Updated at 7:14 p.m.
More than two years after Burlington’s previous police chief resigned, Mayor Miro Weinberger has nominated the city’s interim top cop for the job.
Acting Chief Jon Murad, who previously served as deputy chief until taking over the department in 2020, was introduced as the mayor’s nominee at a Thursday afternoon press conference.
But the nomination of Murad faces steep odds to win the City Council’s approval at its meeting Monday.
All six Progressive councilors plan to vote against Murad’s appointment, the caucus said in a statement hours after the announcement. A 6-6 vote would shut down Murad’s nomination, though the caucus hinted it had even more support among the 12-member body.
“We are disappointed that the Mayor has chosen to move forward despite knowing that more than half of the Council is opposed,” Progressives said in the statement. “This appointment is divisive, controversial, and has cost the City months of time.”
In response to their statement, Weinberger Chief-of-Staff Jordan Redell said in a statement: “Progressives appear to be ready to undermine the Police Department once again by refusing to confirm a highly qualified candidate. For the good of the City and for the sake of progress on our many public safety challenges, let’s hope they come to their senses before Monday.”
Progressives’ opposition to Murad stems from what they see as a need to reform policing in Burlington. With nationwide outrage over the murder of George Floyd as a backdrop, Progressive councilors launched a campaign in summer 2020 to transform the city’s approach to public safety, backing a proposed charter change that would give citizens disciplinary power in cases of police misconduct and reduce the number of officers the city could hire by 30%.
While Weinberger and Murad acknowledged the racial disparities in the city’s policing, the mayor contended the drop in officers has only disintegrated public safety in the city.
“No one in recent memory has seen the downtown at times (as) out of control and, really, scary for many members of the public, as it was at times this past summer,” Weinberger said at the press conference, calling Murad a chief who could “stabilize” the police department.
Weinberger acknowledged the opposition to Murad’s nomination but asked councilors to reassess their position and give the acting chief a fresh start.
“Permanent chiefs have more authority, more credibility and can lead in a different way than even the best acting chiefs,” Weinberger said.
Murad seconded Weinberger’s request, telling the 50 or so people gathered in City Hall’s Contois Auditorium — including his father, wife and roughly a dozen officers — that the acting chief role felt like a “20-month job interview.”
“I don’t think that anyone here who has ever hired people has sat with an applicant or a candidate who got every single part right,” Murad said. “There’s always something where you say, ‘You know what, that one could have been a little different. That one could have been a little better.’”
While Murad was one of two finalists for the police chief position, the other candidate in the pool withdrew his application Jan. 14, before city staff could interview him, Weinberger said.
In addition to criticisms of Murad’s time at the helm of the police department, some city leaders have also cried foul over Weinberger’s process to select Murad.
In interviews with VTDigger last month, Police Commissioner Melo Grant said the search process lacked integrity, while Councilor Jane Stromberg, P-Ward 8, said the mayor’s police chief search committee was “probably one of the most corrupt things I have ever seen this city take part in.”
Weinberger rebuked those comments at the Thursday press conference.
“I don’t think there’s any specific evidence anyone can point to that backs that up,” he said. “I put my back into (hiring a new police chief), and the suggestion otherwise is baseless.”
Weinberger also said that councilors would adhere to recent precedent if they were to confirm Murad’s nomination. As executive of the city, he hopes to face little interference in assembling his own leadership team, he said.
The mayor and other members of his administration still sat down with Murad for a formal interview Jan. 18, according to Redell, the mayor’s chief of staff. Members of the police chief search committee were not invited to join that interview because “the stated goal of the committee was to recommend finalist candidates to the mayor. At that stage, we only had one candidate,” she wrote in a text.
The mayor’s decision to proceed with interviewing two candidates for the position followed months of clashes with the City Council over how to expand the position’s pool of applicants, which both sides said was too small and too homogenous.
In November, Weinberger announced he would suspend the search and wait for additional candidates before starting interviews. However, he wrote in a memo, the council would have to approve five items that he said would help the position attract top candidates, including raising its posted salary.
While councilors did not acquiesce to the pay bump, they passed a resolution in December acting on another one of the items: a request to spend up to $75,000 on an executive recruitment firm to find candidates.
Yet Weinberger effectively vetoed that resolution, saying he could not spend money on a search firm if councilors did not first raise the position’s salary. Burlington has been looking for a permanent police chief since December 2019 when former Chief Brandon del Pozo resigned amid a social media scandal. He was succeeded by acting Chief Jennifer Morrison, who resigned in September 2020, citing a mix of personal reasons and frustration with the City Council for cutting the number of police officers.
