The final copy of an internal assessment of the Burlington Police Department says the force should have a new officer cap of 77 to 80 — not counting eight officers assigned to staff Burlington International Airport.
The 161-page report, made public Friday afternoon, was compiled by the CNA Consulting firm. It says the city requires between 72 and 75 sworn officers on active duty to meet the city’s demands. To account for attrition, that range should be increased by five, the report says, to an officer cap of 77 to 80 sworn officers.
If the city were to count the eight officers stationed at the airport, the cap would reach 88 officers.
Now, the police department has a 74-officer headcount cap, a limit instituted when the city council voted last summer to cut the number of officers by 30% through attrition and reinvest the money into racial justice initiatives. The move inflamed a public debate about whether it was the correct course of action and was a factor in leading officers to leave the force. Currently, there are 70 officers on staff, down from 91 in June 2020.
The highly anticipated CNA report is expected to guide the City Council’s decision on whether to keep the 74-officer cap or raise it.
Mayor Miro Weinberger highlighted the higher officer cap range of 85 to 88 officers Friday afternoon in a press release about the final report. In the past year, he specifically criticized progressives for cutting the department’s headcount cap and resisting calls to raise it above 74 officers.
A draft copy of the assessment was obtained by Seven Days in mid-September. The alt-weekly reported that draft found the department needs between 76 and 83 officers.
Following publication of the Seven Days story, Weinberger cautioned that the report’s contents could change following city review. He said the leak was unfortunate and he hoped a “premature analysis” would not “erode the public’s confidence in the final report.”
In Friday’s press release, he said he thinks the assessment will be an important tool for reaching consensus on public safety.
“I am pleased to see that CNA affirms several priorities of the administration, including restoring the number of sworn officers to an effective and sufficient level, as I have advocated for throughout the last year,” Weinberger said.
The report also recommends cracking down on racial disparities in policing through bias training, building community engagement channels, creating a detailed traffic stop data system, investigating use-of-force incidents for racial bias specifically, reviewing and updating department policies such as use of force, and establishing a community mental health advisory committee.
In a statement Friday afternoon, acting Police Chief Jon Murad said he’s “grateful” for the assessment and “eager” to implement some of its recommendations.
He said he’s “very much in favor” of a crisis intervention team, which the report suggests, to address mental health crises. He said he doesn’t agree with CNA’s assessment of the department’s training, which he called “robust” and goes beyond state requirements. He also challenged the report’s recommendations to relocate the department’s Domestic Violence Prevention Officer and to reduce the number of Chittenden Unit for Special Investigations officers.
Reenvisioning airport officer staffing
The report states that officers assigned to the airport have been “inappropriately negotiated” into the Burlington Police Officer Association contract — an agreement the report asserts has inhibited staffing flexibility in the department.
The report recognizes that the Federal Aviation Administration requires three police officers at each airport checkpoint, of which the Burlington airport has three. But it also states that, while the airport is owned by the Burlington city government, the officers do not have to be supplied by the Burlington police force. Other nearby police could supply officers, too.
It also recommends the airport employ, at the minimum, six full-time officers. Currently the airport employs eight.
If the city continues to employ officers at the airport, the assessment recommends that they not be included in the overall police headcount because they do not respond to Burlington calls for service.
While the report found that the city council was right to decrease the number of officers so the force could more align with the needs of the Burlington community, it noted that last summer’s cuts seriously demoralized officers. It says the Burlington Police Department is “presently understaffed” compared to the volume of calls it handles but relies on an “inefficient staffing model.”
The assessment recommends the police department move from 10-hour shifts to 12-hour shifts, which CNA says “produces the most efficient combination of officer deployment and days off schedule.”
Will a new officer cap be pursued?
Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, told VTDigger on Friday that she would support the 77-to-80 officer count and separation of Burlington airport officers, pending union agreements.
She said she still thinks reducing the department’s ranks was the correct move. If she had this report in hand last summer, she would have supported cutting the police force to 80 officers, not 74. However, based on the information the council had at the time, she does not think the 74-officer cap was an unreasonable number.
She said she’s spoken with a number of Burlington officers and understands why they have been feeling defensive or attacked, but she doesn’t think officers would have been open to change if the council had not made its decision last summer.
“I think that it was just two such different views of how public safety should be, clashing,” Hightower said. “And I’m not sure that was ever not going to be a painful process. And that’s hard because I don’t think that we’ve ended up, right now, in a better place than we would like to be.”
She said there will have to be some reconciliation between councilors and police officers as public safety is reimagined because she does want them to feel like valued members of the community.
City Council President Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, would not tell VTDigger on Friday if he would support a new 77-80 officer cap and separation of the airport officers. He said he does not want to focus solely on the officer cap. He wants to also focus on the report’s recommendations on police oversight and officer shift staffing.
Tracy still thinks the city needs an independent, police oversight group with investigatory powers, a proposal the assessment does not explicitly endorse. It does support expanding the power of the current citizen oversight Police Commission, which is now only an advisory board.
“I think we need to get away from this idea that our public safety system is dependent on a cap and use this report as a tool to move forward a holistic reimagining of our public safety system,” Tracy said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story understated the CNA report’s recommendation on the minimum number of officers to be stationed at the Burlington International Airport.
