This commentary is by Allen Gilbert, a former journalist, teacher and ACLU-VT executive director. In 2019, he researched fatal police shootings in Vermont over the 50 years from 1970 to 2019. He followed that in 2020 by examining the previous 50 years, from 1920 to 1969. Gilbert lives in Worcester and is the author of “Equal Is Equal, Fair Is Fair,” a book about equity issues in Vermont.
Two people were fatally shot by Vermont police in 2022, the same number of law enforcement “fatals” as in the previous year, 2021.
Both years stand in contrast to 2020, when there were no fatal police shootings — the first time since 2009 when no one in Vermont was killed by law enforcement.
The Legislature had passed a new police use-of-force law in 2020, emphasizing the avoidance of use of deadly force in all but the most extreme circumstances. When that year ended with no fatal shootings, it seemed Vermont had turned a corner.
But now, two consecutive years of double fatals have followed, suggesting Vermont still has not found effective alternatives to deadly use of force in police interactions with citizens.
Both of the 2022 deaths occurred in the summer, less than a month apart.
- The first fatal shooting occurred July 19 in West Brattleboro, when three officers shot and killed a man being sought for the murder of his ex-girlfriend. The officers saw the suspect, Matthew Davis, 34, walking on a street in West Brattleboro. He ran when police tried to approach him. When he stepped out from behind some trees, he was holding a knife. He ran down a hill directly toward the three officers, refusing their orders to stop and drop the knife.
A Brattleboro officer, Ryder Carbone, fired his gun three times, and two Vermont State Police officers, Det. Sgts. Jesse Robson and Samuel Truex, fired multiple rounds from a distance of 8 to 12 feet away, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
In the AG’s review of the shooting completed two months later, investigators deemed all three officers were “justified” in their actions: “Under Vermont law, an officer may use deadly force to repel an imminent threat to cause death or serious bodily injury when the officer objectively and reasonably believes that a person has the present ability, opportunity, and apparent intent to immediately cause death or serious bodily injury.”
- The second shooting occurred Aug. 15 in Ludlow. A Cavendish man, Michael Mills, 35, was distraught, calling the Ludlow Police Department more than two dozen times, threatening suicide. He was reported driving erratically around Ludlow, including through the police station parking lot.
Two Ludlow officers, Officer Zachary Paul and Cpl. Jeffrey Warfle, pursued him in what became a high-speed chase that ended with Mills crashing into a tree. When the officers approached the car, Mills pointed a gun at Warfle. Warfle yelled to Paul, and Paul shot Mills in the head.
Mills was taken to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., where he died 10 days later, on Aug. 25. Paul, 21, had graduated from the Vermont Police Academy only a month before the incident. He was with Warfle as part of his training with the Ludlow Police Department.
Reviews undertaken by the Vermont Attorney General’s Office and the Orange County state’s attorney cleared both officers. In a joint statement, they said that Paul’s use of force was “objectively reasonable and justified.” Given the circumstances, there was “no alternative but to use deadly force,” they said.
If fatal police shootings continue at the same rate for the rest of the 2020s, 13 people will be killed in the decade. That would be the second-highest rate for all decades since 1920. The highest rate was in the 2010s, when police were involved in 17 fatal shootings. The average rate over the last 50 years has been 7.6 fatal shootings per decade and over 100 years, 4.1 per decade.
The Vermont Legislature worked with the Department of Public Safety in 2020 to revise use-of-force laws with a goal of bending the rapidly rising curve of police shootings. While the state may still be able to tamp down the surge in fatal shootings that began in the 2010s, moving the needle back to where it was in mid-20th century Vermont seems unlikely (and even less likely in returning it to where it was in the 1920s).
The U.S. has become a more violent, and deadly, society. More guns are sold, and they can be used to deadly effect — by citizens or police. The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force” project tracked 1,100 police fatals nationally in 2022. It’s the highest annual national level since The Post started the database project in 2015.
Vermont needs to continue its conversation about police use of force — a subject that remains cloaked in murky interpretations of cloudy U.S. Supreme Court decisions. While the state’s new use-of-force law is considered one of the most progressive such laws in the country, it’s still leading to high numbers of deadly police shootings.
