The Burlington, Vermont Police Commission met Wednesday and heard a report from the city’s acting chief and also received a report on use of force.
Burlington’s Acting Police Chief, Jon Murad, had submitted his regular written report to the board. During the commission’s hybrid meeting Murad outlined some of the key incidents the department has addressed in the past month.
“We had the South End vandalism spree. We had a shooting at the Shelburne Road Shopping Plaza on August 11. We had a double shooting on Main Street in the very early morning hours of August 13th. We had an officer involved shooting," reported Murad. "The Vermont State Police came in to assist with bar closing also on August 13. It was a very, very busy weekend. On August 19th, we did a swearing in and promotion ceremony. And then that same night we had another shooting at the skate park. We had another gunfire incident last night. In the small hours, we had a very significant assault on a police officer on August 20th, an officer who got some significant eye injuries and will be out for a bit. But we hope that we'll get him back sooner than later.”
Commissioner Stephanie Seguino offered a motion to accept the commission’s annual report and urged residents to read the document.
“We received 55 complaints last year and the report documents the types of complaints, the chief's disposition of those complaints and the Commission's response to those complaints," said Seguino. "It also documents the work that we have done in revising policies. And I think very importantly, for the first time we have also set annual goals for next year and that document identifies those annual goals. In addition to that the report identifies reports that the commission has written or comments that it is made, for example, on the draft ordinance to alter the role of the Police Commission in terms of civilian oversight. So those are the some of the highlights of the report.”
The motion to accept the annual report passed unanimously. Later the agenda included discussion of use of force reports and Vice Chair Shireen Hart asked Acting Deputy Chief Wade Labrecque for more timey receipt of the data.
“Is it possible for us." asked Hart, "to get the use-of-force reports up through our meeting? We'd like to get the use of force reports so that it's closer in time to the event.
"So the way Benchmark works," Labrecque replied, "It only runs reports yearly, quarterly or monthly. I could give you the race, the number of officers and the incident number."
"So this is automatically generated through the Benchmark?" inquired Hart.
Labrecque noted, "That's the new system that we use for use-of-force."
"What's most useful for us and the work that we're doing," noted Seguino, "is to track use-of-force from meeting to meeting.”
