[P]olice body camera footage released Wednesday by the Burlington Free Press shows that a man was brandishing a pointed garden tool, not a knife as police said at the time.
On Sept. 30, police officers responded to a call about a man wielding a knife — later revealed to be the tool — steps from Burlington City Hall. The man, Jason Breault, threw the tool into the bushes along Main Street as police closed in. Breault, 41, refused multiple requests by police to kneel and put his hands on his head.
In the struggle to handcuff Breault, Officer Derrick Hodges suffered a small cut on his right hand from a fixed-blade knife Breault had on him. Police do not believe Breault meant to hurt Hodges, said Deputy Chief Shawn Burke.
The local police union, the Burlington Police Officers’ Association, quickly pointed to the incident as an example of the court system failing to put Breault behind bars, who has repeatedly had run-ins with police.
“Without cooperation from prosecutors and the court, this incident is destined to repeat itself with perhaps an even more tragic ending,” wrote the association’s president, David Clements, in a letter to media outlets days after the incident.
Hodges said during court testimony he did not realize immediately he was cut, and his bosses are backing up his testimony.
“Officer Hodges acted with great integrity. Did he see what cut his hand? No. Because his hand was beneath Jason Breault’s torso, trying to bring it out from underneath him,” Burke said.
Learning that Breault had the garden tool and not a second knife — which would have violated Breault’s conditions of release — distracts from the larger point, which is public safety, said Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo.
“The whole goal here is to not have people armed with any knives in mental distress with 20 arrests on the streets of a city,” del Pozo said.
Breault is well known to Burlington Police, del Pozo said. He is facing dozens of charges, though he has not been convicted of any of them, said Breault’s attorney, Margaret Jansch.
Breault was allowed to have the knife to cook under unrelated conditions of release he was bound by, Jansch said.
“It wasn’t this large knife, it wasn’t this garden tool, it was this knife he was permitted to carry for cooking purposes because he’s a homeless person and he needs to cook,” Jansch said.
Jansch describes Breault as a “sweet” person who has suffered from mental health issues. Breault is now at the Northwest State Correctional Facility facing disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and violating conditions of release charges stemming from the Sept. 30 incident.
“Because of being homeless, he picked up a lot of unlawful trespass charges,” and repeated interactions with police, Jansch said.
In this case, Jansch said she thinks the police could have done more to de-escalate the situation. Public statements and media coverage hinder Breault’s chances of a fair trial, she said.
