State trooper in Beaver tried to fix ticket for friends, police say

A Pennsylvania State Police trooper faces misdemeanor charges after he tried to make a traffic ticket disappear for friends, authorities said Thursday, according to charges filed by PSP internal affairs.

Trask Alexander, a trooper from Troop D in the Beaver County barracks, is charged with tampering with records, tampering with public records and obstruction of law.

According to the criminal complaint, the charges stem from a traffic citation issued by a different trooper in late November in Rochester Township. The woman, who was driving with her boyfriend, told the trooper who pulled them over they knew Alexander. According to the complaint, she sent a photo of the cruiser and citation to Alexander.

Three days later, a handwritten request to withdraw the charges was faxed to the district magistrate’s office in Rochester Township, according to the complaint. The request included the driver’s last name, a partial citation number and a signature “that was not the signature of the PSP member who issued the citation.”

The reason for the withdrawal was listed as “wrong defendant was selected for citation,” investigators wrote. An employee at the magistrate’s office contacted the trooper who issued the initial citation, who said he had nothing to do with the request to withdraw.

State police internal affairs investigators said the pair pulled over that night are “personal friends” of Alexander, and they’d asked him if there was anything he could do about the citation, according to the complaint. Records showed Alexander was on duty at the time the fax was sent to the magistrate’s office.

Alexander, 30, of Beaver Falls, has been a state trooper since 2014, according to a police spokesman. He is suspended without pay. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 24.

An attorney for Alexander was not listed Thursday afternoon.