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By Michael Bielawski
The Burlington City Council has approved a public safety hub located somewhere yet-to-be-determined downtown.
The resolution states, “The City Council acknowledges that Burlington faces an urgent public safety emergency and substance misuse crisis and that the establishment of a public safety kiosk or hub downtown will allow us to directly deploy necessary resources to our downtown.”
The main police station is on North Avenue, adjacent to Battery Park – many blocks distant from downtown. The previous police station was located just a block from Church Street, where City Market is now.
The city has seen a dramatic uptick in crimes over recent years since the City Council in June of 2020 voted to deplete the police force via attrition by about a third. Even though a new council has since voted to approve new hiring, the department continues to struggle to get new recruits.
The resolution indicates that public sentiment has not been great regarding the safety of downtown recently. Its states that they wish “to deter criminal activity and restore public trust in the safety of our downtown through visibility and rapid resource deployment.”
It continues about the sense of urgency to get rising crime trends reversed. And there will be public engagement.
“The Public Safety Committee shall engage the community on its vision for a public safety hub or kiosk, and this engagement shall include consultation with interested community partners,” it says.
There will be some public money involved. It says, “the Mayor’s Administration may seek the support of professional consultant services to assist in the preparation of the report required by this resolution, and the cost of these services shall not exceed $30,000, or the Administration may reserve said funds and an additional $20,000 for a total of $50,000 in assigned FY25 monies for costs associated with establishing the downtown public safety hub or kiosk.”
It further states, “the City will start to prioritize applications and sources for funding sources necessary to support this project.”
Ban guns in bars?
There were other public safety related resolutions passed by the Council, including one to ban guns in bars. A Seven Days report from August says that this has been tried before but it failed to be implemented.
The article states, “It is legal to carry a concealed gun in bars in Vermont, though business owners can choose to prohibit them on their property. The City of Burlington passed a charter change in 2014 that would ban guns in establishments with liquor licenses, but state leaders never approved it.”
Gun-free zones continue to be controversial since those with criminal intent may not be discouraged by these laws. A report by the Crime Prevention Resource Center indicates that 94% of gun attacks from 1950 to 2018 occurred in gun-free zones.
Violent gangs roaming the streets?
VDC has been informed recently about wild groups of youth, some of them armed, who have been harassing people around Burlington over the summer. WCAX has also reported on the trend.
“Police say groups of young people– many carrying guns– are looking for trouble in downtown Burlington,” they wrote in August. It continues, “They’re asking the public for help identifying the suspects and solving a string of recent crimes.”
The police have released a video of some violent incidents, it can be seen here. The first instance is a vicious physical assault right in front of a popular food establishment. Police hope that folks who watch these videos can help them identify suspects.
A BPD press release from August talked about these groups. It stated, “These crimes have been associated with large groups of suspects and perpetrators, some of whom have been identified as juveniles. Many of the involved persons have been shown to carry firearms…” It continues that some in these videos are suspects in other crimes.
Impact elections?
The Vermont GOP has weighed in on the ongoing crime situation in Burlington, essentially blaming the Democrats and Progressives who control the City Council.
The State GOP put out a statement saying, “This is the fundamental problem with the Progressive approach, they are unable and unwilling to admit their mistakes even when people are dying because of their foolishness. How hard is it to say that it was the wrong move to defund the police back in 2020?”
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle
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Categories: Keep Vermont Safe
Wow, sometimes brilliant ideas just come out of nowhere! A kiosk…why didn’t someone think of that before?
Interesting that the wording includes the term “substance misuse”, but that progs still want to provide a supposedly safe and comfortable facility for people to “misuse” their substances, but under medical supervision.
I know huh, why didn’t the rest of the country come up with this genius idea. If we only had a few more kiosk’s the drug and sex crimes would vanish!
We might as well burn the taxpayer money, at least somebody would get some warmth from it!
They have such disregard for the people of Vermont and the hard-earned tax money.
Will our governor call this out, or will he raise them and offer more money for kiosk’s across the state? Time will tell.
Hold onto your wallets, there is apparently a limitless number of dumb ideas on which to spend money.
Rich,
Thanks for picking up on the semantic aspect you referred to. I saw that immediately, too. It used to be drug addiction, then drug abuse, then substance abuse, and now substance misuse. Kind of like “safe injection sites” being neutralized down even further to “harm reduction sites.” We do that enough, and like a game of telephone (device?), the original meaning connected to the original words are so diluted that they have lost their context.
It’s astonishing how important and significant semantics are in altering the thoughts and perceptions we hold. This is why propaganda is so powerful, evil, and insidious. When you think about it, the first propaganda in history happened in the Garden when the crafty serpent used the existing mainstream media to change the meaning of God’s words.
I hope they construct it with bulletproof materials
Whats Up old Friend?
good to hear from you, old friend…
I used to go to Burlington and spend money all the time. Dinner, shopping, a few drinks. Now there’s homeless tarps, stabbings, shootings & general harassment.
Bye Bye Burlington.
“it was the wrong move to defund the police back in 2020” I highly doubt anything was “defunded”. We don’t need more funding for government ANYTHING. More money for police won’t do anything to change crime, someone was shot with a foot patrol officer a hundred feet away the other day, for example.
The only fixes are to STOP subsidizing criminal elements, keep the 95% of repeat offenders somewhere where they can’t repeat their offenses, get government out of the business of destruction of wealth and poverty creation, and legalize/regulate everything nonviolent that criminal groups are created from.
Next: Robots.
You wait.
Can’t put y’umon beans on the street to patrol…too expensive and too dangerous…
This is a laughable parody of ‘outsourcing to AI’…
I refuse to go to Burlington anymore; too violent.
Burlington has become Vermont’s New York City.
The Marxist Agenda for Vermont is to eliminate all low-income, middle-class wage-earners, families, everyone. The Marxist Agenda is to have the State of Vermont be a paradise for the wealthy to come and enjoy. They, the “evils” as I call them, will employ, house, feed the serfs they want to work for them (illegal aliens). Get ready Burlington businesses, all businesses in each Town of Vermont, all families, all wage-earners, all people who heat their homes with oil, natural gas, everyone who drives a combustion engine vehicle, you are all on the List to be vacated by 2030(earlier if possible) and definitely by 2050. The tactics that are being used is so evident from the 45 Goals of Communism from 1963, which is to destroy Capitalism, Free-Markets, Free Societies, and our Constitution.
They are doing it in Sugarbush, 200 migrants, supply their housing, no longer need or want locals to provide the services.
We have only built 2 affordable homes, despite 30 years of “trying”, studying, grant money being spent. But the can quickly do it for Sugarbush!
But they are working on more rental housing with a big sewer plant, get all the must haves under one roof.
Your words, seem to follow a state wide trend, coincidence?
Coming soon, multi-million dollar animal crossing on i-89, but you Vermonter can go screw, live in your tents and be happy. We are so happy on our new bike paths, don’t bother us.
Wow, Burlington’s City Council has approved a public safety hub located somewhere ” downtown ” yet-to-be-determined, that figures the cart before the horse……………
They’ll probably have the unarmed ” citizen Patrol ” man it next !!
I imagine this “hub” will consist of social workers, non-profiteers, and a patrolman/woman who draws the short straw? Taking bets on the moment it is established, it will be tagged with graffiti, littered with spent needles, spent gun casing, and all the pamphlets and propaganda leaflets scattered to and fro. Likely someone will take a dump in the doorway or tinkle sprinkle the threshhold. Winter settling in soon – the frozen corpses won’t smell until Spring – this they know.
So, ms. mayor “may” seek to spend $50,000.00 to maybe establish a kiosk to police from? Pointless, unless one is receiving those funds, say the consultant?
or the NGO’s that will line up to staff said kiosk with “interested community partners” with paid workers?
Sounds like progressive cronyism, not policing nor “public safety” to me.
Definition of Kiosk:
ki·osk /ˈkēˌäsk/
noun
-a small open-fronted hut or cubicle from which newspapers, refreshments, tickets, etc., are sold.
-a small structure in a public area used for providing information or displaying advertisements, often incorporating an interactive display screen or screens.
—————————————————————————————–
So they are going to have a telephone, some refreshments (for the criminals of course), and a giant screen with who to call on it? Well call all crime in BTown “Solved”, hallelujah