This commentary is by Charlie Smith, a self-employed consultant specializing in transitional leadership. He has lived in Burlington for 39 years.
In the wake of Burlington’s recent knife and gun incidents, Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak reassured us that safety is her administration’s top priority. She said the incidents “point to larger work our community must do to interrupt conditions that lead people to act violently.”
These words admit that Burlington is stuck. They don’t lead in any new or better direction. They don’t rally us to a higher calling of mercy, justice or accountability. They don’t convey frustration or determination. Burlington is on fire with hard drugs, retail theft and vandalism, not to mention knifing and weapons incidents. Another press statement about “interrupting conditions” is simply not enough.
Let’s say it out loud: Selling drugs is a violent crime. The perpetrators are criminals who destroy lives for profit. It is obvious and pervasive criminality and needs to be removed from Burlington’s streets. Passively allowing drug markets to persist is neither just nor merciful.
And, yes, eradicating drug sales in Burlington will disrupt the lives of addicts. This will call on us to provide much better alternatives for those who now shoot up, pass out or overdose in public. Humility demands we acknowledge limits to our ability to mend lives. But we can remove fuel from the fire by attacking drug sales, and we can offer treatment to those in need, in the mayor’s words, to interrupt the conditions and achieve a better future for everyone.
Some will depict this as an attack on the most vulnerable. Not so. It is specifically aimed at a lawless element. Across the income spectrum, all law-abiding citizens are victims, including the children who are routinely exposed to drug activity as they walk to school, the library, city playgrounds, the King Street Center or the Boys and Girls Club. In fact, the front-line victims of the drug culture are often the poverty-stricken, mentally ill or both who live on the streets or in unpoliced public housing and can’t escape the daily violence. If we actually stamp out the drug sales, it will become much easier to address the needs of vulnerable, law-abiding neighbors who are striving for stability and security.
The drug sellers need to know that the citizens, the police and the mayor are resolved to drive them out. We are hostile to the damage they inflict on other human beings, on Burlington merchants and families, and on Burlington’s reputation as a spectacular city in which to live, recreate, raise a family, work, attend college, shop or just visit.
If safety is the mayor’s top priority, she can act boldly to back up the rhetoric with a few clear statements. She could say: I will marshal city, county, state and federal law enforcement resources to stamp out the open-air drug markets in Burlington. The policing actions will be lawful, definitive and conclusive. Burlington will no longer be passive on drug enforcement. I will back up the Burlington police as they lawfully execute their front-line theft and drug interdiction roles.
She could add that Burlington, with her leadership, will double down with the state of Vermont, the University of Vermont Medical Center, Howard Center, Spectrum Youth and Family Center, COTS and other agencies so users of illegal drugs are offered treatment and other appropriate recovery services, and that those who refuse help will have to go elsewhere to find drugs. In this spirit, she might further add that Burlington will welcome an additional methadone or other medicinal treatment clinic, but will not enable the consumption of illegally obtained drugs. By compromising on the needle exchange, she might find more common ground with the state and elicit more cooperation from the governor.
In addition to more aggressive drug interdiction, she could declare that thieves and vandals will be arrested and prosecuted and that serial offenders will go to prison, and acknowledge that, yes, sometimes prison is a necessary step in modifying bad behavior. That said, she could reenergize and elevate restorative justice as the preferred route to accountability for low-level offenders, so they can avoid prison, make amends with their victims and bend their behavior back in a positive direction. She might also seek procedural changes so the parents of minors who serially commit theft and other crimes will share legal responsibility for the antisocial acts of their children.
Personally, I am committed to living in Burlington for the long term and have no intention of aging anywhere else. As a lifelong citizen of this city, as the former interim executive of many Burlington-based organizations including the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, the Flynn Center and ECHO, and as a former secretary of human services and of administration for Vermont, I say it is long past time to step up the fight against the drug markets, to step up the drug treatment alternatives, intercede aggressively on theft and vandalism, and restore Burlington as a special, spectacular small city.
