Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, said Tuesday that the process would have been better if the city had held a public forum before the confirmation hearing, as he had suggested when Mayor Miro Weinberger announced the choice July 7. Weinberger rejected that idea, Tracy said.
The appointment of del Pozo, a veteran of the New York Police Department, as chief was passed without dissent at Monday’s city council meeting. There were eleven ayes and one abstention from Joan Shannon, D-South District, citing a professional conflict.
Del Pozo was first announced by the mayor as the nominee for Burlington police chief last week, but a 36-page academic paper on racial profiling written by del Pozo and published in the Queensland University of Technology Law Review Journal in November 2001 raised concerns from some members of the Burlington community.
Mark Hughes, a retired war veteran and an organizer for a Montpelier group that looks to stop police brutality, spoke against the appointment at the city council meeting Monday night. Hughes said he, along many of the other 44 people who spoke during the public forum, wanted the city council to delay the decision to appoint del Pozo for the sake of “due diligence.”
Tracy said that he thinks the reason the administration didn’t want to wait is because they might have lost del Pozo, though he’s not sure he agrees.
Weinberger said he did not want to put off the vote on del Pozo’s confirmation.
“I was clear with the Council that I thought it was important for the City and the Police Department for Deputy Inspector del Pozo to be confirmed Monday,” Weinberger said in an email on Tuesday. “The process started in April, del Pozo had been very thoroughly vetted, and he was an outstanding candidate. I appreciate that the Council welcomed del Pozo and his family to Burlington with a unanimous confirmation.”
Hughes said the process to approve del Pozo was “surprising and appalling.”
“I don’t think due diligence is about about asking a person questions and being satisfied with their answers,” Hughes said. “I mean they should’ve gone and done their own research first; I don’t know that they did.”
Hughes said he was so certain that there was not going to be a vote on the appointment that he left the four-hour meeting early, he said.
“There was an overwhelming majority of people that were in the room who were adamantly opposed to his employment, or at least just strongly urging a delay for due diligence,” Hughes said.
Tracy said participants at the hearing were not able to ask del Pozo questions. A lot of the information about the police chief was not accurate and probably would have been corrected had there been an open forum.
“I think it’s important that people have the opportunity in the future to engage with important nominees like this before they put it to a vote,” Tracy said.
“This is not about him,” Hughes said. “This is about the process of due diligence that seems to have been neglected by the city council.”
Margaret Joyal, treasurer of the coordinating committee at the Vermont Workers’ Center, was one of several demonstrators who gathered outside City Hall before the meeting. Joyal said the academic paper that del Pozo wrote was “a little bit shocking,” and “it really is on the mayor and the administration that it did not come to light before now.”
Del Pozo wrote that racism is “an immoral, unethical and largely illegal practice,” and then goes on to differentiate between “racism” and “racial profiling.”
“It is simply not the case the definition of racism casts so wide a net as to include, ipso facto, any act informed by race at its inception,” del Pozo wrote.
Weinberger addressed some of the community’s concerns about the paper in a July 13 post on his Facebook page.
“Del Pozo was clear in his academic paper 15 years ago and this week that racial profiling is unethical, illegal and ineffective,” Weinberger stated in the post.
In response to questions from the city council, del Pozo addressed concerns about the militarization of the Burlington Police Department. The department has a military vehicle and several pairs of night vision goggles. The vehicle has been decommissioned, and del Pozo said he doesn’t think the department needs additional military style equipment.
Del Pozo has stated that he never participated in foreign or domestic surveillance of Muslims, which was a concern for many in the Burlington Muslim community who spoke during the public forum.
Others spoke in support of del Pozo.
Former Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling said that after spending time with del Pozo and his family, he found him to be a perfect fit for the Burlington Police Department.
Joyal attended an event at the local Peace and Justice Center before the council meeting, where del Pozo spoke addressed some of the negative comments on social media about his hiring, she said. It was a small, closed meeting with a few community members and members of the Peace and Justice Center, she said.
“I think the primary concern coming out of the meeting for me is that this has not been a public process and our chief of police is one of the most important positions in the city and the hiring process should be something that is vetted publicly and I was very concerned to hear him say that this little meeting of about 10 people was equivalent to a public forum, because it’s really not,” Joyal said.
Del Pozo’s appointment is effective Sept. 1.
