[B]ENNINGTON — A working group formed by Attorney General William Sorrell to gather input concerning bias in the public’s interactions with law enforcement wrapped up a series of forums in Bennington this week and plans to issue a report on police training methods by mid-December.
About 75 area residents, law enforcement officials and state lawmakers heard a dozen speakers describe the opposite perspectives of citizens and police officers — along with the ongoing efforts to address those issues through officer training and fostering closer ties to the community.
Sorrell said the working group will issue a report on suggested police training changes to the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council, prior to its December meeting. The council could make changes to the Vermont Police Academy training curriculum.
“I think this turnout is a reflection of interest in community policing,” the attorney general said. Sorrell said the state “could really be a model” in developing ways to improve the relationships between law enforcement personnel and their communities.
In addition to academy training changes the council might ultimately implement, Sorrell said, “There also is interest in the Legislature, which could mandate changes.”
Requirements for reporting of police vehicle stop or arrest statistics, for example, could help assess whether a bias is evident when officers pull over motorists.
“I want to thank people for speaking up,” said state Rep. Kiah Morris, D-Bennington, a member of the panel. “Some people have told me they are worried [about describing their experiences with authorities]. This is not an easy conversation.”
Morriss is encouraged by some of the changes police departments are making to identify and reduce incidents of bias during interactions with the public. The input received from some Vermonters, Morris said, ranged from “terrifying to positive,” during the three forums, held in White River Junction, Burlington and in Bennington.
Two women on Tuesday described stressful interactions they had with police officers. One said she has anxiety issues relating to men, yet was directed by police to remain in a difficult situation. Another said her teenage daughter suffered “harassment” when questioned by an officer over child car seats in the vehicle, after he apparently concluded she was a young mother who had left children alone to go out with friends.
In fact, the woman said, she operates a child care business, which was the reason the child seats were installed in the vehicle. She said her daughter was left in tears by the encounter.
Bennington Police Chief Paul Doucette, former BPD Chief Rick Gauthier, who now is executive director of the Vermont Police Academy, and Rutland Police Chief Brian Kilcullen
Doucette said everyone has some type of implicit bias at an unconscious level.
“So we need to think about that when our law enforcement officers are out and about doing their job every day,” he said.
Doucette said that while police can have biases, so can members of the public, and he cited increasing reports of shootings and other violence against police officers around the country. “Some of the officers were attacked just because they wore a uniform, a uniform that has made them a target for people,” he said.
He said it was different 27 years ago when he joined the Bennington department. Police once were looked up to and had many positive interactions and relationships with members of the community, he said.
“Back then, people respected police for who they were and what they stood for,” Doucette said. “But this has changed over time.”
Younger people today too often seem biased against police officers and are even fearful at the sight of the uniform, he said, apparently having been influenced negatively toward police by adults in their lives.
“But that is not what we should be teaching our children,” he said.
As more families have become dysfunctional, officers also are being asked to act as social workers or perform other roles, adding to the difficulty of the job, Doucette said.
For those reasons, along with a trend toward sentencing people who assault officers to probation or allowing a deferred sentence — rather than certain time in jail, as in the past — a larger number of police positions are typically open and difficult for departments to fill. That never was the case in the past, he said.
Doucette said most allegations involving bias filed against police officers in Bennington have been resolved with a face to face meeting to work through the issues. “Communication is the key to success to what we are talking about here tonight,” he said. “We have to make sure that people understand what the police do, and police need to understand the community.”
The public also should understand that there is a need to comply with police officers to avoid an escalating confrontation, and that any issues over complying can be resolved later without violence, he said.
Ongoing training for officers, especially in Southern Vermont, is difficult to schedule and costly, Doucette said. He recommended that more bias-related training sessions be held in the Bennington area. Training is not consistent in regions of the state and needs better funding support.
Doucette said his department reviews traffic stop and other report data for signs of bias issues with officers, and a supervisor will immediately respond if certain behaviors surface.
He said the BPD also has complied with requests from the state for statistical reports on traffic stops and other police activities.
Panel members noted that an analysis of traffic stop data in Burlington released earlier this year showed that African Americans are more likely to be stopped and more likely to have their vehicles searched than whites, and there likely will be increased attention paid to collecting and analyzing those and other police statistics.
Kilcullen, who prior to accepting the Rutland post was the chief in Schenectady, N.Y., described some of the efforts around Rutland’s Project Vision. The effort seeks to foster collaboration and interaction with the community and partner organizations to reduce crime and address opioid addiction, a low percentage of home ownership in a neighborhood, and other related issues. He said follow-up statistics show a positive influence on local crime rates.
The Rutland department has developed relationships with local organizations or groups active in the community and police become directly involved with citizens, such as through a basketball league in which officers play on each team and other efforts to establish relationships that can help defuse possible subsequent confrontations in the street.
Comparing the situation in Vermont to New York, Kilcullen said “there is more awareness” of bias issues in Vermont, “but there is certainly more support in New York” for training programs to address those issues.
He said that in addition to reviewing the traffic stop records, the Rutland department keeps track of charges sought by individual officers and the circumstances that led to the arrest. One focus, he said, is helping officers understand how to avoid a situation in which they seem to be arresting someone for what amounts to “contempt of cop” charges, when a situation might have been de-escalated with no charges resulting.
Charlie Murphy, of the Vermont Center for Independent Living, said training should be required for dealing with a person who is hard of hearing or has had a brain injury or other disability that could make them seem to be noncompliant to police commands.
Select Board member Jim Carroll asked whether there is psychological testing to help weed out candidates at the academy who might act improperly once they became a police officer.
Gauthier said there is psychological testing for potential officers that has shown a high predictability rate. He added that testing for positive policing traits and for psychological tendencies toward bias is not as common, though such testing is being considered.
Sorrell said at one point that privacy concerns must also be considered when departments consider using cruiser or officer body camera, as the public may not want to cooperate with police if their involvement might be publicized in the media.
Police vehicle and body cameras, Doucette said are costly and the cameras become obsolete or begin to fail over time. He estimated it would cost the town of Bennington $96,300 to make upgrades and replace BPD camera equipment.
Attorney Bradley Myerson, of Manchester, said the benefits gained from having an actual video record of a stop or arrest outweigh other issues. He said it saves time in the criminal justice process and increases the level of fairness when citizens and officers “are all seeing the same thing.”
Sorrell said anyone wishing to add further comments on the forum topics can send them via email to AGO.BiasReport@vermont.gov.
The attorney general’s working group includes Sen. Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden and Rep. Morris from the Legislature; Karen Richards from the Vermont Human Rights Commission, Jay Diaz from the Vermont chapter of the ACLU; Curtiss Reed from the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, and U.S. Attorney Eric Miller.
