When state troopers at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) division of the Connecticut State Police saw that Sgt. Robert Hazen was approving his own overtime in 2024, they added a rule in the state police’s Kronos time keeping system to remove his ability to continue doing so, but were quickly overruled by state police leadership, who took over approving Hazen’s overtime, according to emails obtained by Inside Investigator through a Freedom of Information request.
Yankee Institute in October 2025 broke the news that Hazen had been approving his own overtime, which ranged into the six-figures, based on an internal state police complaint outlining a “consistent pattern” of overtime abuse, including taking overtime pay while out on sick leave and on vacation leave, and adding several hours of overtime to his schedule every day.
“Hazen has gone unsupervised and unchecked for more than a year and has become emboldened enough to self-assign and approve nearly $10,000 per month in questionable overtime,” the August 2024 anonymous complaint from a “department member” said. “Had these payments been legitimate due to his position, i.e. responding to emails, phone call etc, the times of the OT would not be so consistent. In addition, his justifications for each is simply (COS) [Chief of Staff] and no case number which is typical to justify overtime.”
The complaint included extensive documentation of times and schedules from the state police Kronos system. From 2023 through 2024, Hazen banked more than $200,000 in overtime, which counts toward a state police trooper’s pension.
When administrators of the Kronos system saw what was occurring, they attempted to curtail it, but were quickly overridden, according to emails between Lt. Adam Rosenberg, commanding officer for the Telestaff-Kronos system with the OSS, and Cecilia Raimundi of the Active & Pension Payroll Services Division of the Office of the State Comptroller.
Throughout the last half of 2025, Raimundi and Rosenberg were working extensively to bring a new $6 million time keeping system online for the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection (DESPP), including adding rules to the system to ensure proper procedure is followed. On December 16, 2025, Raimundi emailed Rosenberg, saying that state auditors were looking into Hazen’s actions and asking how this could have happened.
“I know you mentioned that Hazen added and then approved his own time (lots of examples of this in 2024/2025),” Raimundi wrote. “What authority gives an employee permission to approve their own overtime? The auditor is asking me the following and I honestly don’t know the answer. He was under the impression that employee entry of overtime always required approval by the supervisor. He is asking me what enables this employee (Robert) to approve their own overtime.”
Rosenberg responded that normally approvals are given by the next senior officer – sergeants approve for troopers and detectives, master sergeants approve for sergeants, who are also allowed to approve for other sergeants, and so on. However, he wrote that when his office cut off access for Hazen to approve his own overtime, they were ordered to give Col. Daniel Loughman’s chief of staff at the time, Humberto Henriques, “access to Hazen.”
“So what happened for Hazen was we locked him out when he was approving his own time,” Rosenberg wrote. “Then the Col. ordered us to give his CoS access to hazen (who normally wouldn’t have access to him bc their jobs are not related) and then Henriques (CoS) was blindly approving his OT w/o knowing (or caring I guess) what he was doing. Same applies for Lund and Richter. They were all padding their Overtimes to get their high 3 years for pension.”
The Colonel’s CoS would not normally have access to approve Hazen’s overtime because they are technically in different jobs. The Connecticut State Police Department is divided into three divisions, each overseen by a Lieutenant Colonel: Office of Field Operations, which includes the trooper barracks and major crimes; the OSS, which handles administration; and the Office of Professional Standards and Support Services, which includes Internal Affairs and the training academy.
The Lt. Colonel of one division generally can’t approve overtime for a trooper in another division, because they may not be privy to whether the overtime is necessary or what is happening in that division. Whereas the chief of staff is responsible for assisting the colonel, Hazen was part of the Office of Field Operations.
“Lund and Richter” refer to Sgt. Justin Lund, who has received $467,160 in overtime over the last three years pushing his total pay over $322,000 in 2025, and Sgt. Colin Richter, who has earned $278,430 in overtime over three years pushing his total pay over $230,000 in 2023 and 2024, according to state open data records.
The email goes on to indicate that OSS tried to lock out both Lund and Richter, as well, but were likewise “ordered to give them access,” and that the overtime was not being used for police work.
“Everyone in the dept knew what they were doing bc people were like – he can’t be on OT I just saw him in the supermarket… and then the rumors spread about the shenanigans going on.” Rosenberg wrote. “If they want to look at stuff, Richter, Lund, Hazen – all during that time frame. We tried to lock them out but we were ordered to give them access.”
Both Raimundi and Rosenberg then exchange further emails indicating that the new system should prevent such “shenanigans,” but Rosenberg writes that he was recently ordered by Col. Loughman’s current chief of staff, Captain Douglas Sauve, to give full administrator access to a trooper under threat of termination – an order he couldn’t follow because the system is technically owned and operated by the Comptroller’s Office and the Department of Administrative Services.
On November 18, 2025, Captain Sauve emailed Rosenberg, Col. Daniel Loughman, and Lt. Colonel of OSS Mark Davison, ordering Rosenberg “to give TFC [Andrew] Forbes full administrative access to the new Kronos by 2359hrs today.”
Rosenberg responded that he couldn’t grant access because he only had temporary full administrative access to help set up the new system and directed Sauve to the Comptroller’s Office. Sauve then asked the Principal HR Specialist for OSC’s Statewide Payroll & Management Division to give Forbes system administrator access and questioned when Rosenberg’s access to the system was downgraded and whether Rosenberg requested it – essentially trying to determine whether Rosenberg evaded his order.
Anderson wrote that Rosenberg’s system access was downgraded as part of their planned launch of the new system, and that they could give Forbes greater access to the system but not system administrator access. Anderson points out that no other state department has system administrator access.
“Now that the upgrade is complete, myself and OSC leadership feel the System Administrator role should be reserved for my staff on central OSC UKG Team in order ensure proper system functionality,” Anderson wrote. “For comparison, no employees at the other three UKG agencies (DCF, DVA and DOC) that use UKG ProWFM have System Administrator to UKG ProWFM access due to security concerns.”
Forbes was given “the Police Administrator role, which would provide him with 79 permissions thus allowing him to complete many more tasks,” according to the email.
In response to several questions sent by Inside Investigator, the State Police Media Relations Office responded that although Rosenberg oversaw the Kronos system and oversaw the system upgrade, his “email correspondence reflect a limited opinion from his perspective of how the timekeeping system (Kronos) is configured and how personnel/Kronos user roles are structured within the agency.”
Hazen’s ability to approve his own overtime, the state police said, was part of a system configuration “that allowed some supervisors, including Sgt. Hazen, to input their overtime hours,” and that “this was not unique to any one individual and was not the result of any individual action to bypass controls.”
The Media Relations Unit also wrote that Colonel Loughman’s chief of staff took over approving Sgt. Hazen’s overtime because Hazen was serving as a “liaison” between the Office of Field Operations and the Colonel’s office. Hazen was a sergeant at the time, six levels down the chain of command from the Colonel, but was also serving as chief of staff to Lt. Colonel Kenneth Cain, who oversaw the Field Operations division. According to payment logs and schedules contained in the complaint, Hazen’s overtime accumulated daily.
“During the relevant period, Sgt. Hazen was assigned formally to the Office of Field Operations (OFO) but functionally served as a liaison between the Office of Field Operations and the Colonel’s Office. This assignment was intended to improve communication and coordination between those offices, as a large volume of notifications from the Troops, Major Crimes units, and other specialized units flow from the field and need to be directly and timely communicated to the Office of the Colonel at all hours of day and night,” the Media Relations Unit wrote. “The Colonel’s Chief of Staff, along with command staff in OFO, would jointly approve Sgt. Hazen’s time entries on a ‘as needed’ basis as Sgt. Hazen’s responsibilities accrue on a 24/7 basis as notifications occur in the field.”
While the Internal Affairs complaint outlining the self-approval allegations against Hazen was made in August 2024, the December 2025 email sent by Raimundi indicates that there were “lots of examples” of overtime self-approval in “2024/2025.”
The Media Relations Unit also stated that Chief of Staff Henriques “may have made limited time approvals for SGTs Lund and Richter on an as needed basis if their normal supervisory chain were unavailable to make the approval,” but said such instances would have been “rare.”
“This is consistent with the role of the Chief of Staff, who is tasked with solving administrative issues that arise in the course of daily operations,” the Media Relations Unit wrote. “The standard chain of supervisory approval for SGTs Lund and Richter is through supervisors in the Bureau of Special Investigations (BSI) and the majority of overtime is authorized and approved through that chain.”
DESPP annually is one of the largest sources for Connecticut’s overtime spending, amounting to $46.3 million in fiscal year 2025, according to the Office of Fiscal Analysis. Part of the problem is a lack of troopers needed to fully staff the department, which has been understaffed for more than a decade. Lawmakers have tried to attract new recruits to the state police with contractual raises.
A 2025 study conducted by Yankee Institute and Nutmeg Research Institute found “widespread pension spiking and found that between 2010 and 2025 the State Police accounted for $578 million in overtime pay, with 24 percent of that overtime concentrated in the final three years of employment. The top 13 overtime earners ended up with pensions more than 30 percent higher than their salaries.
However, overtime opportunities are not evenly spread throughout different ranks in the Connecticut State Police. Hazen earned his massive amounts of overtime as a sergeant, getting him three years of high earnings before being promoted to Lieutenant, where there are fewer opportunities for overtime. Based on payroll records, it appears Hazen was promoted to lieutenant in October of 2025.
Rosenberg made headlines in 2023 when he was copied on an email with the subject line “Inbred Jews,” from Scott DeVico, executive assistant to former DESPP Commissioner James Rovella. Rosenberg, who is Jewish, filed a complaint, which launched a state investigation. Rosenberg also alleged he was denied proper compensation for working multiple jobs by Human Resources employee Marybeth Bonsignore and filed a complaint in 2023. Both DeVico and Bonsignore left DESPP amid a hiring scandal and subsequent investigation in 2024.
The Connecticut State Police have had a difficult past six months with numerous officers arrested and then terminated, two federal lawsuits alleging troopers abused their power to pursue personal vendettas, and a sex scandal involving several troopers and a private security guard within state government offices. The department has sought to clamp down on internal reporting by restricting officers from communicating with the media and funneling their Freedom of Information requests through Col. Loughman’s office.
The Media Relations Office did not respond to follow-up questions asking how long “some supervisors” were allowed to approve their own overtime, how widespread self-approval was if it was “not unique to any one individual,” and why a sergeant would be tasked as a liaison when he was under the Lt. Colonel overseeing the whole division.
Hazen has received no overtime this year, according to payroll records, and is projected to receive $156,376 in salary as a lieutenant.
Editor’s Note: As is disclosed on our About Page, Inside Investigator is an independently managed program of Yankee Institute. II has management that oversees daily operations and determines content, completely independent of Yankee Institute.
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