Just as free speech doesn’t mean much if controversial speech isn’t protected, so too does the concept of freedom of information ring hollow if records that shed light on government wrongdoing are sealed off from public scrutiny.

In October 2019, a Connecticut state medical examiner ruled the gruesome in-custody death of Carl Talbot a homicide. Talbot, who earlier that year was taken into custody at the New Haven Correctional Center for a parole violation after he lost his place to live, was pepper-sprayed repeatedly at point-blank range, kicked, and piled on by officers when he stopped complying with orders while in the shower. Talbot, who later died after being restrained in his cell, was experiencing mental distress prior to and during his re-incarceration, had earlier smeared feces on the walls of his cell.

Department of Correction (DOC) records related to the incident were falsified. In a subsequent federal lawsuit brought by Talbot’s family members against sixteen DOC officers and employees involved in the run-up to Talbot’s death, a statement of undisputed material facts noted that a restraint checklist was falsified and several DOC employees could not verify information on the checklist that had been attributed to them.

The court filing stated that names and initials were “forged by some unknown person.” Inspection reports were also fabricated. Though the State’s Attorney issued a report on Talbot’s death, it did not recommend bringing criminal charges against all but one DOC officer because “no actions of any individual Department of Corrections official give rise to the degree of recklessness” required for prosecution. The report also did not mention the admitted fabrication of documents related to Talbot’s death.

While the statute of limitations has already run out, Inside Investigator does not believe the state’s apparent disinterest in holding those who tamper with official documents is good enough, either from the perspective of government accountability or state taxpayers who are responsible for the $3.75 million settlement Talbot’s family awarded as a result of DOC official’s misconduct.

That’s why, in February 2025, when the state approved the settlement, I filed several Freedom of Information Act requests seeking documents, largely produced by the DOC and the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection (DESPP), examined as part of the State’s Attorney’s report on Talbot’s death.

DOC and DESPP are two of the state’s worst FOIA offenders. Between long wait times and, in DOC’s case, bizarre record-keeping practices that severely restrict the internal information one can glean about the agency, they are two of the hardest agencies to successfully obtain records from. And, usually after a wait of about a year, when you finally obtain records, they are so heavily redacted and incomplete as to be of limited utility.

That’s been my experience so far with the requests I submitted related to Talbot’s death. Of the seven requests I submitted in February 2025, DESPP is only the second agency to respond. But the records they turned over last week, over a year later, have limited utility.

Containing mostly reports from Connecticut State Police (CSP) who responded to and subsequently investigated Talbot’s death, the unredacted portions of the records do shed light on a confused response to the incident and a subsequent investigation hampered by incomplete records from DOC. The reports also show how early on in the response, DOC began providing inaccurate or incomplete information.

“Upon arrival, Troopers learned that Inmate Talbot had been non-compliant in a hospital unit shower and was also non-compliant while being moved to the restrictive housing unit. Corrections officer utilized a chemical agent multiple times and placed him in restraints within the restrictive housing unit. A subsequent check on Talbot revealed he was unresponsive. Talbot was transported to Saint Raphael’s Hospital in New Haven where he later died.” an initial CSP report from a trooper who responded to the incident reads.

That is an inaccurate account of what happened, failing to mention the nearly four minutes where multiple officers piled on top of Talbot to put him in restraints or that one officer kicked Talbot while he was lying on the floor of the shower after being pepper-sprayed inches from his face, in violation of policy.

But DESPP also redacted over 150 pages of responsive records in their entirety, including a copy of a document known to be falsified: a restraint checklist.

DESPP cited several exemptions, contained within FOIA and elsewhere in statute, but the majority of records were withheld not because they’re exempt from disclosure, but because they did not originate within DESPP.

In 2024, tucked into that year’s budget implementer bill, legislators quietly passed a change in law that profoundly affects access to information under FOIA by not requiring agencies that maintain records shared with them by another agency to provide them in response to public records requests.

“Any person requesting data, records or files that have been shared by one state agency with another state agency pursuant to any statue, regulation, data sharing agreement, memorandum of agreement or understanding or court order, including, but not limited to a request made pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act…shall direct such request to the state agency from which such data, records or files originated.” the statute reads.

When that situation occurs, state agencies are supposed to notify the requester and forward the request to the agency that maintains the records. Neither of those steps appears to have occurred here. DESPP certainly did not notify me in any of the 14 months between filing the request and turning over responsive records that some originated with another agency. And when they did turn over the records, they merely noted they had been withheld because they originated with another agency.

Nor, as far as I’m aware, did they notify DOC of the request for records, though I do have an outstanding request, also filed in February 2025, for the DOC documents the State’s Attorney reviewed as part of the investigation into Talbot’s death. But in the intervening 14 months, DOC officials have provided absolutely no updates on the status of that request.

Particularly because of the unacceptable length of time it takes DOC and DESPP to respond to requests, and because the state has admitted DOC officials falsified the documents at issue here, it would be helpful to have those from another source.

And there’s no reason not to turn them over. It’s not as if DESPP would have to do extra legwork to turn over the documents it withheld; they are attachments to the reports I requested and they provided.

In 2024, the carveout for data originating from other agencies, initially contained in a standalone bill, received bipartisan criticism over concerns it would make it more difficult for the public to obtain records. Despite not having a fiscal note, the language was included in the budget implementer at the request of Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration according to testimony from the Office of Policy and Management (OPM). OPM supported the initial bill on the grounds that agencies who are not the original source of records cannot navigate the redaction process as easily.

But it’s hard to see how that would apply here since DESPP and DOC largely deal with the same exemptions. All the prohibition on agencies that do not originate records providing them via FOIA is doing here is hiding information about egregious government wrongdoing and giving the agency responsible cover to slow walk the potential release of a record that was falsified. DOC was also the subject of the investigation in the records I requested. Withholding those documents pokes holes in the records DESPP provided and makes them significantly less useful.

Prevaricating language that refuses to hold accountable individual DOC employees in the State’s Attorney’s report aside, someone in DOC tampered with official records that likely shed light on failures in policy that contributed to Talbot’s death. While DOC officials have denied knowing of this until years after it happened, and largely shrugged their shoulders at the idea the culprit is identifiable, someone somewhere is responsible. Tampering with records may make it impossible to discover who, but at the very least, the extent to which records have been doctored should be discoverable. What DESPP has turned over so far has revealed conflicting and incomplete accounts surrounding its handling of Talbot’s death. The release of DOC’s original records should help clarify how early false narratives were peddled and who played a role in misleading investigators.

DOC may no longer be legally culpable for its role in Talbot’s death, but officials must face some sort of public scrutiny for their actions, particularly as this is not the only recent case in which information about deaths in custody has been withheld. FOI legislation, passed around the country, was a visceral response to Watergate’s breach of the public’s trust. But today, can it be used to dig into publicly acknowledged misconduct and hold it accountable? If the answer is no, it is toothless.

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