[B]URLINGTON — A group of Burlington residents support an increase in the number of police commissioners in the wake of the recent appointment of a new police chief.
About 20 Burlington residents and others met Monday at the Peace and Justice Center to discuss their concerns with how the selection of NYPD veteran Brandon del Pozo was conducted.
Rachel Siegel, a former city councilor and current executive director of the Peace and Justice Center, facilitated the meeting with Bill Oetjen. The meeting was a follow-up to a July 21 meeting, also at the Peace and Justice Center, in which 10 people voiced their concerns to del Pozo, Siegel said.
Siegel said expanding the number of commissioners from five to nine and clarifying their duties would create better oversight of city police.
“I think that there is room for improvement by making the commission a real oversight body — a citizen oversight body,” Siegel said.
She said police commissioners themselves asked for more members just before the city’s last election in March. She said the new chair of the city council’s charter change committee, Kurt Wright, has not taken up the request.
“We’ve already gotten it pushed back another year, because that’s how it happened, much to my chagrin,” Siegel said.
Siegel said that former Police Chief Michael Schirling also favored a larger commission with more oversight and jurisdiction.
“So, I hope that will happen,” Siegel said. “It’s just a very slow process. It’s a big institution, the city of Burlington, and when things change fast people get upset, and when things change slow people get upset.”
Sara Giannoni, a member of the charter change committee, was the only current city councilor at the meeting.
The members of the police commission are chosen through the city council and are meant to handle grievances that become too big for the police department to deal with on its own, though the role of the commission is not fully defined in the city charter, Giannoni said.
Siegel said that any changes would not take effect until April 2017, at the earliest. The proposal would first have to be accepted by the charter change committee, be voted on by the city council, put on the ballot for voters in the March 2016 election (and pass by two-thirds of the vote), Siegel said. Even then, it would have to be ratified by the Legislature, which could take one or more sessions to happen, she said.
“There’s a lot of work to do and no matter how you do it, it’s not going to be perfect but as long as we just keep doing it, I feel hopeful,” Siegel said.
