Former Burlington police chief Brandon del Pozo has stepped down from the Howard Center board of trustees.
In a statement posted to Twitter Thursday afternoon, del Pozo said he resigned because he has moved to the Adirondacks.
“The people and rhythms of Vermont are becoming more distant to me,” del Pozo wrote. “It’s only fitting that my seat on the board be filled by a person closer to the heart of your community. It is with feelings of satisfaction, thankfulness and pride that I conclude my service.”
His resignation follows calls from the Peace and Justice Center and a petition from the union representing Howard Center employees demanding that he be removed from the board. Critics cite a December 2019 scandal that cost del Pozo his job as police chief.
That December, it was revealed to the public that del Pozo set up an anonymous Twitter account to troll a local activist and critic, Charles Winkleman. Del Pozo later lied to a Seven Days reporter about whether the account was his. He had come clean to Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger about it in July 2019, but the information didn’t become public until December.
“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 states. Winkleman had once been employed as a community health worker with the Howard Center.
The Howard Center, one of the state’s largest organizations that provides mental health, disability and substance abuse services, was pursuing an investigation into whether del Pozo should remain on its board.
del Pozo told VTDigger he was interviewed as part of the investigation in the fall but had not been briefed on the results. The probe in no way prompted his resignation, he said.
Del Pozo joined the board in 2018; his term would have ended this year. “The Howard Center board was extremely supportive of my service there,” del Pozo said. “I just felt that 2021 was a good time to look in other directions.”
Del Pozo is now working as a researcher on issues of addiction and public health interventions with Rhode Island’s Miriam Hospital and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. In national media, he has touted himself as a progressive law enforcement expert, prompting some locals to call him a hypocrite because he did not reform his own department to address issues of police violence.
Winkleman had told Seven Days that Howard Center board chair Deb Stenner had sent him an email stating that del Pozo had resigned in late December “before the full board had the opportunity to discuss the results” of the investigation. She also said because del Pozo had resigned, “in the end no action was necessary.” The report would not be made public because it “is a confidential attorney-client communication,” she said.
Winkleman declined to discuss that email with VTDigger or provide a copy. He told VTDigger via Twitter that, if the Howard Center had “nothing to hide, they’d release the report.”
Neither Stenner nor Bob Bick, CEO of the Howard Center, responded to requests for comment.
“Why work on an investigation about whether Brandon tried to get me fired and then never release it?,” Winkleman said. “If it proved his innocence, why wouldn’t they release it instead of hiding behind a ‘client/lawyer confidentiality’ that the lawyer is held to, not them?”
The center’s lawyers interviewed him for the investigation, he said, but it was “suggested I keep the conversation confidential so that the investigation could be done fully.” Winkleman told Seven Days that lawyers asked him about del Pozo’s social media use, as well as his own, and at times he felt like he “was on trial.” He said lawyers also implied to him that he would be able to see the report.
Del Pozo said any claims that the Howard Center is trying to protect him by concealing the report are “baseless.”
