As elected officials and activists tried to make sense of Thursday evening’s events, in which one person was struck by a vehicle and at least half a dozen were pepper sprayed near a peaceful protest, they encouraged Connecticut residents to continue to show up to voice dissent. But they urged caution when confronting federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam on Friday morning told reporters that the events of the previous night were being investigated by the local police and the Department of Homeland Security. As hundreds gathered in front of a federal building in Hartford Thursday night in a peaceful vigil spurred by the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minnesota, some protesters moved to the opposite side of the building where the confrontation occurred.
“We will be investigating what appears to be a hit-and-run incident by the what we believe to be a federal employee, as we would any other hit-and-run in the city of Hartford,” Arulampalam said. The Hartford police will also be investigating the use of pepper spray as an assault, and the incident of an object being thrown at a vehicle as property destruction.
Asked if the people driving the vehicles involved in the altercation were ICE agents, he said that “it’s a strong suspicion.”
ICE did not respond to a request for information about the incident.
Protests during the second Trump administration have remained largely peaceful in Connecticut over the past year, as crowds, sometimes numbering in the thousands, took to the streets with handmade signs to hear speeches and exercise their First Amendment right to voice dissent.
On Thursday, a few people with megaphones ran toward those gathered at the vigil. The sound of speeches was temporarily interrupted by urgent cries to come to the other side of the building.
Even as volunteers at the official event urged people not to leave the vigil, dozens went, some under the impression that they were attempting to stop a detainee from being taken away by ICE in vehicles that were leaving the building’s parking lot on the other side of the building. They gathered in the street. In the confrontation, a woman was pushed down by a vehicle, which rapidly reversed. Another person threw an object at a van, breaking a window. At least half a dozen people were sprayed with pepper spray by a man wearing a mask.
With the identities of the drivers of the vehicles and the person who deployed the pepper spray unknown, Arulampalam said the incidents are being treated as unsolved crimes.
He said DHS has indicated that they’re conducting an internal investigation.
“They’re refusing to share any details with us until that completes itself,” he said.
Arulampalam was one of several elected officials to offer a tempered reaction to Thursday’s events: he criticized the role of the Trump administration in escalating violence while warning Connecticut residents not to play into the caricature of violent protesters in American cities that’s being used to justify events like the killing of Good.
Arulampalam said that the violence that occurred on Thursday night “is a direct result of the lawlessness and recklessness of the Trump administration that has occurred over the past year and that last night came here to the city of Hartford, that resulted earlier this week in the death of Renee Good in Minneapolis. That chaos that we saw last night didn’t come from the city of Hartford.”
Arulampalam expressed pessimism that the federal government would be cooperating with local officials on the investigation, and said the lack of cooperation “stymies the efforts of local law enforcement,” to solve the case.
John Cappadona came to the vigil on Thursday evening and said he watched a man hurl expletives at police officers.
“In high school you would have said he’s picking a fight,” Cappadona said.
Cappadona was impressed by Hartford police, who impassively waited until the man walked away, and by peacekeepers who tried to keep people calm. He said he would encourage anyone put off by reports of pepper spray to come to the next protest and see for themselves: “you can expect that the police and peacekeeping people will do their best to ensure safety and it was very effective.”
Arulampalam said that police officers in Hartford are trained to deescalate in such situations. “Federal agents are sent in to enforce and don’t care about what happens in communities that they run through, don’t care about the aftermath of those actions. They have very different directives and visions of success,” Arulampalam said. “In general, we don’t want violence in this city. This is a city that is working to build a community that is an antidote to the chaos we are seeing at the federal level.”
At a separate press conference on Friday morning, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., supported Arulampalam and the city of Hartford in its handling of the incident and investigation.
Blumenthal decried the shooting of Good by an ICE agent and said that the killing was part of a pattern of excessive use of force on the part of ICE agents that has repeated across the U.S., according to a December report he produced with other lawmakers on the excessive use of force by ICE and CBP. “The pattern of escalating indefensible violence must be investigated, restrained and reformed,” he said.
Gov. Ned Lamont spoke after Blumenthal and echoed his horror at the Good killing. Lamont also commented on the events in Hartford on Thursday night. “As usual 99% of the folks were there peacefully, stepping up and saying this is not right. There was an incident behind the courthouse as you heard the mayor describe and I just want to urge each and every one of you: Make sure you exercise your right to free speech, exercise your right to protest, but you do it peacefully. Don’t let Fox News take one isolated incident behind and say, ‘see it’s happening on both sides.’ It’s not.”
Lamont commended Connecticut police who are “taught not to put gasoline on the flames but to put out the flames and let people get about their lives peacefully.”
Asked more about the incident by reporters, Lamont said, “This is the issue: ICE took an open window and shot somebody in the head and shot her dead and she was an innocent mother of three. I don’t want anything to distract from that. You’re doing just what President Trump says if there’s a demonstration here in Hartford, a couple of people do something they shouldn’t do, that’s what distracts. He takes advantage of issues and distractions like that. Don’t let that happen.”
Blumenthal added that he has been to countless Indivisible rallies in recent months across the state, and “they have been uniformly, peaceful, orderly, well-conducted. That’s Connecticut. And, we’ll see from the video, and I’ve seen some videos of what happened last night, for almost everyone in front of the courthouse, the demonstration and the protest was peaceful and orderly. We’ll know more about what happened in back of the courthouse when those two vehicles sought to leave it, because for me at least it’s not clear yet and there needs to be an investigation.”
At the same time, Blumenthal encouraged people to dissent and get out to protest. Blumenthal said that peaceful protest is “an obligation.”
“When people use violence, they undermine their cause. They play into the hands of authoritarian dictators. And the history of the rise of authoritarianism involves the invoking of violence as a pretext for cracking down on lawful dissent. That’s what we need to avoid.”
National protest organizations like ICE Out for Good have instructed protesters across the country to be nonviolent, follow the law and “bring your most peaceful attitude even in these tense times.”
Activist leadership in Connecticut contacted by The Connecticut Mirror were reluctant to speak about the incident in its aftermath. Several declined to be interviewed, some citing ongoing confusion about just what had happened and how the events were sparked.
On X, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he had spoken with Arulampalam and echoed Blumenthal’s sentiment. “My team and I will continue to gather details,” he said. “People are right to be furious, but it’s important for our protest to be peaceful. The intent of DHS’s inhumanity is to provoke a fight. Don’t let them win.”