Jabulani Gamache was unanimously elected chair of the Burlington Police Commission June 2, just over a week after a white police officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, sparking nationwide protests.
Gamache, 34, moved to Vermont from New York City with his parents in 1990, and moved to Burlington in 1991, when he was in first grade.
Gamache joined the police commission last summer following the release of body camera footage showing officers shoving and tackling Black men who filed police brutality lawsuits against the city.
Now, Gamache is leading the commission as hundreds of members of the public call for cuts to police funding, including a 30% reduction in uniformed officers, removing officers from schools, and the firing of Officers Jason Bellavance, Cory Campbell and Joe Corrow, all of whom are named in the police brutality lawsuits.
Gamache spoke with VTDigger about why he favors cutting the police department budget, why he thinks the commission should have more authority, and why he decided to join the commission. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
VTDigger: Why did you decide to apply to the police commission last year?
Jabulani Gamache: I joined the police commission in response to what happened to the Meli brothers. I know Jeremie, but I’m much better friends with his brother Albin, who was involved in that incident as well. He and I have been playing soccer for five years now.
I remember a week after it happened, he didn’t go into much detail about what had happened. I was kind of waiting for it to show up in the news, and it never did, so I lost track of it.
When the video surfaced back, that just kind of lit a fire of anger, for lack of a better word.
VTD: What’s your overall overview of your first year on the commission?
JG: I honestly didn’t know what to expect with the commission, I heard oversight, loosely, and things like that. But I never really got a clear answer, and when I joined, I kind of quickly realized, for all intents and purposes, we don’t really do much.
That’s more due to the fact we don’t have much authority to really do anything. All we’re really able to do is review and help craft policies and directives, review disciplinary matters. Pretty much we really only agree with that punishment or not agree with that punishment, we don’t actually have any authority to hand out punishment. I find that very frustrating.
What the public wants out of it, and what we actually do, are two totally different things. People assume we have a lot more power than we actually do. In reality, we don’t have any power whatsoever.
VTD: Do you think the police commission should have more power?
JG: I think so. The kind of oversight that Burlington wants requires us to have more power. I’m in agreement with that. It would be nice to have power of actual discipline when these things happen, so it doesn’t seem like it just gets swept under the rug.
VTD: Do you think officers in Burlington are appropriately held responsible for excessive use of force, when that happens?
JG: As it stands right now? No, I do not.
VTD: Why? Can you expand on that?
JG: Definitely in the Meli brothers case, I think what Officer Bellavance did was definitely grounds for firing. No de-escalation, or anything at all that he did, that warranted that response. I share those same sentiments with Corrow and Campbell.
VTD: What are your plans for the role as commission chair?
JG: I’m seeing more and more, we don’t really have much power. But if anything, we have the power of putting a spotlight, and maybe pressure. I’m trying to figure out how to best pressure and influence the change people are crying out for, and how best to move that forward.
VTD: What does that change look like?
JG: That’s the million dollar question. I’m in agreement with the Racial Justice Alliance demands. The easy part is agreeing with it, the hard part is, how do we do this? I think if we look at some models around the country, there are some long standing programs across the country that have shown tremendous effect.
I’m thinking, in particular, the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Oregon, which pairs a social worker and trained EMT. They are about 1% of the budget in the police budget, but they deal with about 17% of the calls that come in, and that’s gone on for 31 years. [According to a recent High Country News report, the program costs about 2% of the police budget.]
If we’re actually serious about wanting to do these things, we need to look at all these different models and how other places are doing it, and see what would work and how we can apply those things here.
VTD: What do you make of the unprecedented public input in recent weeks?
JG: Pardon my French, but people are fucking tired of the status quo. People are fucking tired of seeing Black and brown people killed with impunity on TV or on their cell phones, over and over again.
They’re tired of people, of politicians, of even people in my position saying that, something’s going to happen, something’s going to change.
They are putting their action to use, and I fully support them. No change is going to happen unless people speak out and force some of these people on council to actually take a look, how do we fix this, how do we move forward? And the same goes for the mayor as well.
VTD: What do you make of local and national calls to cut police funding following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer?
JG: I’m in complete favor of defunding the police. I feel the problem is that people hear “defund the police” which means getting rid of X number of cops, and just kind of seeing what happens. And that’s absolutely not the case.
I know from my many years of bartending in downtown Burlington, a majority of the interactions I see between police and people happen to be due to people being homeless and drinking downtown or having a mental health crisis.
I see their frustration when they deal with these things, because they’re not actually fixing the problem. And they know they aren’t actually fixing the problem. How can we help these people that actually need help?
There’s a lot of open room in Burlington to tackle this. Is an armed officer really the best use of our resource for someone drinking a couple of beers downtown in the park? No. How do we move forward? How do we get everyone to the table?
