This commentary is by Namaya, a poet-artist and peace activist who has been a leader in police reform in Brattleboro for many years. He was one of the leaders for the Civilian Police Review Board.
I am cautiously optimistic with Norma Hardy as the new Brattleboro police chief. An African American woman with extensive professional police experience is a significant step in the right direction, but only the first step. As Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I am waiting to see the content of Chief Hardy’s character, courage and commitment to community policing. I am also curious how the town and Brattleboro Police Department will help to support her. It is like the African American tradition of jumping over the broom for newlyweds, leaping toward the unknown future, and sweeping aside the past.
Brattleboro faces a host of problems that directly impact our community’s long-term viability and the police department. We are a town of 12,000, a mecca for the homeless, plagued by opioid use, and a sanctuary for drug dealers. I was in the Flat Street parking lot and there was a man in his silver car, selling drugs. I asked two cops in front of the parking office, “Do you want to look into this?” They replied, “No, we can’t. It’s an ongoing investigation.”
I love Vermont and our home on Blue Heron Pond, and I am profoundly saddened to see the decline of our community. We have the most extensive stock of low-income housing with Windham Land Trust, and while its goals are commendable, it does not contribute fairly to the economic well-being of our community; in fact, it does the opposite. We are not addressing the chronic multigenerational poverty of native Vermonters.
In our town, we have a vast not-for-profit sector that does not equitably contribute to the tax base, a declining grand list (according to the assessor), and one of Vermont’s highest homeowner property tax rates.
Much of the burden of this and a bloated police department falls squarely on the backs of homeowners. Our town has a prodigious appetite for expensive dinners at the PC Café, but only has a modest McDonald’s budget. The new $14 million police station is only one of those white elephant expenses that the taxpayers did not want.
It is to this milieu we welcome Chief Hardy. Hopefully, in partnership, she can help tackle the systemic problems of drug trafficking, policing and community safety. The town spends far more on law enforcement than prevention, which has led to a police department that costs about 20% of the town’s annual budget. Guilford and many surrounding villages have no police department and rely on the county sheriff’s department for a fraction of the cost of what we spend.
Perhaps into this mix of community safety, we need more mental health professionals, and true linkages to social services. When the Brattleboro Police Department gets out of the mode of a paramilitary operation and truly takes up the mantle of community policing, we will have begun to address these problems.
However, Brattleboro and the police department have profound structural problems stemming from years of mismanagement and lack of professional leadership. The issue of racism and bias in the department is only one small part, though it is the most visible. Unfortunately, our town has never had an educated professional chief. Perhaps, with the well-credentialed Chief Hardy, this may begin a new chapter. What is desperately needed is a new partnership of all the taxpayers and the Brattleboro Police Department, and creating a viable Community Police Review Board that voters had endorsed.
Despite the efforts of many well-meaning police officers, the Brattleboro department has had a long history of misconduct. (Far too many for this short essay). Does the town and new chief have the courage to sweep out the department, perhaps in how Hercules cleaned out the Augean stables?
I am concerned that Chief Hardy said, “We need to increase the size of the police force and improve retention of officers.” At this point, she does not realize what had been done previously. For example, the police have this mythic number of 27 cops as a full complement. This is not based on data. The Brattleboro Police Department has never had an extensive independent review of its operations, and most of the decisions and management are not evidence-based or founded on contemporary police practice.
Can the town truly afford to spend 20% of its budget on policing? Perhaps our goal should be 10% of the town budget. Do we need those cruisers who often sit idly in the lot? Why are many of the cops’ salaries and retirement packages consistently inflated by overtime pay?
I was at a representative town meeting, and the representatives ha agreed to make Brattleboro the best for the retirement of any police department in Vermont. I objected and asked, “Where are the facts that support this? Where are the studies that suggest this would be efficacious?”
A show of hands passed that motion, and Brattleboro taxpayers continue to pay for this impetuousness. These decisions and the $14 million fiasco of the new police building, which most taxpayers had opposed, leave me skeptical of the town administration and the police department.
I hope that Chief Hardy listens to the diversity of taxpayers’ perspectives and reads the extensive community dialogues on policing over the past 20 years. Instead of increasing police, we need to have more mental health professionals, and resources to help people in crisis.
The best medicine is prevention. In this era where it is difficult to recruit new cops, perhaps this new era with Chief Hardy presents an opportunity to rethink policing and community safety. Many of these issues we are currently talking about had been discussed in public forums 20 years ago, and yet the town management had refused to implement those suggested changes.
Sadly, one of the previous chiefs not only ignored the dialogues, but he told me he destroyed those records. Fortunately, I had kept a copy. Even the Community Police Board that voters overwhelmingly passed was watered down to a virtually worthless entity. It is time to reinvigorate the Civilian Police Review Board and make it genuinely viable as it was intended, and create true partnerships between police and community, and simply not a cup of coffee with a cop or a ride-along.
I want the cops to take off their sunglasses and not walk around the town like a mini-SWAT team with bulletproof vests. We, as citizens, need to take off our blinders. Perhaps we can all meet, eye to eye, and forge a new direction? Yes, where appropriate, support our cops, but they must be held to account like all town employees.
Chief Hardy, my best wishes, and I am cautiously optimistic that we can have community policing that focuses on prevention, promotes diversity and safety, and is cost-effective.
