HARTFORD — The ACLU of Connecticut has released responses to its 2025 questionnaire for candidates seeking to lead the Office of the Inspector General, the agency charged with investigating police use of force.
Today, the public policy and advocacy team will also testify on the need for police accountability and investigational transparency from the Office of the Inspector General. Once the newly appointed Inspector General assumes their role, the public policy and advocacy team will meet with them to affirm their commitment to accountability and transparency.
As a non-partisan civil rights and liberties organization, the ACLU of Connecticut does not endorse or oppose candidates for public office. The ACLU of Connecticut led advocacy efforts to create the Office of the Inspector General in 2021 and played a key role in establishing the criteria for appointing its first leader, Robert Devlin.
“The Office of the Inspector General must operate independently and transparently, with an unwavering commitment to truth, accountability, and the public interest,” said ACLU of Connecticut public policy and advocacy director Chelsea-Infinity Gonzalez. “Our 2025 questionnaire was developed to reflect the policy needs and priorities of communities most harmed by police violence, especially Black and other communities of color. The public deserves transparency about where Inspector General candidates stand on civil rights, police accountability, and the use of state power — especially when racialized violence and rhetoric is emboldened on the federal level, and when groups of people such as Black people and immigrants are routinely criminalized. The responses represent a range of candidate positions, and varied answers about commitments to transparency.”
The questionnaire aims to illuminate how each candidate views the use of deadly force, transparency in investigations, and the systemic patterns that contribute to police violence. This tool also helps identify broader attitudes within the legal field about police power and the possibilities for transformative change in Connecticut.
“The ACLU of Connecticut envisions a model of public safety that interrupts and deprioritizes state violence,” said ACLU of Connecticut policy counsel Jess Zaccagnino. “We prefer investments in care-based, community-rooted approaches that truly keep people safe.”
“In Connecticut, Black people are 4.4 times more likely to be killed by police than white people,” said ACLU of Connecticut senior policy organizer Anderson Curtis. “Most high-profile police killings in the state have involved Black and Brown people. Dyshan Best was just killed in Bridgeport. Jebrell Connelly was killed seven months ago in New Haven. And the police officer that killed Jayson Negron uses violent iconography on his personal social media that has alarmed his sister, a city councilor in Bridgeport. These are not isolated incidents — they are systemic.”
“There are deep rooted historical patterns of racialized state violence in Connecticut and it is imperative that we acknowledge and address that legacy,” said ACLU of Connecticut field organizer Erycka Ortiz, “Our communities don’t just need transparency and accountability — we deserve it.”
“We work with — and many of us are — justice-impacted people at the ACLU of Connecticut,” said ACLU of Connecticut campaign manager Gus Marks-Hamilton. “The Inspector General must center government accountability and truthful investigations, and that requires a commitment to ending cycles of taxpayer-funded police harm."
More information on the questionnaire and process can be found here: https://www.acluct.org/en/news/2025-connecticut-inspector-general-questionnaire
A summary of the candidate responses, and each of the five candidates who provided answers to the questionnaire’s responses, are near the bottom of the page.
