On busy nights for police, the Burlington Police Department will dispatch officers quickly to high-priority calls and respond to less urgent calls at a later time.
The policy, called the Priority Response Plan, is being instituted because of low department staffing, acting Chief Jon Murad said at a Monday afternoon press conference. The policy is the department’s latest strategy for dealing with last summer’s Burlington City Council decision to cut officer staffing by 30% through attrition and reinvest the money in racial justice initiatives.
Murad also said he’s interested in applying to be the permanent police chief. The mayor’s office announced May 14 that the chief search will resume in June after being postponed because of Covid-19.
Murad said the urgency-based response plan is a way to avoid losing active police coverage between 3 and 7:30 a.m. Murad said that, after he warned in December that the police staffing shortage could lead to the 3-to-7:30 coverage gap, he’s heard considerable community concern about that possibility. The new priority plan will help avoid that.
This is not the first time the Burlington police have prioritized urgent calls over others when call volume is high, Murad said. But he wanted to issue a written policy as staffing drops will force police to put some calls on the back burner, he said.
“The reason police exist is to keep people safe by preventing and responding to crime and disorder with and for our neighbors,” Murad said. “But the disorder part may have to take a back seat when staffing is low, when incident volume is high, and when we are dealing with priority one and priority two incidents.”
Police will respond first to “priority one” calls — such things as assaults, overdoses and vehicle crashes. Priority two calls come next. They include mental health incidents and trespassing. Priority three calls are the least urgent and include noise complaints and vandalism.
City Council President Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, and Council Public Safety Committee Chair Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the new plan.
All calls will eventually get a response, Murad said. But department policy requires at least two officers at each incident response. With six or seven officers on the day and evening shifts, only three calls can be responded to at a time. The Burlington Police Department now has 77 officers available, down from 91 last summer.
Asked whether his policy will raise fears among residents that their calls will go unanswered, Murad said he wants to be honest with the community. He doesn’t think this plan affects public safety — low staffing does.
“I wanted to make certain that we are being as honest and forthright with our neighbors as possible,” Murad said. “And the point of this is to make certain that our neighbors can know where we are, so we can all work on this together and be in this situation together.”
The Burlington police have received City Council approval to hire 10 more community service officers and liaisons — unarmed positions that handle various duties in the department, to take pressure off overburdened cops. It can take seven months to hire and train these individuals, Murad said.
He doesn’t know when those positions will be filled or how long the urgency-based policy will be in force.
Since the policy took effect May 2, Burlington police have had a handful of instances where the “stacking” method of calls, from most urgent to least urgent, was used. Murad said he didn’t have numbers yet on how many calls the police received in those instances.
The department began to use the policy more frequently as of May 19.
“We had very, very large parties. We had incidents with robbery, gunfire, vandalism,” Murad said. “And it’s not simply the volume of those incidents. It is also the complexity of those incidents and the way in which they absorb police resources quickly.”
During the weekend, a massive party took place in the streets of Hickok Place, Isham Street and Loomis Street early Sunday morning. In a press release, police estimated 400 people, largely college students, flooded the streets. In the midst of it all, a fight had broken out and police received several reports of gunfire.
Additionally, early Saturday morning police responded to another report of gunfire after a large party on Isham Street. It’s not yet known if the incidents were related, according to a police press release, and Murad said Monday there are still no suspects in the case.
Police were also hit by vandalism last Monday. Police allege Micael Bizuneh smashed the windshields of six police cruisers, racking up $2,800 worth of damage. He was charged with felony mischief. Police said Bizuneh has been involved in similar acts of vandalism in Barre, Montpelier and Berlin.
A judge asked that Bizuneh be referred to a Howard Center mental health team, but it was not available, so Bizuneh was released. Bizuneh told officers he would be back to vandalize more cruisers.
On Saturday, he was arrested again and charged with vandalizing at least nine cars in downtown Burlington. When police approached him at the Committee on Temporary Shelter Daystation, they allege, he admitted to the vandalism. When he was taken to the police station, he spit directly into an officer’s eyes, police allege.
Bizunehwas being held for lack of $10,000 bail on multiple charges of vandalism and assault with bodily fluids.
In a statement, Mayor Miro Weinberger said the urgency-based response plan maintains public safety while police staff levels are low. Weinberger has consistently opposed the police staffing cuts.
“It is important for the community to understand that in serious incidents, when you need help, the BPD will respond,” Weinberger wrote. “The community should also know that the administration is focused on multiple strategies to keep this period of dramatically constrained public safety response resources as short as possible.”
On the search for a new police chief, Murad said he hopes the community will decide he offers what Burlington needs.
“I am very, very, very confident that I don’t think there’s somebody who’s going to care more about this police department, or who is going to have the, you know, the capacity to really look out for the men and women inside this police department and look out for our neighbors,” Murad said.
