This commentary is by Ron Jacobs, who works in Burlington and lives in Winooski.
Recently, Burlington’s Mayor Weinberger suspended the search for a new police chief for the city. In his press release announcing his decision, he wrote that “(The) City Council actions over the last year … have weakened the department and undermined the chief’s role. (This) has made a successful search impossible at this time.”
If the action the mayor was referring to involved the council calling for a citizen review board and creating community liaison positions when he wrote this, then yes, the chief’s role was theoretically weakened.
However, the way many of Burlington’s residents and those who work in Burlington see it is different. Indeed, many in Burlington consider these moves, however incomplete they might be currently, to be the beginning of a process that gives residents more oversight over the men and women whose job gives them a certain level of power over the lives of anyone inside city limits.
The chief and the department should not be operating as a world unto its own, nor as an enforcement agency designed mostly for those with property and capital, but for all who live and work in our town.
If no candidate has applied for the position yet for the reasons Mayor Weinberger wants us to believe, that seems to be a good thing. Not only are they saving theirs and the city’s time, they are leaving the way open for applicants who are truly interested in helping to redesign the city’s police force in a way that can lead to a new understanding between the Burlington Police Department and the vast majority of Burlington’s residents and workforce.
It is important to remember that the last police chief (del Pozo) Mayor Weinberger selected was rushed through the hiring process despite public opposition. It’s equally important to remember that Chief del Pozo resigned under pressure due to unprofessional conduct that was possibly against the law.
Given this and the desire of many Burlington residents to reform the Burlington Police Department, waiting a few more months for more candidates acceptable to the City Council and those who elected them is the proper path to follow.
This may not sit well with certain political forces in Burlington, but the truth is the time for changing the way police are managed and allowed to behave is way overdue. The idea that they should monitor their own employees without outside oversight that can effectively discipline errant officers places those officers outside the laws they are hired to enforce.
The existing mechanism reinforces the perception among the public (and the police) that they can get away with behavior the rest of us would be hauled into court for. Burlington has been fortunate in that it has not seen the worst excesses that this so-called qualified immunity can produce, at least not in the past three or four years. In other words, Burlington police have not murdered any unarmed individuals, like police have in so many other towns and cities across the land during that period.
Hiring a police chief who truly understood that their department’s role is to serve the people who live, work and visit Burlington, even if they personally don’t agree with or even like those persons, is a crucial part of changing how officers are perceived and how officers interact with the public.
While acknowledging the difficulty police officers often face in their duties, that difficulty is no excuse to abuse members of the public. There is a better way to police. Establishing that better way will require police, politicians, property owners and the rest of us to drop certain assumptions.
It also means that some will have to relinquish some power they are too used to having. The mayor and city council of Burlington need to exercise patience and continue to look for the person who responds positively to the changes demanded by those who challenged the Burlington Police Department’s status quo in the streets and the city council. It will be worth the wait.
