Former Burlington police chief Brandon del Pozo doesn’t need your forgiveness to move forward.
“I doubt most people will ever forgive me … and I doubt they have an interest in forgiving me,” del Pozo said in an interview with VTDigger, nine months after he resigned after creating a fake social media account to taunt a critic. Del Pozo later lied that the account was his. “I’ve also had people every day who say, ‘I wish you never left Burlington. We’d be a better city if you were still there.’”
“American policing is not in a space where people are even thinking in these terms of reconciliation and forgiveness,” he said. “It’s very polarized right now. I wouldn’t even be sure what to ask people.”
While del Pozo hasn’t been a Burlington public employee for nine months, his name and reputation haven’t left the city’s sphere. Especially now that he’s emerged as a progressive police expert in national media — he’s appeared on an MSNBC podcast with Chris Hayes and has been featured in the New York Times, Buzzfeed and Slate magazine. He’s also embarked on postdoctoral research about addiction policy and plans to pick back up a nonfiction book project about American policing, based on his experiences.
These media appearances have also raised concerns of hypocrisy. Some of del Pozo’s critics say the progressive policing he’s advocating in the media he failed to deliver as chief — especially when it comes to use-of-force violations among the officers he oversaw.
Most recently, the Howard Center announced to its staff in an email two weeks ago that it’s investigating whether del Pozo should remain on its board of trustees. The Howard Center is a wide-ranging organization that largely provides mental health, disability and substance abuse services.
While some have been arguing for his removal since he resigned, the calls gained further traction after AFSCME Local 1674, the union that represents Howard Center employees, posted a petition calling for del Pozo’s removal. The petition currently has over 600 signatures.
“This petition is about getting justice for a coworker and defending our rights as workers to perform our jobs free of indignity and abuse by our employer or its representatives,” the petition description states. The coworker in reference is Charles Winkleman, a Howard Center employee who was the target of del Pozo’s fake Twitter account and resulting tweets.
“In what normal human services agency would an employee be expected to go about their normal responsibilities while their self-admitted harasser remains on its board?” the petition states. “What message does that send to del Pozo’s victim? To all employees?”
Neither Debra Stenner, the president of the Howard Center board of trustees, nor CEO Bob Bick responded to requests for comment from VTDigger.
In the email to employees, reported first by Seven Days, Stenner said, “We believe Brandon brings unique and valuable insight and have supported him in his decision to stay on the board. However, we recognize that there are strong feelings of harm on both sides and gaining a full, unbiased understanding of all that has happened, or continues to happen, is in the best interest of Howard Center and we believe is an imperative in order to move forward.
“To that end, the board has decided to contract for an independent inquiry in order to better understand the full scope of events,” she said.
Stenner said the center asked del Pozo to recuse himself from all board deliberations while the inquiry is taking place, and he agreed.
Del Pozo said he believes the Howard Center investigation will be impartial and he does not know who or what organization will conduct it.
While he admits that the Twitter account he made and the tweets he sent were inappropriate, he disagrees with the union’s characterization of him as a “harasser.” Del Pozo, who still resides in Burlington, suffered a serious brain injury in June 2018 as a result of a bike crash, and previously attributed his behavior to his injuries. He said the eight tweets he posted to belittle Winkleman were quickly deleted after he sent them.
“Harassment is a pattern of conduct,” del Pozo said. “Harassment is not eight things done for 45 minutes and then erased.”
He thinks that he still has a valuable perspective to add to the Howard Center board and that he should not be removed.
“It’s about delivering the best standards of care to Vermonters, especially figuring out ways that we can reduce the harms of over-policing and drug use in the mental health space,” he said. “I think I have a tremendous amount to contribute. Not only based on my experience but also what I’m doing now as a postdoctoral researcher.”
Winkleman did not respond to multiple requests for comment from VTDigger during the preparation of this story. However, he later said he had not received those requests.
In a post-publication interview, Winkleman said he thinks the Howard Center has already made its decision to keep del Pozo on its board — the investigation is ensuing because of pressure from the community.
“If the Howard Center is an organization that’s trauma informed, they certainly seem to spend most of their time focusing on Brandon’s head trauma and not any of the emotional distress or trauma or PTSD he personally, or his officers, caused on members of the community,” Winkleman said.
Winkleman said he has not been contacted by the Howard Center about whether his social media activity is also going to be investigated. He’s currently on a mental health leave from the Howard Center, where he is a community mental health worker in schools, which he took after the incident with del Pozo.
‘I’m just explaining to people what I did’
The Harvard-educated ex-cop pushed back on the idea that he’s trying to rebrand himself as a progressive police expert through multiple media appearances. He said that, as the country has become embroiled in emotional and controversial conversations about systems of policing, members of the media have reached out to him for his perspective. And del Pozo said he’s happy to give it.
“It’s not about me defining myself. I’m just explaining to people what I did and how it should be carried forward,” he said. “And people are hungry for that.”
Del Pozo wrote in a New York Times opinion piece, published in June: “The nation’s police need to start acting and speaking in unison in ways that bring people together. They have to unite in taking responsibility for the flaws in the profession. …”
He told BuzzFeed News in a June interview: “One of the big barriers to holding police accountable is that we don’t have national standards for how police ought to behave.”
In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, they both made light of the anonymous Twitter account incident that led to del Pozo’s resignation. “You ended up having to resign because you were too online,” Hayes told del Pozo.
When recounting to Hayes how he had initially lied to a Seven Days reporter about not being behind the account that was trolling Winkleman, del Pozo said, “I feel like someone walked up to me in the middle of a party and asked who farted.”
‘I pushed the limits of that system’
His commitment to accountability in the media for cops who abuse their power rings hypocritical to del Pozo’s critics. For the past week, protesters have been inhabiting Battery Park 24/7 to demand the termination of three officers — Jason Bellavance, Cory Campbell and Joseph Corrow — who have been criticized for using excessive force under del Pozo’s leadership as chief.
In a 2018 incident, Corrow tackled a Black man named Mabior Jok to the ground allegedly without provocation, knocking Jok unconscious. In March 2019, Campbell punched a white man named Douglas Kilburn in the face outside the UVM Medical Center, causing injuries from which he later died.
And in September 2018, all three officers responded to a call at a Burlington bar about a “verbal altercation,” and upon arrival, they pushed and tackled three Black men to the ground. Only Bellavance was suspended for pushing one of the men, who was temporarily knocked unconscious, according to body camera footage that shows the man’s eyes rolling into the back of his head.
Del Pozo pointed to his decision to suspend Bellavance as evidence that he took use-of-force violations seriously within his department.
When asked if that suspension was enough, del Pozo responded, “I did what the system empowered me to do at the time. And I pushed the limits of that system.”
“What I’ve said on the record many times is that these incidents should have been released to the public much sooner,” he said. “But we spent hours talking, sharing body camera footage, with a civilian committee, looking very carefully at disciplinary precedent and pushing them as far as we could. And stay within the limits of defensible jurisprudence.”
Jabulani Gamache, chair of Burlington’s Police Commission, said the country needs progresisve perspectives on the future of policing, like those that del Pozo is providing on a national scale.
But Gamache said he thinks del Pozo’s credibility was frayed by his transgressions as chief.
“Locally, I feel like people don’t really want to hear from him. Because he never really accepted responsibility for what he did,” Gamache said. “So I do feel like the local response is justified and I do think he’s being hypocritical.”
Gamache also thinks del Pozo should be removed from the Howard Center’s board.
“Being on the board of directors, you kind of have that same responsibility to the community for upholding good morals and values and not deceiving the community,” Gamache said.
Kurt Wright: Ex-chief has a valuable perspective
Kurt Wright, a former Burlington City Council president and state representative, said he doesn’t think del Pozo should be defined by the mistakes that led to his resignation.
“Brandon del Pozo is an imperfect human being and made some mistakes,” Wright said. “I weigh his entire tenure, and look at his entire career, to some things that didn’t go perfectly.”
Wright doesn’t think that del Pozo is being hypocritical by sharing his thoughts on progressive policing. He thinks del Pozo has a valuable perspective to share, which he’s also done on Wright’s radio show, “The Morning Drive.”
“He has a lot of expertise,” Wright said. “That doesn’t mean that I would agree with his opinions either. But I think they’re valid opinions that people are interested in and want to hear. And certainly you should be able to exercise that right.”
As police chief, del Pozo said, he led one of the most progressive departments in the country. He pointed to the de-escalation curriculum his unit had piloted and implemented, he hosted training on implicit bias for his officers, and he reduced car stops significantly.
Even so, del Pozo’s department still had the kind of use-of-force incidents that have been occurring in departments across the country. Even with the most innovative and progressive policing techniques at hand, why did the Burlington police still experience these problems?
“There’s a difference between knowing how to run a good police department, and running a police department where every officer behaves perfectly,” del Pozo responded. “I’m not in the mind of the police officer at 2 in the morning.”
Beyond his presence as a commentator on policing, del Pozo wants to continue his academic research. He’s doing research on addiction with Rhode Island’s Miriam Hospital and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. He didn’t offer specifics about where his research will take him next, if he’ll become an author or go down the academic track.
But for now, this is his focus. He recently published an academic article that assesses how Covid-19 and the transformation it’s made in drug and incarceration systems could disrupt the status quo for better solutions.
As for his relationship with the Burlington community moving forward — it’s complicated. Del Pozo said he wants to continue working with the Howard Center, an organization that he said is in the harm-reduction business and has extended its forgiveness to him.
“A lot of the folks that are vehemently against me being on the board or in other public spaces are saying, ‘All cops are bastards; we have to abolish the police,’” he said.
“Simply what I did for a living precludes forgiveness.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated on Sept. 11 to include comments from Charles Winkleman, who maintained he had not received the requests for an interview that had been made earlier.
