Three years needed to rebuild police force to 85 officers
Mayor Miro Weinberger June 2 issued a statement describing the four major elements of the city’s new public safety plan, instituted after public outcry over the rising number of shootings and other violent crimes this year and last year. The self-explanatory statement is printed below, with minor edits. – Editor
New Policing Plan: The City Center Area
We have changed the way in which our officers are deployed to increase the presence of police officers in the downtown. Too often, last summer, we experienced disruptive, intimidating and even dangerous incidents in City Hall Park and on the Marketplace. With a declining number of officers, the City struggled to maintain a public safety presence in our downtown Incidents in City Hall Park forced some youth programming to be relocated. And even while we continued to enjoy a large number of visitors to our downtown, too many of those visitors and female employees of downtown businesses reported that they felt unsafe.
Because more than 50% of incidents take place downtown, we are concentrating the most of our resources in that area. This summer, two Police Officers and two Community Service Officers will be assigned to the new City Center Area (pictured below), which encompasses the downtown. Areas of proactive patrol and focus include the Church Street Marketplace, City Hall Park, the Fletcher Free Library, North Winooski Avenue, the Downtown Transit Center, and Elmwood Avenue.
Creating Additional Public Safety Resources
We are supplementing the police presence with new and expanded investments in numerous other public safety resources. Those resources include:
– Community Service Officers: Respond to a variety of quality-of-life complaints. They can write municipal tickets to address issues around noise, animal control, and open containers. They also respond to non-investigative crashes and perform downtown foot patrols.
– Beach and Parks Patrol: Works on the Marketplace, waterfront, bike path, and beaches and parks. They provide information to citizens and visitors, educate the public about City ordinances and rules, and help foster a safe, clean and healthy environment for all.
– Urban Park Rangers: Help the City ensure our parks are welcoming to everyone by increasing the thoughtful and positive presence in our parks, utilizing tools of education to help our visitors understand our park system ordinances and expectations so that everyone can enjoy our public spaces.
Expanding Capacity to Help People in Need
We are also expanding our capacity to offer help to people who need of support and services, including continuing to develop ways to work with people experiencing mental health challenges and homelessness.
– Community Service Liaisons: In-house BPD social workers who focus on issues associated with mental health, substance use disorder, and homelessness. They often work on cases referred by Patrol or Street Outreach, and do follow-up that requires more time and additional resources.
– Street Outreach (Howard Center): Works with individuals in the downtown Burlington Business District who have mental health, substance use, homelessness, and unmet social service needs. The team helps to coordinate services for those individuals, and the primary goal is to increase access to services for all individuals.
Rebuilding our Police Department
We are committed to making this plan work, but we may also encounter challenges because we currently have fewer officers than we need to provide the fully robust public safety response that Burlingtonians have come to expect from the Burlington Police Department.
We are also working to rebuild our police department, and are seeking Council approval of a budget that would enable a comprehensive outreach plan to increases the Burlington Police Department from 66 officers to 85 officers over the next three years. The goal is ambitious but achievable if we successfully negotiate a competitive contract, attract new recruits with hiring incentives, and deliver a successful marketing campaign that sets Burlington apart from other communities.
Categories: Police Reports
What did Burlington think would happen when it demoralized and defunded their police department?
BUrlington GOT what they asked for. Demonizing and defunding the police . Letting Ben and JErry’s theology run amok all over the countryside.
It’s YOUR fault , progressives and Leftie Dems. No one else’s
It’s to bad that it took a failed city to prove the all to obvious, that fewer cops does not make that crap hole safer.
All of the social workers, do-good helper do-bees and slick marketing campaigns in the world cannot alter the fact that the police in BTV have been treated with a nasty back of the hand by officialdom and the community, reflective of a culture and attitude of obsession with “equity” etc. Enjoy your curated woke jazz festival, your shee-shee food emporiums in the Marketplace, and your “connection” with community service officers. Have a pleasant cup of Kru while contemplating your ginormous BLM-emblazoned roadway, then go and get a Ben and Jerry’s woke cone and say hello to the underfunded police for me…….
Can the citizens of Burlington sue the Progressives on the City Council for damages…….And there’s no doubt that Progressives are responsible for the mess in Burlington……A cancer that’s spreading to other parts of the state……..An outcome that was so predictable.
So predictable and so intentional. All this insanity is instituted with intent. Never misunderstand that.
Yes Kathleen…….So predicable, yet not likely intentional. In order to be intentional, the Progressives on the City Council had to have some idea of what they were actually doing ……..And based on the out come of what the Progressives have unleashed, it’s very doubtful that they had any idea of what they were doing or what would result.
If the Progressives did in fact actually expect the outcome that has occurred in Burlington their actions would border on a form of terrorism on a civll society…….It’s doubtful that “Defund the Police” leader Zoraya Hightower and her Squad had any idea of what they were doing…….They’re just simply naive, unexperienced and way over their heads as City Councilors.
In my view, the out come the Progressives produced was not intentional, it was simply dumb and very poor governance of the worse sort.
Yes, it was stupid! And most well thinking citizens did predict the outcomes. The voters who selected these representatives were aware of what they represented. SO, they were deliberate in their choices. Those of us who failed to vote are as responsible as those who selected these candidates that were determined to destroy our towns and villages! Be not misled! It was a deliberate effort! Just consider even our School Boards!
The Mayor and City Council should, at the very minimum, beg for forgiveness for their reprehensible conduct and pure incompetence at putting citizens at safety risks. Do they have no shame in what they have done? Essentially, what they are saying now is “whoopsie” regardless of how many businesses and citizens they put at safety risk. Why is this OK?
It isn’t. But they feel no need to even imitate being shameful – they well know that the freaks in Burlington will vote for them no matter what they do – probably including their next directive of slaughtering all male children under two years of age (the atheists in VT won’t recognize the reference).
And if Vermonters EVER even smartened up enough to seek to throw da bums out (not likely) for what they had perpetrated, I’m sure all the voter fraud mechanisms in place would still carry them to victory!
Huh. I guess we have learned a lesson here? Crowds of screaming, unlawful, spoiled, (possibly paid), young people with no life experience (with the exception of packing a bowl) and certainly no experience in law enforcement or municipal law/contracts – maybe ought not call the shots in ANY city???
Whilst I referred to those kids a couple of summers ago as dumb azzes, in fact such a characterization belongs more aptly to the supposed adults on the City Council and the Mayor. Sorry, kiddies.
In the end, both groups of birdbrains caused a lot of decent people a lot of misery, a lot of danger, a lot of grief, and a lot of lost revenue. Just for starters.
Great job, City Councilors! Bravo!!!
It’s hard to bring logic and aforethought into the equation with what has happened with the crime rate and consequently the quality of life in Burlington. The voter base is now made up predominantly of students, renters and deadbeats with little skin in the game.
I agree completely about the school boards. I have attended many school board meetings and the school admisistrators are pushing the BLM and WEF agenda, equity, which is encouraging school resource officers to be removed from their schools. Police are forced to submit to the whims of children. I believe in Essex, I was in one school board meeting where the board stated that the kids provide input to the police on their practices and how they can and can’t be helpful to their community. Really, children dictating police conduct.
Another case of “Can’t See The Forest For The Trees”… Burlington is on my bucket list of cities NOT to ever visit.