The Burlington Police Department arrests Black people at a rate 3.7 times that of white people, according to a city report.
Of the 1,594 arrests the department made in 2019, 17.3% of those arrested were Black. The arrest rate is 123 arrests per 1,000 Black residents compared to 33 arrests per 1,000 white residents. The report says 5.3% of city residents are Black.
Mayor Miro Weinberger asked city staff to prepare the report on race and arrests as a follow-up to the city’s 2019 equity report. The Police Commission received and discussed the arrest report at its Tuesday meeting after Brian Lowe, the city’s chief innovation officer, presented the data.
The data shows a decrease in arrests in the past five years, with a total of 1,594 arrests in 2019, down from a peak of 2,324 arrests in 2016. The racial disparity has fallen slightly during that time, down from a peak of 5 to 1 in 2012 to 3.7 to 1 in 2019.
Black residents were overrepresented in four types of arrests: drug-related arrests, assaults, domestic violence, and disorder-related crimes. Black residents made up 28.9% of violent felony arrests and 14.6% of non-violent misdemeanor arrests.
“In 2019, arrests where officers have a higher level of discretion, which is lower-level, non-violent crimes, show less disparity,” Lowe said.
The disparities for Black adults is 5 to 1, which is higher than Black juveniles, which is 3 to 1.
The disparity used to be higher for Black juveniles. Interim Police Chief Jon Murad said he believed the decrease was a result of school resource officers prioritizing engagement and education over enforcement, a change made in a 2015 agreement between the school district and the police department.
“It is the presence of the SROs, in a delineated, specific way as determined by that MOU that makes certain they are changing the way they are dealing with juveniles in the schools,” he said.
The City Council voted to terminate the school resource officer agreement with the school district at the end of the 2020-21 school year after more than 1,000 people called into public meetings in June demanding the removal of the officers from the city’s schools.
The report reflects similar racial disparities that were shown in the department’s 2019 traffic stop data, which showed that Black drivers were stopped, ticketed and arrested at a rate higher than whites.
The report recommended that the department continue to provide yearly reports on traffic stops, use-of-force data, and overall arrest rates by race to the Burlington Police Commission.
The report also recommends that a third-party evaluator conduct an independent evaluation of race and arrest data and look for other areas of interest. It also recommends that the city’s health equity manager — a recently created position — lead a process to create strategies to improve the community’s understanding of how underlying inequities influence arrests more broadly.