By Michael Bielawski
The State Chittenden County Prosecutor Sarah George stated at Burlington’s Community Forum on public safety that the overall justice system is not set up for timely investigation and prosecution of repeat-shoplifters.
“There isn’t a legal avenue to just hold people in jail while their cases are pending,” she said. “It is literally against the law and our Constitution to do that. So if someone is stealing repetitively from a store I would first say that it’s often two months at least until our office knows anything about it and that’s if we get the cases from law [enforcement].”
She said the police have to finish their investigations before her office gets involved.
“If the cases are investigated and solved and then those cases come to us, it’s often two months at least until our office knows anything about it. So in that time, people are of course able to continue to engage in that behavior without our office ever knowing it’s happening so much later on,” she said.
She also said that her office cannot lock up anyone without a conviction.
“And then by the time we do, we can’t just hold people in jail,” George said. “They are entitled to their freedom and they are presumed innocent until we have proven at trial that they are guilty and that is another delay while we are attempting to do that so that’s how our system works.”
She continued that she wishes both the police and her office could collect, investigate, and prosecute shoplifting in a more timely manner but “that is not how our system is designed to work, unfortunately” she said.
The clip can be seen here.
Burlington Mayor says meth and Fentanyl fueling crime
Burlington mayor Miro Weinberger was on the Morning Drive radio show on Wednesday talking about how Fentanyl and meth are fueling the crime crisis.
“Since 2020 Fentanyl and meth have become the dominant drugs in the area and that has been a game changer,” Weinberger said. “Fentanyl is a much more powerful opioid, a much higher risk and overdose and death, it’s an opioid that people have to consume much more frequently, it used to be people if they were heavily addicted they would be using these drugs every 8-to-10 hours, now it’s every 2-to3 hours. People are injecting or smoking this drug 8-to-10 times a day.”
He also talked about how meth makes people behave worse.
“Meth has this terrible side effect of making people very agitated and at times more likely to commit crimes or create other problems,” he said. “That is really the biggest change that I believe is driving this real Vermont-wide and really country-wide challenge with legal drugs right now. The fact that we have so many more homeless people is driven by our problematic housing market is another big component of it. And of course, our ability to address this is also impacted by the loss of officers that we faced.
More thefts over the holiday
There were more thefts over the holiday, especially on Tuesday. There was a request for information put out by state police after someone robbed an Aubuchon Hardware store in Moretown.
The report states, “Troopers received a report of a retail theft that occurred the previous week. Aubuchon Hardware in Moretown, Vermont reported multiple items taken from their store.”
A still from a security camera can be seen here.
Also on Tuesday, there was a car theft at the St. J Subaru dealership. A man on security camera can be seen checking car doors throughout the parking lot and when he finds one that is unlocked with a key still inside, he drives it away.
Stores are not the only target for thefts. The same day there was another incident involving two white men in a red SUV-type vehicle taking four snow tires and four aluminum rims from a residence in Glover.
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle
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My personal thought: She could actively oppose defunding the police, and actually do her job instead of feigning virtuous ineptitude. That would be a start.
99.9% of the time when you hear the government talk about “cutting spending”, they aren’t cutting anything. They are reducing the “proposed increase” to a lower level than what could have been the increase, but it’s still always an increase in spending (theft). What they do is just up the “proposed increase” amount to get what they originally wanted to spend in the first place, and make it look like a big compromise. It’s all a scam – smoke/mirrors.
Why does the “right wing” want to fund government things so much? The police don’t do law enforcement. If they did, all the politicians would be in jail. You do realize, the funding of any government organization is never-ending bloat of cost increases, and will be used to fulfill what all the politicians you don’t like want to enforce. They will and do have killer robots/drones, remote vehicle disabling devices, and spy tools for any electronics you use, with very little return on investment. How about we keep the money, and protect ourselves and our communities instead of outsourcing it to the inept government waste factories?
Maybe put the money towards teaching young students firearm handling, self-defense, and crime prevention. How is it, we have multiple ARMED robberies in VT this year, and the best defense was a hot coffee splash? The people need to step it up. Businesses should build in private lots where they can keep anyone out who they want. We should hire our own town security, and not leave it up to the state apparatus. They have proven time and time again that they cannot be trusted. You should know this! Enough with the boot licking – the system is NOT your friend. I love everyone, but we all need to stick together with a healthy distrust for the system.
Exactly.
“State prosecutor says system not designed to investigate and prosecute shoplifters in a timely manner” If the prosecutor was not Sarah George I might be a little more likely to believe that the prosecutor was indeed bothered by the reasons given for having to turn them loose, but it is Sarah George. Couldn’t the affected stores ask for NTOs to be served against the perps ? It would be one more charge that could be levied when (if) the case made it to court .
Sarah George is simply engaging in distraction in bemoaning about supposedly having her “hands tied” in prosecuting what some consider to be petty crimes involving shoplifting – as opposed to having to address her general malaise in prosecuting and imprisoning the many dangerous, violent, drug-related, gang-related criminals who have infiltrated Chittenden County & VT and who are very seriously threatening and endangering the health, welfare, dignity, and very LIVES of the people therein.
She is nothing more than a George Soros funded prosecutor who very often refuses to fulfill the requirements of her job and who each day violates the sworn oath she presumably took to protect the welfare & the safety of the people in this state.
Have “obstacles” preventing you from “tackling” shoplifting, Ms. George? Begin with the basics instead then of convicting and punishing and imprisoning ALL of the violent criminals who endanger the lives, the livelihoods, and the quality-of-life of the law-abiding citizens of Chittenden County!
After you’ve taken out the trash, then you focus more diligently on the shoplifting problem that YOU had a hand in creating with your party’s farcical ideations that “oppressed” groups deserved to steal things that belonged to others!!! Nix the distractions. Everyone knows it’s a ploy.
“She also said that her office cannot lock up anyone without a conviction.”
She knows that someone can be held pre-trial if they are considered a danger to society so, there are exceptions to that statement. She also knows that some of the habitual shoplifters have used threats of violence when confronted, elevating the offenses to felony level.
Regardless of her apparent ignorance or her overbearing leftist ideology of victim-worship and misplaced empathy for miscreants, the majority of voters in Chittenden County have had 2 opportunities to vote her out and have failed to do so. Liberalism is a mental disorder that affects public officials as well as those who elect them.
Rich is correct here. If this is a repeat offense and if violence was used there are tools to hold that individual, and they should hurry that case along. However as you can tell from the interactions with police over time Sarah Georges office and the police aren’t cooperating anymore so this doesn’t happen.
I would also like to know how a shoplifting crime takes two weeks to investigate with all of the camera evidence available these days. There are cameras in every one of the stores and there are cameras all over downtown.
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Miro YOU wanted to be a sanctuary city. This is what it looks like when YOU open the borders. This is YOUR fault. You don’t get to now say the problem is fentanyl, it was YOUR grandstanding that put this into play to begin with. NOTICE THE CAPITAL LETTERS! YOU Miro YOU!!!!
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Take a good look Vermonter’s, this article right here shows two of the top people you must get out of office to change the course of Vermont’s newly found increases in theft, drugs, and shootings. Do you want all the national chain stores that you foolishly allowed into the State over the years to pack up and leave like they did in Commie-fornia?
I promise you it’ll happen much quicker here as their margins are much smaller and they’re not going to wait around very long. Or maybe you like shopping with locked cabinets everywhere, only being able to touch the cardboard version of it.
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Back in the day. when someone got into office and they did this on purpose they used to turn feather them in front of the entire town, a tradition that possibly should be brought back…
Passing the Buck but just distracting her feelings of keeping people out of JAIL!!!!!
I don’t think that’s at all the case, that there isn’t a way to jail someone until they’ve been convicted. And the evidence of their guilt should be easily found on their persons with unpaid for merchandise and/or on camera. Letting shoplifters out just enables them to continue buying and using drugs. And it will cause stores to depart because they can’t survive the losses. Do we really want to only be able to shop online at Amazon and Walmart?
Wow. Just wow. She should teach a graduate-level class in gaslighting.
Are you starting to feel a little crazy from listening to this crazymaker?
She hasn’t been prosecuting anyone anyway. Where did they give her degree!
shoplifter///green light///go// go/// go//
When a system does not work, a good leader identifies opportunities to improve the system so that it will achieve the desired outcome. Getting shoplifters out of the stores snd into a cell would be one alternative. Perhaps Attorney George should… (1,) figure out how to make that possible, and (2.) actually achieve that objective.
If she did that, she’d have to relinquish her premium membership of the $oros club.
The invention of Narcan dosen’t help. The only way to stop these drugs is to stem the demand for them.
Well, putting all the polemic aside, what is needed is a meeting of all law enforcement parties—police, prosecutors, judges, corrections officials, and key legislators—to figure out how to stop passing the buck and start making our communities safe again. I’m sure the investigation of many shoplifting cases is simple and can be done quickly; start with those. Then get our prosecutors to push for early trials—no excuses about “heavy caseloads.” Judges must also ride herd on attorneys and not tolerate unnecessary delay—motions and discovery seem to go on interminably. Judgment needs to be swift and significant—“Justice delayed is justice denied.” And if a shoplifter (and we’re really not talking just about shoplifting, either) is sentenced to jail time, that doesn’t mean that Corrections should just spin the convict around and put him right back on the street. And finally, if any of the above plead that their hands are tied by the law, that’s where the legislators come in—they need to realize that lax policies haven’t worked, and fix the laws!
Unfortunately, through the voting habits of a majority of Vermont voters, the voice has spoken loud and clear that we value legislative, prosecutorial and public school curriculum policies that perpetuate mistrust of law enforcement and insistence that the justice system is intrinsically racist and generally unfair. The embrace of leftist victim worship and misplaced empathy for those who engage in pathological antisocial behavior pervades the thinking of elected public officials and yet inexplicably they remain in office. When the “shoplifting” turns violent, and morphs into carjacking and more home invasions, maybe voters will get a wake up call about the dangers of dismissing the less-serious crimes. Every crime is serious when you are the victim. State’s Attorney Sarah George recently experienced the result of her catch-and-release policies when her courthouse was closed down due to threats by a frequent flier criminal. Perhaps she needed a good bite in the arse from the beast she has unleashed so let’s hope she comes to her senses on the issue of how to deal with serious repeat offenders.
Rich,
She may have “experienced” it, but not like the average citizen/victim. Look at the beefed up protection she and staffers received!!
What is the Criminal Justice Council? An ad hoc committee micro-managing law enforcement and ignoring actual crime? Those who are elected or hired to enforce the law have a sworn duty to do so! If they do not have the resources, it is their sworn duty to advocate lawmakers to supply those resources! All attorneys holding a license (friends of the court, officers of the court) also have a duty to apply the law as written, protect the interests of the People, and raise the issue when rules of law are subverted or broken.
The gaslighting and blatant lies coming from Sarah George, many other elected officials and attorneys, is enough to puke a dog. The population is to believe that they are not responsible for the chaos unfolding around us. They are responsible! They are paid to occupy an office and they choose to lie to the People ad nauseam with impunity.
Simple solution – do the job elected to do, stop whining and lying for personal profit. The day of judgment is now squarely upon them. It won’t be long now and they will face the consequences of their dirty deeds of fraud, collusion, and conspiracy. Declared and decreed.
Your comment assumes that a solution is sought by these ‘law enforcement’ parties, especially the “key legislators”. I do not believe that is the case, regarding ms.george and the “key legislators” from Chittenden County. I am certain that ms. george was rather clear about her politics and policies when running for re-election in 2022- as were many of the “key legislators”. It seems rather apparent that these people present ideologies that Chittenden County voters desire and appreciate.
Short sighted voters? It appears that the voters do not mind the extra costs for goods to deal with the “petty crime” of shoplifting.
There is a number of US Federal district court cases listed in Vermont – sealed and unsealed since 2017. A particular site is providing case numbers for here and across all States. The low hanging fruit leads to toppling of the top. Judgement day is coming – make no mistake.
You know…..I generally have plenty to say about the powers that be in Vermont….but, the sheer audacity of this woman has me speechless. She truly thinks that Vermonters will believe this…it is insulting.
Criminals are told, naughy, naughty, don’t do that again, and released, any and all Illegal immagrants are put on busses, and planes and given free passes to go anywhere in the country they want. Nothing to see here folks, just the death of lawful American society.
Oops, Criminals, My editor was sleeping again !
Thanks Guy !
I presume everyone realizes how determined our legislators and government officials are to not increase the prison population:
https://www.vtcng.com/state_and_world/state_news/battle-over-the-future-of-vermont-s-prisons-takes-shape/article_dc33dcd4-a902-11eb-b2a6-b35d3f28bdf2.html
Sarah George is turning around and blaming the police for not presenting cases fast enough for her to recognize that there is a problem with a repeat offender. That is typical of her, to blame someone else for the problem. There are ways to combat this problem. Rather than having the police cite the offender into court for 6-8 weeks down the road, a “flash citation” could be issued which orders the person into court on the following day. Another tactic is for police to send the offender’s name to the SA’s office, even if their court case is not fully completed yet. The SA’s office could have a heads up that a case is coming soon. When their office keeps seeing the same name popping up repeatedly from a police agency or multiple agencies, the SA could then be aware that a repeat offender is at work and perhaps they can jump on the situation sooner, like a subpoena, a warrant, or a flash citation. This might put a stop to that offender’s ability to robbing merchants blind. If there is a problem and the present means are not working, find a way to deal with it.
But isn’t that endemic to all people now, especially those under say, 50? No one is responsible for anything they say or do these days. Why should TPTB be any different than their constituents or the taxpayers? This is just not going to end well… these are the last days of our great experiment. Might take 5 or 10 years to waste away or it might go up in a big whoosh this coming year, hard to say but you can’t recover from what ails this country. The cancer is lethal.
Sorry to be such a Gloomy Gus.
I’m curious as to why the police would want to work with someone who wants them defunded and that would quickly go after any officer for stepping out of line. My wife works in retail and I hear the daily stories about the same shop lifters coming into her store and leaving with cartloads of goods. Store policy is that she can do nothing. I will say this of my wife, she’s tough and has gotten creative on stopping these people. She told me of some kids from the project not far from her store that when threatened to have the police called, they just answered with “Go ahead. What are they going to do?”
If Miss George doesn’t want to do her job, she needs to step down in favor of someone that will. Perhaps holding some of these people even if for awhile will send a clear message. Oh yes, and please stop using mental illness as a shield as to why people do things. If they know right from wrong then a shield is exactly what it is.
For repeat shoplifters, I would make an argument that a Rule 3 Exception called Continuation of Offense could apply. Of course, the final decision on this would be up to a liberal judge provided the liberal S/A would be willing to take a chance.
The other factor besides posing a danger to society that would allow for pre-trial detention is an indication that a defendant is not likely to appear for trial. Some of these chronic shoplifters no doubt have multiple past offenses that they have not shown up to court for, and have warrants for arrest. Also, many have court-ordered conditions of release that most often get violated for a repeat offense. When a “condition of release” is violated, it makes sense to no longer allow them to be “released”, but Vermont has an exception for everything when a “victimhood” is at play. Those involved in the justice system are “oppressed” and the prosecutors dont want to be seen as “oppressors”.