to a state population that is 84 percent white.
The majority of distracted driving tickets were issued in spring and summer, according to the data collected from each individual department.

Read the full story here. 

This is Trent, a purebred Labrador, a narcotics detection K-9, a first for the Orange Police Department. He was trained to detect numerous illegal drugs including marijuana, heroin, ecstasy, opiates, and more. Trent was purchased through Guiding Eyes in New York through a Connecticut State Police Program that takes dogs not suited for guide work and sends them to police departments as bomb, arson and narcotic dogs. Trent was funded through asset forfeiture monies the Orange police department received through past narcotic investigations. / Contributed photo

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo

Investigations Editor
Bristol police Officers Eric Wethered and Jason Kasparian took aim at a threatening male suspect on a screen in the Police Department’s new shooting decision simulator, and shouted at him to drop his weapon.
They decided to shoot when the suspect went for a weapon — and when the simulation was over, a training officer, Eric Ouellette, evaluated how they did.
The simulator is designed to help police prepare for potential deadly force situations, and it is just one of many purchases that police around the state made after getting funds through federal and state criminal asset forfeiture programs.
Police agencies reported using the funds for a variety of purchases, including police dogs, pistols, computer equipment and shooting simulators.

Read the full story here.

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
and Viktoria Sundqvist

Seven out of the eight Connecticut police departments that received poor grades on a recent public information compliance test have improved their access to arrest information, a follow-up check shows. The exception was Hamden.
The New Haven Register, The Middletown Press and The Register Citizen in March tested all of the 92 municipal police departments and 11 state police troops for compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.

Read more here. 

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor

NEW HAVEN >> The city Police Department is now making an arrest log available to the public at headquarters.
The move comes in response to a Freedom of Information Act compliance check of all police departments   around the state conducted by staff at the New Haven Register, The Middletown Press and The Register Citizen.
The newspapers gave the New Haven department an “F” after it failed to provide an arrest log when a reporter visited.

Read the full story here.

Ed Avery at the bus stop on Temple Street. He takes the bus to work at Walmart. Melanie Stengel — New Haven Register

By Charlotte Adinolfi
Register Staff
NEW HAVEN >> The last DUI charge Ed Avery received, he was riding on a scooter.
“I didn’t have a license, but I thought I could drive a scooter,” Avery said. “Since I didn’t have a license, I got a ticket.”
Avery, 58, and now living at the Roger Sherman House, a transitional halfway house for men discharged from the correctional system in New Haven, had lost his license after a charge of driving under the influence in 2004.
He received his fifth and last DUI charge in August 2010.
That September, Avery was sentenced to jail for four years.

Read more here. 

From left, Michelene Longo, correctional substance abuse counselor; Parole Officer Trudy Beaulieu; secretary Suzanne Kiniry; Parole Officer Dawn Rizzuto; Parole Officer Alan Piascik; Parole Manager Jennifer Bennett; Parole Officer Dave Skarzynski; Parole Officer Lushonda Howard; and Parole Officer Art Reardon of the Department of Correction’s DUI Unit are photographed at the Maloney Center for Training and Staff Development in Cheshire. Arnold Gold — New Haven Register

By Charlotte Adinolfi
Register Staff
All it took was a quick ride down the dirt road near his house.
Kenneth, 48, of New Hartford, had been having a few drinks while he was working on his children’s quad before he decided to take the quad for a ride.
Somewhere along that road was a cop.
The officer pulled over Kenneth and arrested him on drunken driving charges.
Kenneth said if he had reached the 10-year mark and had not received any other offenses, his previous two DUI charges would not have been counted against him when he received that third offense.
“Unfortunately, I had gotten two prior to the 10-year mark,” Kenneth said. “I was six months away from it, not even. They took everything and ran it all together.”
Kenneth was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

Read the full story here.

(Arnold Gold/ New Haven Register) A sign alerts motorists to a sobriety check point at the entrance to I-95 off of Willow St. in New Haven on 12/20/2013.

By Luther Turmelle
HARTFORD >> When lawmakers return to the State Capitol in February for the 2014 General Assembly session, the Connecticut chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving is determined to close what its leadership sees as a loophole in the state’s drunken driving laws.
Emboldened by a 2012 change in the laws that expanded the use of ignition interlock devices to prevent repeat drunken driving offenders from getting behind the wheel if they are inebriated, the organization wants to extend the use of the equipment further. MADD wants Connecticut lawmakers to require usage of the devices for anyone who is arrested for the first time on drunken driving charges.

Read the full story here.

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
Most Connecticut hospitals aren’t consistently meeting the state required 48-hour deadline to get newborns’ blood samples to a laboratory for genetic testing, recently released data shows.
In 2012 in Connecticut, the average time was three days, with 7.6 percent of samples taking five days or longer to reach the lab.
State law requires that newborns delivered in Connecticut be screened for several disorders, with the goal of providing prompt medical treatment when problems are found.
William Gerrish, spokesman for the state Department of Public Health, said Tuesday, “We agree that accurate and early testing is a critical part of the system to save babies’ lives, and feel that Connecticut hospitals’ overall reporting performance has room for improvement.”

Read more and follow links to national coverage of this topic by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel here. 

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
HARTFORD >> State lawmakers in the coming months will be meeting with educators and parents to develop a list of legislative proposals on special education.
Lawmakers are forming a new working group on special education under the Municipal Opportunities & Regional Efficiencies Commission, or M.O.R.E., which focuses on making improvements and finding cost savings.
Deputy Majority Leader Michelle Cook, D-Torrington, will be a co-chairperson of the new working group.
“The speaker of the house put together the M.O.R.E. Commission to make the state more efficient and lessen the burden on taxpayers,” Cook said. “As we have sat with municipal and education leaders, we hear how special education is costly. We have never looked at special education as a whole, and it is a huge component of our education budget.”

Read the full story here.

(Mara Lavitt — New Haven Register) Nicholas Glomb of Vernon, with his father Walter, works, has friends, and has plans for his own business. His success in part is due to general education classes both in public school and at Manchester Community College.        

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
For some families, their disabled children have excelled when they have spent as much time as possible with their non-disabled classmates.
But others say an outside placement — at a separate school specifically for disabled students, is what ultimately worked for their child.  
Lisa Weisinger-Roland moved to Connecticut and specifically to West Hartford because she wanted her son, Jamie Roland, who has Down syndrome, to be educated with his non-disabled peers as much as possible.
The family moved here from Florida about four years ago, and Jamie Roland is now a senior in high school.
According to his mother, while the family lived in Florida, they decided to home-school Jamie because school officials wanted to put him in a self-contained classroom where he would have little exposure to his peers.

Read more here.

By Catherine Boudreau
Special to the New Haven Register
It was not until Alicia Gerbert’s son, Domenick, attended middle school in Stamford that she discovered he was reading at a second-grade level. Even though he had been identified with a severe learning disability years earlier, Domenick made little progress in public school.
Gerbert and her husband sought help from a special education advocate. After discussing his records and test scores, they all agreed Domenick wasn’t improving, and would not unless something changed immediately.
The Gerberts then went to a psychologist to perform further evaluations. The results were heartbreaking, Gerbert recalled, because she thought the school had been doing the right thing all along. And when Domenick’s fifth-grade special education teacher told Gerbert he would not do any better, she knew it was time to seek other options.

Read more here.

By Pamela McLoughlin
Register Staff
I have a 16-year-old son with an intellectual disability who has been in the special education system for 13 years, and I cursed Connecticut’s handling of the P.J. settlement daily throughout his time in elementary school.
Yes, the settlement has done wonders for countless children who, through inclusion in a typical classroom, have had the priceless benefit of interacting and learning alongside children who provide what no book or teacher’s lesson ever could — modeling of appropriate behavior, social interaction and a higher bar for academic achievement.
But the state Department of Education has gone too far in eliminating self-contained classrooms following the P.J. settlement agreement. Just as children were wrongly warehoused into contained classrooms before the P.J. settlement, children such as my son, Will, who can’t survive in a classroom with typical peers, are being warehoused to substandard special education schools.

Read more here.

The New Haven Register has launched a new blog devoted to special education issues. Check it out here.

We also have a new Facebook page on the topic, which readers can find here.

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
While a judge concluded the state has substantially complied with a landmark agreement that called for students with intellectual disabilities to spend more time with their non-disabled peers, those who originally filed the lawsuit are appealing to a higher court, claiming the state is backsliding and more needs to be done.
Decades ago, intellectually disabled students were typically taught in separate classrooms, with little interaction with non-disabled students.
That changed with the class-action lawsuit known as the “P.J. case.”
Attorney David Shaw of Bloomfield, who represented “P.J.” — Patrick Jordan of West Hartford — and the other plaintiffs, said many of these students are doing well today, learning to read and thriving.
According to Shaw, the P.J. case made positive changes — by changing attitudes and resulting in better education for intellectually disabled students.
“But some schools still have the same idea that they should be in a separate class,” Shaw said. “Children are frequently unnecessarily segregated.”
“I think it is an embarrassment to the state to make so much progress and then go backwards. Did they really mean to change?”

Read the full story here.

By Regina Galluzzo
Special to the New Haven Register

On the sidewalk-lined streets of West Hartford, 6-year-old Patrick Jordan waited alongside his brother, sister and other neighborhood children at the bus stop.
These same kids who were in his classes also participated in Boy Scouts and religion classes with Patrick. They were his friends.
But without the determination of his parents, he would have been picked up separately, by a different-looking bus and taken to a school much farther away.
The year was 1991.

Read more here.

Close-up of a gun

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
Michael Polito of New Fairfield recently stood before the state Board of Firearms Permit Examiners, trying to get a pistol permit, which had been denied at the local level.
“My wife and I want to have a hobby and go shooting, we have friends who go shooting,” Polito told the board members.

Read more here.

Gabriel Arvelo, vice president, Fuller Installations of North Haven adjusts pump at Forbes Premium Fuel in New Haven September 18, 2012. / Vern Williams photo

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo

Investigations Editor

Gabriel Arvelo, vice president, Fuller Installations of North Haven adjusts pump at Forbes Premium Fuel in New Haven September 18,2012. vmWilliams

A check of gasoline inspection stickers in Connecticut, which show the last time pumps were checked for accuracy, revealed numerous cases of missing and illegible stickers, even stickers showing a last inspection dating back to 2006.
Pumps are supposed to be checked for accuracy within two years, according to state law, to ensure that when a consumer pays for a gallon of gasoline, they get a gallon.
In recent weeks, Journal Register Co. staff drove to 83 Connecticut gas stations to check the inspection stickers.
Inspectors are supposed to affix a sticker with the month and year of the last inspection to each pump. Of the stickers we checked, 25 stations had stickers on some pumps showing inspections done more than two years ago. We found 12 stations which had pumps with missing stickers or stickers that weren’t legible.

Read more here.

One pump at Forbes Premium Fuel on Forbes Avenue in New Haven was dispensing minus five cubic inches in a five gallon draw, an inspection showed. To be exact, the fuel level in the calibrated cylinder pictured above should be at the zero mark. This pump, which performed the worst at Forbes, was still within an acceptable range, as up to minus 6 cubic inches is allowed.  Regardless, the business called in Fuller Installations of North Haven to fix the pump. / Photo by Michelle Tuccitto Sullo    

On Sept. 19, red tags were on several pumps at the Hamden Hess, 1126 Dixwell Ave., in Hamden. The pumps were tagged, or pulled off-sale so customers couldn't use them, after an inspection by the Department of Consumer Protection showed they weren't dispensing enough fuel.

Sims Metal Management in North Haven. Mara Lavitt/New Haven Register

Sims Metal Management in North Haven "is not your grandfather's scrapyard." The ferrous metal yard. Mara Lavitt/New Haven Register 4/18/12

By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo
Investigations Editor
On an afternoon in March, two New Haven Register reporters drove a Ford Freestyle SUV carrying a newspaper honor box into the lot of a Derby scrap metal business, M. Jacobs & Sons on Factory Street.
We wanted to see if the staff would ask for identification, or ask if we had permission to sell the large, metal, coin-operated Register honor box. The boxes are on streets and in plazas across the region and have been targeted by thieves and sold for scrap metal.

Read more here.