I couldn’t say whether Gov. Ned Lamont was consulted, but it sure seems possible that people in his office have been involved in the police harassment and the irregular prosecution of State Pier critic and former Green Party congressional candidate Kevin Blacker.

Indeed, it’s been three years since Blacker’s arrest on charges related to his protests of painting old, outdated street signs near State Pier pink, and his request for a trial has languished in Superior Court in New London.

When I asked the Judicial Department why that isn’t a violation of state law requiring a speedy trial within a year of arrest, a department spokesperson wrote back and said Blacker hasn’t made a motion for a “speedy” trial. He asked for a trial more than two years ago.

I guess the Connecticut court system needs a nudge to obey the law.

Blacker filed a motion in court for speedy trial Thursday, after I asked him to comment on what the Judicial Department said.

He called me back late in the afternoon to say a clerk had called him to say the judge wants to schedule a hearing, now set for Thursday.

Suddenly, after three years, the wheels of justice have started spinning. I wonder why.

I might have just chalked up the long delay in letting Blacker have a day in court to backlogs and inefficiencies and the COVID-19 pandemic, which concluded a long time ago. But three years of waiting is absurd, given that statute 54-82 (m)(1) says “trial of defendant shall commence within 12 months from … date of arrest.”

“The governor does not have any interest in this case and was unaware it remains pending until we received your inquiry this morning,” Lamont spokesman Adam Joseph responded by email, when I asked about Blacker’s prosecution.

So if the governor is not paying attention, which important people in his administration have been? It’s a question Blacker has long said he wants to raise in a trial, if he could ever get one.

After all, it seems unlikely that someone with a lot of clout didn’t intervene in the first place, when Blacker was arrested.

He was questioned and arrested by officers with the State Police Eastern District Major Crime Squad, which, according to its state home page, is “responsible for all major case investigations, homicides, sexual assaults, armed robberies, arsons, etc.”

You know, etc., after murder and rape, etc. as in pink sign painting, vandalism by someone who acknowledged the crime, in a city that has its own police department.

That’s the kind of crime you usually bring in the big State Police guns for.

The arrest itself was questionable because the elite police crime squad did a lousy job of investigating, arresting Blacker on a felony because they were told by David Kooris, chairman of the board of the Connecticut Port Authority, that the damage to the signs was $1,663, or $163 more than the $1,500 threshold that makes the crime a felony instead of a misdemeanor.

Of course Kooris, who has made no secret of his dislike of Blacker and his harsh criticism of the troubled and criminally-investigated port authority, had no business estimating the damage to the signs, which are owned by the state.

And the elite police investigators had no reason to accept his valuation for damage to property he doesn’t own. If police had properly investigated they would have learned the state Department of Transportation pegged the damage at way under the felony threshold.

Crime investigation 101.

Prosecutors finally accepted the DOT’s lower estimate and reduced the charges from felony to misdemeanor, but not until after Blacker tracked down the DOT numbers and finally asked for a jury trial. With the felony gone, he is now only eligible for a trial by judge.

Clearly no one wants to give Blacker a trial in which he might explore how the elite state police came to arrest him on exaggerated charges, on a complaint from an agency he has been criticizing.

There are other examples of what seem to be overt use of police intimidation against Blacker, like the time two detectives tried to escort him from the Legislative Office Building, but never charged him with anything, as he waited to testify in a hearing about State Pier.

Not long after, James Rovella, Connecticut police commissioner, asked Blacker to meet with him, maybe for coffee somewhere near where he lives. Talk about intimidation.

If there are any brave civil rights attorneys reading, someone not intimidated by what sure looks like weaponization of police powers in Connecticut, they might want to reach out to Blacker.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com