The Burlington City Council on Monday night agreed to revisit the controversial cap on the number of officers in the city’s police department.
The measure was one of several public-safety-focused items on the council’s agenda last night in response to a rash of violent crime in the past several weeks.
Passed by a 9-3 vote, the resolution charges officials in the police department with providing recommendations on staffing levels to the council by Dec. 9. Democrats had originally proposed removing the cap altogether but agreed to change the resolution Monday night.
The issue has loomed over the council for years since June 2020, when the Progressive-led body voted to reduce the department’s ranks by 30% — from 105 to 74 — through attrition. That cap was later raised to 87 in 2021.
Burlington’s department currently has only 67 officers — a number its police chief has called “simply inadequate for what we want to be able to provide to our community.”
The police officer cap has remained a point of contention among Progressive and Democratic councilors — and a persistent focal point in criticism against the city. Monday’s five-hour meeting was often testy, with some Progressive councilors criticizing Democrats for not consulting them before introducing the resolution.
Progressive councilors suggested the move would do little to bolster the department’s recruitment. Police agencies throughout Vermont — and across the country — have struggled to hire and retain officers in recent years.
More than two dozen attendees on Monday urged the council to pass the original resolution to lift the cap on police officers. Among them was Bram Kranichfeld, the Franklin County state’s attorney and a former Burlington city councilor, who said the city is “undoubtedly in the midst of a public safety crisis.”
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Burlington has faced growing challenges related to homelessness and substance use disorder. It’s also grappled with a rise in property crime and certain types of violent crime over the past four years.
The council’s action comes just two weeks after a Stowe man was shot and killed outside the Church Street bar Red Square. A South Burlington woman has pleaded not guilty to murder in the case, which allegedly followed a dispute over drinks inside the establishment.
The homicide occurred amid a spate of violent crime throughout the city, and as University of Vermont students returned to Burlington for the fall semester.
Several types of crimes, including aggravated assault, burglary and larceny have increased significantly in the city since 2019, according to data from Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad’s annual reports, which were cited in the council’s resolution.
Gunfire incidents since 2019 have increased by 300%, according to the data. Drug overdoses, meanwhile, have increased by over 1000% in the same time period.
Democratic councilors pointed to these statistics as well as anecdotal reports in support of examining the department’s staff limits. Councilor Tim Doherty called the current officer cap “woefully out of date and superseded by events in the last several years.”
“This is made overwhelmingly, and I would say, indisputably clear by the statistics on crime in the city, but even more so by the lived experience of our community,” he said.
The number of police officers in the department, he added, “never should have been a political football, and it certainly shouldn’t be a political football now.”
The council was not in full agreement. Three Progressive councilors — Marek Broderick, Melo Grant and Joe Kane — voted no, with Grant calling the resolution “symbolic,” and “performative.”
“I just cannot get past this idea that the problem with recruitment is that we have a cap of 87 officers when we don’t even have 70 (officers),” Broderick said. “We are constantly bringing up the cap when we cannot even reach the cap.”
“It’s not what we should be focusing on,” he said.
The council did find more consensus, however, on a resolution to address gun violence in the city. Passed unanimously, that resolution asks state lawmakers to approve a 2014 Burlington charter change that would ban firearms from city establishments that sell alcohol.
The resolution also asks lawmakers to create harsher penalties for individuals who possess stolen firearms.
The legislation has lagged in the Statehouse for a decade. Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, during her time as a state representative, introduced H.98, which would have moved the charter change forward. But the bill “never received a walk-through or a hearing,” she said in a letter to the community.
“Burlington has waited 10 years to address a very, very common sense and well evidence-based solution to removing guns from a highly sensitive location,” Mulvaney-Stanak said during the council meeting, “and I am just sorry to Burlingtonians, and the entire state for that matter, that the Legislature hasn’t been able to get to this point long before where we are today in Burlington.”
Two more public safety measures on the agenda were postponed until the council’s Sept. 23 meeting. One would have committed the city to establishing a “a public safety hub or kiosk,” near Church Street, while another would have jump-started the process to revamp the department’s North Avenue headquarters.
