“Justice for Katherine” Demonstrators Again Call for New Britain Police Officer to be Fired

Editor’s Note: Olivine contributed to the reporting of this article.

A year after the New Britain police officer Connor Reinsch struck and killed Katherine Colon with his police car as she was crossing West Main Street, family members were joined by other protesters calling for the firing of Reinsch and criticizing Mayor Erin Stewart (R) and police Chief Matthew Marino for not having already done so.

Protesters marched down West Main Street to Central Park, where family members and other activists spoke, repeatedly noting that a motorist other than a police officer who struck and killed a pedestrian would likely be arrested and even jailed.

The protest march briefly slowed traffic, as marchers walked down the eastbound travel lane, lead by a vehicle and surrounded by protest marshals.

The Justice for Katherine campaign has included a series of protests and advocacy. There was a large protest last October of 2023 in downtown New Britain calling for justice for Colon, after Reinsch, on September 21, 2023, struck and killed her with the police vehicle he was driving.

Another protest was held at the city Police Headquarters in March of this year in reaction to a February 24, 2024 report by State Attorney Maureen Platt clearing Reinsch of criminal liability.

Platt, in her report, had concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge Reinsch with a crime in the case. Her report had noted that he was traveling at, perhaps, 60 miles per hour on West Main Street, while traveling to a police call without his emergency lights on. Reinsch was quoted in saying that he was traveling to, “intercept an active burglary suspect” and that his attention was on another pedestrian he thought may be in medical distress when he struck Colon.

Platt’s conclusions were largely based on a state investigation that had concluded that it was Colon’s actions that, “were the causative factors for the collision, placing herself in unnecessary danger,” because, it said, she did not use the crosswalk and crossed the street diagonally, wore dark clothing and that she was intoxicated.

Protesters took great issue what these conclusions at today’s demonstration, calling the reasoning to be “victim blaming.”

Earlier this year, Justice for Katherine activists went to a City Council meeting to call for renewal of consideration of creating a community review board for the New Britain police that a previous Republican-controlled Council defeated in 2020.

In 2020, the-then Republican-majority Council voted down, on a Council committee, a Democratic proposal to create a strong community police review board.

That year, momentum grew for the creation of a community review board for the city’s Police as massive protests occurred nationwide, including in New Britain, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. City Republicans’ response was for a weaker civilian review board plan that was widely derided for being advisory-only, appointed entirely by the mayor and lacking authority to effectively investigate alleged police misconduct.

Council Democrats, led by Ald Francisco Santiago (D-5), proposed a stronger version of a community review board to create a review board empowered to initiate its own investigations, expressly give the board power to issue subpoenas for evidence and compel witnesses and expand the valid reasons why people can file complaints with the review board. While still leaving the board advisory, the Democratic proposal would have changed from the Republicans’ plan for it to be appointed all by the mayor, to one appointed by both Republicans and Democrats on the Council.

All of the Republicans on the City Council’s Consolidated Committee voted down the Democrats’ proposal in October of 2020.