By Mike Donoghue,
Vermont News First
Former often-embattled Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad was among those in the running for the post of South Burlington Police Chief but is no longer a finalist.
Vermont News First reported Wednesday that Murad was among five finalists when the first rounds of interviews wrapped up last week in South Burlington.
By Thursday morning Murad had shared with friends that he was out of the running in South Burlington.
Attempts to reach Murad directly were unsuccessful.
Two South Burlington Police employees also were under consideration following the interviews last week: Deputy Chief Sean Briscoe, who was hired two years ago as the possible heir apparent to take over the department, and Patrol Lt. Chris Bataille, a 14-year veteran. He resigned last Friday to take a job at the Vermont Police Academy, but appears still interested in the top post at SBPD.
Also under consideration is an unidentified New England Police Chief, believed to be from New Hampshire, and possibly one other applicant, Vermont News First was told by a person familiar with the search, but not authorized to speak for the city.
South Burlington hoped to cut the final list to possibly three candidates before conducting final assessments with day-long visits for each in July.
South Burlington City Manager Jessie Baker said this week she would not confirm any of the names.
Baker said the city received 14 applications to replace Chief Shawn Burke, who resigned, effective in March, to take a two-year post as the interim police chief in Burlington.
It looked like there was a possibility that Burke and Murad could end up trading jobs as police chiefs for the two cities.
The 14 applicants for the South Burlington post were whittled to eight by the search firm hired by the city, JW Leadership Consulting, Baker said.
JW Leadership Consulting is led by James Baker, a former colonel for the Vermont State Police and who also did stints as Police Chief in Manchester and Rutland City. He is no relation to the city manager. Former Vermont State Police Capt. Julie Scribner is leading the process for JW Leadership.
An 8-member screening committee created by the city reportedly whittled the list to five following live interviews last week.
The city ideally wanted the list cut to a more manageable list of three finalists.
South Burlington Police has been run since March by Briscoe, who joined the City in September 2023 after an elaborate nationwide search for a deputy chief.
Briscoe had 27 years of experience in progressively responsible leadership positions with the City of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Police. During his time in Saratoga Springs, Briscoe focused on community outreach and was a founding member of the Saratoga Coalition to End Homelessness.
Bataille, who was a patrol officer for Hinesburg Police early in his career, has worked his way up through the South Burlington Department and is one of two lieutenants reporting to the deputy chief. Bataille has been active working with city residents to resolve problems in neighborhoods and as an instructor at the Vermont Police Academy in Pittsford.
Murad had strained relations in recent years dealing with various local and state officials, the business community, the general public and the news media. He finally announced in November 2024 that he would not seek re-appointment from Progressive Party Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak when his term was due to end this month.
The Mayor had said initially there would be a two-week overlap transition for Murad and Burke in March, but when the time came, Mulvaney-Stanak pulled the plug on the idea. She put Murad on paid leave two days after Burke returned to the department. The Mayor welcomed Burke on his first work day during a city council meeting on a Monday evening and thanked Murad, but never mentioned she had put him on the shelf.
Murad was named acting police chief in 2020 for the recently defunded department. He never got enough support for the permanent post until June 2023 when then-Mayor Miro Weinberger tried again and the City Council approved him 8-4.
It was unclear if Murad would have been reappointed by Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak for her second term this year after clashing with her and others both in public and behind the scenes.
One of Murad’s major clashes was with the Mayor and State’s Attorney Sarah George over some news releases. Murad tended to include public information about long criminal records of those arrested, including one man with more than 1,850 police contacts.
George asked Mulvaney-Stanak to rein in Murad because it put extra pressure on her office to prosecute repeat offenders that had been given persistent passes in the past.
The Mayor eventually muzzled Murad and issued an Executive Order that said all Burlington Police press releases had to be pre-approved by her before they could be sent to the media. It ended a department press policy that had been in effect since about 2011.
In another case, Murad and George came to an agreement that allowed Burlington Police to keep a lieutenant who filed 25 timesheets that were inaccurate or untimely, according to public records. They noted the officer was eventually demoted and was ordered to repay the city. He later moved to Shelburne Police.
Murad also failed to deal even handedly with the press and public at times.
Murad had hired a Public Information Officer (PIO), but limited her work. He failed to provide her a cell phone so the media could never reach her nights and weekends for information on breaking news stories, including homicides, shootings, stabbings, drugs raids, aggravated assaults and other serious cases in the city.
The post of PIO for Burlington Police was eliminated when Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak announced her plan in May to eliminate 25 city jobs in an effort to fill an $8 million shortfall in the budget. The Mayor has since learned her accounting was off and there is an additional $1.8 million in needed cuts.
It was hit and miss with news releases from Murad, who kept under wraps some major cases, including the theft of and damage to a taxpayer-owned fire engine by a drug addict. The addict, who the fire department was assisting for an overdose, jumped into the large $400,000 truck and later crashed it. Murad later admitted at an unrelated news conference that he had left it up to the Burlington Fire Chief to report to the public both the theft and the subsequent arrest by the police department. The fire department union eventually made the theft and crash public in a social media post.
Murad also caused a stink in the community when he threatened to arrest a trauma doctor who was treating an 18-year-old gunshot victim in the Emergency Department at the UVM Medical Center on Aug. 11, 2022. It was another case of tactics of the New York City Police Department, where Murad had previously worked, not flying well in Vermont.
The Mayor never told the city council about the Medical Center confrontation for four months and the case was later sent to the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. The Council ruled in September 2023 the behavior did not rise to the level of unprofessional police conduct under the law. Murad offered an apology to the doctor.
The police also were defendants in a few race-related lawsuits over excessive force arrests and those weren’t brought to the attention of the city council immediately.
Murad also has tended to refrain from returning calls to some of the more senior media members that would ask tough questions and often have unwelcomed follow-up questions that held his feet to the fire. Instead, Murad tried to deal mostly with young TV reporters that just turned on the camera and let the former high school actor freely speak.