BURLINGTON — Four months after the Burlington City Council voted to reduce the number of uniformed police officers by 30%, through attrition, the Burlington Police Department is approaching that goal.
Three officers left in October, according to records obtained by VTDigger, and two more officers will depart in the next six weeks. Another officer, William Drinkwine, is on suspension, facing a felony charge for entering his ex-girlfriend’s home without consent.
Those changes will leave Burlington with 83 active officers — down from 90 in June, and about 20% below the prior officer cap of 105. It’s a sign that the force could arrive at the new ceiling on police officers, 74, in a matter of months.
The October departures include Jason Bellavance, one of the three officers who protesters demanded leave the department this summer because of his use of violent force, and David Bowers, who shot and killed a 76-year-old man in 2016. Bowers did not face charges for the incident at the time, and acting Police Chief Jon Murad told VTDigger that he resigned.
At a police commission meeting Tuesday, Murad said he expects the force to dip below 80 officers by early 2021.
Six Burlington officers, he said, are in the Vermont National Guard, and plan to leave in the first quarter of 2021 for a yearlong deployment to U.S. military posts overseas, presumably as part of the law enforcement detachment. That detachment will be based at the U.S. European Command as part of Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, the current name for U.S. war on terror operations.
When the officer count reaches 80, it will trigger “emergency staffing,” which refers to a different rotational schedule outlined in the police union contract.
That will be a “moment of truth” for the department, Murad said at the meeting. “At that point, we really do lose the flexibility necessary to be able to perform the tasks that we’re currently performing.” He said the department has not resorted to emergency staffing since 1999.
A June memo from Burlington police to the City Council outlined the impact of reduced staffing: A diverted focus from non-serious calls, and removal of certain “community policing” posts, such as the community affairs officer.
Burlington remains one of the biggest per-capita spenders on police in the state, at around $400 per resident, even after nearly $1 million in police budget cuts in the current fiscal year. The per-resident cost had been $422 before that. Still, in her September resignation letter from the force, then-police Chief Jennifer Morrison called the police cuts “antithetical to public safety,” and “culled from a national movement” rather than local needs.
For Rep. Brian Cina, P-Burlington, reduced police capacity was intentional. “We need a smaller, focused police force to be used in the situations where they are needed,” he told VTDigger. “We can figure out how to get that work done another way.”
Cina is on the steering committee of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, which urged the 30% reduction in June, in the wake of nationwide protests for racial justice, alongside a broader call to “restructure public safety.”
“We must lean into the transformation that we know is right for our community and this nation,” the alliance wrote in its demands.
The city government is now engaged in some of those efforts. A committee is working to hire a consultant to help envision a “new, innovative public safety apparatus.” The mayor appointed Kyle Dodson as director of police transformation last month to help guide an audit of the police department, among other efforts.
At Tuesday’s meeting, commissioners discussed this work, alongside a new policy on releasing body-camera footage to the public. The body-camera policy is still being drafted, but is likely to require more timely and transparent release of video footage.
The effort “is not just about cutting the police. It’s about freeing up that money and then reinvesting it,” Cina said, noting that officer attrition has allowed the city to invest in a fund for racial justice and for a cultural empowerment center.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Murad appeared open to shifting some responsibilities away from the police department. “I am really looking forward to us getting the ball rolling on the assessment,” he said, which, under the June council resolution, will evaluate “who, what, where and how the department polices,” and recommend changes.
He said over a two-and-a-half-month period, Burlington police made contact 84 times with a single person who struggles with mental health issues, and is now in jail. Police interacted with another individual 10 times in a single week.
Murad said he hopes the assessment will change “the police alone being the responsive agency” in such situations.
Cina also emphasized that point: “The police have ended up becoming these frontline mental health workers who aren’t trained to be mental health workers,” which he said creates a “culture of oppression.”
The assessment, though, may raise new questions about the number of officers on the force.
In a September interview with VTDigger, police transformation director Dodson, who did not respond to an interview request for this story, said the assessment would look for “data that helps us get at whatever the number is of uniformed police officers is,” ultimately, by evaluating how resources are allocated.
Murad told VTDigger in an email that he is eager for the assessment to get underway, “so that we can truly understand, from a data-driven, comprehensive standpoint, what our headcount should be.”
Cina said changing the officer count would be a “knee-jerk reaction.”
“Instead of jumping to that,” he said, “let’s take the time to do this process of police transformation. To really assess what police are doing and who should be doing that instead.”
For now, though, the Burlington Police Department remains bound to 74 officers — and the city continues its transformation efforts. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to get us there,” Cina said.
