Reaction to Fairfield State’s Attorney’s Report on Deadly Shooting of Zoe Dowdell by New Britain Police

HARTFORD -- Today, the Fairfield State’s Attorney released a report declining to charge New Britain police employees Marcin Ratajczak, Christopher Kiely, Michael Slavin, Kyle Jones, and Chad Nelson for their actions in shooting into a car and killing 20-year-old Zoe Dowdell on December 14, 2017.

The following is a statement from ACLU of Connecticut legal director Dan Barrett, who represents Dowdell’s father, Shawn Dowdell, in his legal case seeking records and information from the Connecticut State Police and New Britain police:

“It is unconscionable and inhumane that Fairfield State’s Attorney, New Britain police, and Connecticut State Police forced Shawn Dowdell to wait for more than one year only to first see footage of his son’s death online. Because of police and prosecutors’ decisions to ignore and oppose the Dowdell family’s repeated requests for transparency, a grieving father is still in the dark about his son’s death at the hands of police. The Fairfield State’s Attorney’s report is not a ruling from a court and has no bearing on whether it should be tolerable in Connecticut for police to summarily execute a young man on the street. Prosecutors and police still have not released all of the evidence about what happened to Zoe Dowdell. Our legal case on behalf of Shawn Dowdell seeking full transparency and information about Zoe Dowdell’s death will continue.”

For more information about Dowdell v New Britain and Dowdell v Connecticut State Police, the legal cases seeking information on behalf of Shawn Dowdell: https://www.acluct.org/en/cases/dowdell-v-new-britain-dowdell-v-connecticut-state-police