This commentary is by Brian Clifford, an abolitionist mutual aid organizer working in and around Burlington.
We can’t police our way to making downtown Burlington feel safe. I do not mean we shouldn’t. I’m not saying we should choose a higher path rooted in care and healing. I mean we can’t, as in, it is literally not possible at this time.
The idea that increased police presence will deter scary behaviors downtown makes logical sense. It’s been Burlington Police Department policy since 2023. If you are plugged into city politics, you may have seen interim Police Chief Shawn Burke share charts showing that police incidents are at an all-time high. Since the department refers to incidents as “a measure of police activity,” it is accurate to say that police have been more active downtown over the last three years than during the pre-2020 glory days, when they had over 90 sworn officers.
A closer look at the data shows that Burke has responded to public pressure to boost police presence downtown. Under Burke, downtown’s share of citywide incidents rose from 30% to 39%, while downtown’s share of foot patrols rose from 72% to 92%. When you consider that the department’s sworn officer count continues to fall — reported as 55 in a recent City Council Public Safety Committee meeting — you can see there are no more cops to place downtown. You may also wonder how responsible it is to allocate nearly all foot patrols downtown when over 60% of violent police incidents citywide have historically occurred outside of downtown.
And if you think seasonal deployments of Vermont state troopers are the answer, there is one big problem with this approach: The troopers rarely arrest or even cite anyone. According to the Burlington Free Press, troopers logged 680 patrol hours during their most recent stint downtown. They made two arrests and issued three citations. When you consider that a trooper with one year of service makes $91,916.20, a very conservative estimate is that taxpayers spent over $30,000 for two arrests and three citations. I’m not sure how this scales, but it seems as if we may run out of money before noticing any impact.
So we can’t have more cops downtown because more cops do not exist. But what if cops simply enforce the laws we have, as so many armchair legal experts suggest?
Burke has said police cannot simply roll out tougher enforcement due to legal restrictions at the state and federal levels: Bail statutes don’t allow it, so nonviolent offenders are either issued a citation or arraigned, depending on their situation. He has admitted the police department is often criticized by members of the public, but points out that police do not have the authority to blanket search people for drugs on the street, and making arrests for open drug use is very difficult to do legally.
As if to provide everyone an example of these limitations, the police department arrested 11 people in an August crackdown on drug-related activity in City Hall Park. Following the arrests, Burke reported that most of the people arrested were cited and released. He acknowledged that the arrests were about the optics of cleaning up the park, adding that it was not the best use of the drug unit’s time and that the department would be better served focusing on “mid- to upper-level traffickers.”
So if you interpret Burlington Forward’s call to “Strengthen Accountability for Unlawful Conduct” as a demand to lock up more poor people you see downtown, you should know that doing so is not legal. And if it were legal, county judges and prosecutors probably wouldn’t want to lock more people up. And if they wanted to, the prisons are all full. And if the prisons were not all full, our police chief is telling you that arresting poor people you see downtown is not the way to stop drug trafficking.
The overlapping crises we are seeing in Burlington are complex. They will take a long time to impact. I think most people understand that it will take more than policing to get where we all want to be, but the reality is that much of what we need apart from policing is being defunded. The police are not being defunded. Police budgets grow steadily every year. I worry that giving police agencies larger shares of our shrinking budgets will simply accelerate our decline. None of the more life-affirming recommendations in Burlington Forward will ever happen.
