US: Indian-origin Sikh woman sworn in as Connecticut’s first assistant police chief of Asian descent

She is the  department’s first-ever second-in-command of Asian descent.

She joins fellow assistant chiefs David Zannelli and Bertram Ettienne in what Board of Police Commissioners Chair Evelise Ribeiro described on Friday as the “dream team” that Police Chief Karl Jacobson has surrounded himself with at the top of the department, reports  New Haven Independent.

Friday’s ceremony marked “another glass ceiling being broken,” Ribeiro said, noting how Colon — a 15-year NHPD veteran who was born in Mumbai, India and immigrated to the United States with her family when she was 11 years old — is now the department’s second ever female assistant chief of color and its first Indian assistant chief.

Colon has risen the ranks and served in a wide variety of roles during her tenure with the NHPD, Ribeiro and Jacobson said with praise, describing how Colon has worked in patrol, as a detective in the special victims unit, as a sergeant supervising the robbery and burglary unit, as a lieutenant and district manager for Newhallville and Dixwell, and most recently as the head of the Internal Affairs division.