Whistleblower Trooper Sues State for Retaliation

0:00It's May 1st. From your city to your ears, this is Hartford News Today, powered by AI. A retired Connecticut State trooper, master sergeant Dominic Guggen, just filed a lawsuit claiming state police brass pushed him into early retirement, as payback for blowing the whistle on misconduct. He says he reported issues like shady overtime payments, but instead of digging in, the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection targeted him. Over his final six years on the force, Guggen raised red flags multiple times, including an anonymous tip on August 12, 2024. That one zeroed in on Sergeant Robert Hazen, accusing him of padding overtime hours from August to September 2023, while serving as Chief of Staff, thanks to Lacks Oversight. Officials allegedly sniffed him out as the source, grilled him to confess and flipped the script with their own investigation. It stemmed from a June 5, 2023 complaint by a female trooper over a supposed WhatsApp

1:01message, but Guggen calls it a sham pretext. The suit blasts them for skipping real forensics. No device checks, no metadata review, nothing to verify the message. They also stonewalled his records request on overtime waste, and even withheld his retirement badge and papers. Now he's chasing back pay, lost benefits, emotional distress damages, and punitive hits, with the state named as Defendant. This saga spotlights how whistleblowers in blue might face the heat instead of the bad apples.