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. He compiles an annual report of Vermont police fatals. Gilbert lives in Worcester and is the author of “Equal Is Equal, Fair Is Fair,” a book about equity issues in Vermont.
There was one deadly police shooting in Vermont in 2023, one fewer than in 2022. So far in the 2020s, five individuals have died at the hands of police.
The victim was a Fair Haven man, Kenneth Barber Jr., 38. He was on furlough, from a second-degree murder conviction, when he got into a fight with neighbors in Fair Haven on June 19, 2023. The neighbors were able to restrain Barber until a Fair Haven police officer, Detective Shaun Hewitt, arrived on the scene. With Hewitt’s help, a neighbor took from Barber a gun he was carrying. But Barber then broke free, jumped into his car, and started to drive away. Hewitt stood by the open driver-side door of the car, warning Barber not to drive off. Hewitt attempted to use pepper-spray to incapacitate Barber, but the canister didn’t work.
Barber began backing up; Hewitt feared he’d be cupped by the open door and dragged to the ground. He took out his gun and fired once, hitting Barber and disabling him. Hewitt got his first-aid kit and, with the help of a nurse who was passing by, administered first-aid before an ambulance arrived and took Barber to the hospital. Barber died shortly thereafter. An autopsy showed an alcohol level three times the legal limit, as well as the presence of naloxone, used to reverse drug overdoses.
If the current rate of police shootings so far this decade continues, the state will add a second double-digit decade of fatal shootings. The first was the 2010s, when police were involved in 17 fatal shootings, an all-time high. The average rate over the last 50 years has been 7.6 fatal shootings per decade, and over 100 years, 4.1 per decade.
Following the burst of killings in the 2010s, the legislature in 2020 passed a new police use-of-force law. It emphasizes avoidance of deadly force in all but the most extreme circumstances.
When 2020 ended with no fatal shootings, it seemed Vermont had perhaps turned a corner. But now, four years later, the pace of deadly encounters seems to be returning, suggesting Vermont still has not found effective alternatives to deadly use of force in police interactions with citizens.
Noteworthy about the 2023 killing is that Barber indicated he wanted to die, yelling at police to shoot him. Barber had no deadly weapon with him at the time he was shot; his gun had been taken away from him. In the Vermont attorney general’s review of the case, she spoke specifically to the officer’s fear of his life due to his standing by the open driver-side door as Mills began backing up.
“Pursuant to 13 V.S.A. § 2305(3), under the totality of the circumstances, Detective Hewitt reasonably believed that he was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily harm and was, therefore, justified in using deadly force to defend himself,” Attorney General Charity Clark said.
One of the two 2022 fatal police shooting victims, Michael Mills, also sought “death by cop.” In that case, Mills had a gun and pointed it at the officer who confronted him, who then fired a single shot and killed him. Mills had made numerous suicidal statements to police in phone calls he made the day he was killed.
The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force” project tracked 1,144 police fatals nationally in 2023, 44 higher than the number in 2022. The number has climbed steadily since the Post started the database in 2015. Post reporters had found, following the fatal police shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, that there was no accurate national tracking of such police “fatals.” The Post reported police shootings totaled 995 in 2015, far higher than reports provided by law enforcement. Post reporters have provided annual reports since then. The Post database can be found here.
