On June 5th, the Burlington City Council approved the one-year appointment of Acting Chief Jon Murad as the city’s Police Chief on an 8-to-4 vote. Just over a month later, Murad tells WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley nothing has changed operationally between being the acting and confirmed chief, but he says there is a different sensibility.
I was the acting chief for just under three years, a couple days shy of three years. And truly, the role and responsibilities were the same during that period as they are today. But there's definitely something different in the sensibility of it. I think the sensibility inside the agency, the sensibility in the community. And although I didn't think that I would feel a really significant change or shift, I actually have and am grateful for the opportunity to have this role in a more official capacity and to get to continue to doing the work that I was doing and continue to do and follow through on the plans that we've laid out for our future. Mayor Weinberger and I have really tried to articulate a rebuilding plan and I'm eager to tackle it.
So a couple questions along those lines. How do you feel a little bit different? I mean, you said you didn't think you would feel different and you do. So can you articulate a little bit about how that feeling has changed, what you feel?
Sure. So you know, it's somewhat amorphous. I'm not certain that it is something that I can really articulate because, again, it wasn't something that I knew I would experience. I really did not believe that it made a big difference for me or for the work that I do. And I'm hopeful that it didn't make a difference in the decisions that I made or the way in which I cared for the community and also tried to lead and take care of the people I'm privileged to work with. But I did understand that there was a value in having a permanent chief for recruitment purposes, for example. I think that there was a period of time during which a lateral officer, that is an officer from another location or another state, looking at this police department as a place potentially to come would say: ‘Acting Chief for three years, that's strange. Either something is going on in the city or something is going on with that individual and maybe that person is not really up to snuff and either way it's an agency that I think I will look at with a little bit more scrutiny.’ And so I knew that having a permanent chief would aid in that and I think reduce the likelihood of having people, you know, perhaps think twice about coming to this agency. But I didn't think it would make a big difference in my day-to-day work. And yet, I will say that I do feel different. Again, I can't necessarily articulate exactly how. I am, I'm grateful, tremendously grateful for the support of the people who live in Burlington. And yet I knew that I had a lot of that support even before. I am tremendously grateful for the support of the city council. And yet I had the support of a portion of that council before. I am really very grateful, most grateful of all, for the support from Mayor Weinberger, but I had that support as well. So what is it that changed? Obviously, you know, two votes changed on the city council. And so I think that that was important and it was something for which I'm very, very happy.
You mentioned earlier that you've got the policing plan that you're working on with Mayor Weinberger. Are plans like that and other initiatives that you've been working on, easier to move forward with now that you are full chief, permanent chief, than it was as Acting Chief?
So the plans that Mayor Weinberger and I have developed over the past year to rebuild and that were part of our Fiscal Year ‘23 budget, which began in July of 2022 and that had been reiterated and strengthened for this new budget that began just now in July of 2023. Our plans that we were working on obviously before the confirmation, are they easier to work through now? I think that there's just one less thing to think about or worry about or be concerned about, which is the stability of the role, the sort of legitimacy of the position. And that one thing not to focus on allows us to focus on our other plans that much more. And those plans include the rebuilding, which is the most important sort of long-term goal that we have in front of us. But also those goals include making certain that this year is different in Burlington than last year. Last year was a tough year for Burlington with regard to crime, with regard to another number of different quality of life issues, certainly with regard to, you know, an unprecedented and unacceptable increase in gunfire and the worst year that the city had ever seen for murder. And so far, knock on wood, as we passed the halfway mark of 2023 we are seeing a different year than we saw in 2022. And so to the extent that having the question of whether or not this position is a permanent one or whether it's fully approved off the table allows us to focus on other things. I think that's a good thing.
Taking a look at you holding the position of acting chief for three years. Why did you decide to stay in that status for that long?
It is a good question. It's one that's asked a lot. And it really boils down to the fact that I, I love this community. My family lives in this city. I was born in this city. I spent a long time thinking about how I could come back to Vermont. And the opportunity to do it in a profession that I love was something that I didn't think I'd ever be lucky enough to get. And so having had that opportunity I wasn't going to give it up easily and I wasn't going to give it up without making certain I did everything I could to make the most of the opportunity. You know, for me, it was a matter of knowing that I had an obligation to the people I live near, my neighbors, to the people I serve across the city, and to the men and women I'm fortunate enough to work with, not to just throw in a towel. And I guess, part of it when it comes down to it is just I'm not, I'm not very good at quitting.
Chief Murad, the relationship with the city council is one of the more visible aspects, I think, of your job. You were named police chief just recently but that's the second time the council voted on it. How confident were you that this current iteration of the city council would ratify your appointment?
I was, I was quite confident. But you know nothing is ever a sure thing until the vote has actually taken. I was confident that the mayor and his team had done tremendous amounts of work. And you know if you look at this one, I think that there were things that we said, you know, we want to make certain that this time this is about what the community is looking for and not merely about what the mayor needs or what the police department needs. I think there was a sense too of a shift. You know, nobody can look at 2022 and think that that was a normal year. And I think that people recognize that there was, through all that tumult, a steady leadership in the police department and in the city and that those two things deserve to be acknowledged and to say, well, maybe we can we can be more competent in this leadership. And obviously, there'd also been, you know, a shift on the council in March of 2023. And so all of that, I think, came together for what was a, for me a really, really satisfying night, a good night,
The last few years with the City Council, what have you learned especially as the debate over staffing levels occurred?
I've learned a lot about what you can do in the face of crisis. I think that when you have a crisis, you have two choices, you can either sort of roll over and let it defeat you or you can struggle through it. And if anything, tried to gain from it. Experience, if nothing else. And that's where we've been for the past three years. I think that the decision to reduce the police department through attrition was not the best decision for our city or for the police department. I was clear about that from the beginning. But in the face of it, once it was made, I did everything I could to try to continue to function the way that we need to function as a police department in order to serve our city. And that has included, you know, building new kinds of roles. We increased the number of Community Service Officers that we have, unarmed unsworn officers who can handle certain kinds of quality-of-life issues, although they can't make arrests. And we also created the new role of the Community Support Liaison or CSL, in-house social workers. And so by augmenting what we had, building these new resources, we've tried to stay on top. But the fact of the matter is, you know, on patrol which is our basic role, we're 50% smaller than we have been in the past. And we are actually facing more calls for service than we have in many years. We're trying to make that work. We're trying to sort of figure that out. And rebuilding is really the path towards that. I think that what we've had over the past three years, and the lesson is, that we had an experiment that for some was very well intentioned and was well meaning for others was fraught with potential problems. And we've seen that that experiment didn't work out quite the way that it was anticipated. And we're trying to build back from that. I feel that we're on an upswing. I feel that we are this summer in a place where we can build from and we are in a place where we can rebuild and that means bringing in great men and women into this police department and who are going to be the future of the policing profession today.
Chief Murad, while you say that there is progress being made It seems like the Burlington Progressives still want to have some reforms to the powers of the police department. As chief now, how does that affect how you feel you have the support of the city and the council in particular? And how will it affect how you interact with the Progressives that are on the council?
That's a terrific question also, right. I mean, obviously, I don't want to be, nor am I, the police chief of a part of the city. I am the Police Chief for the entirety of the city. And that means doing the best I can to meet the needs and work with everyone in the city. The example of police oversight that was presented to the city in March of 2022 on Town Meeting Day was resoundingly defeated because it was a picture of police oversight that our city didn't agree with. That is not to say, however, that our city doesn't want changes to police oversight or want to confirm and firm up how police oversight is conducted in the city. And I'm aware of that. I think that we have a strong system right now. I think we have a system that has been codified in ways that it hasn't been. Over the last three years we have written new documents to discuss and to codify how the Burlington Police Department and the independent Burlington Police Commission work together. The amount of information that is shared with the Commission is larger than it ever has been. The amount of information that's made public is larger than it ever has been. I make every single use of force public. We release a lot of body cam footage of those uses of force. We have tremendous amounts of data that are available for the public to review and understand for itself how the police department functions and what it is doing and addressing. I think that is the way forward. I think there's a path forward with regard to continuing this movement towards you know, transparency. I think there is a new police commission. I think that the police commission is changing and in many of the ways that the city council has changed over the last year. I think that is a positive thing as well. When we can have reasonable people come together and recognize that we all stand on a certain amount of common ground and find that common ground together and work together in the interests of the city that we all love and for the goals that that we pretty much share. We all want a safe city. We all want a city where people have equal access to our public spaces and to opportunity, the ideas of equality, the ideals of equal access, the ideals of freedom of speech and worship and the ability to seek out your own fortune.
Chief, you've mentioned that the number of shooting incidents in the downtown area has gone down and that things appear to be getting better. But I'm a little bit curious about the temporary housing arrangement on Elmwood Avenue. I've seen some reports that residents around that temporary shelter, the Pods, say that not necessarily the people in the Pods living in the Pods are problematic. It's people around that area are being problematic. What are you seeing? How is the police department responding to that?
Great question. So I mean with regard to the first part, yes. We'd had about 15 gunfire incidents by this time last year and we've had five this year. So we are in a different place. With regard to the Pods, you know, the Pods are very important both to Mayor Weinberger, to me, to the city. I think that we owe it to our most vulnerable neighbors to try to find ways to make sure that we are doing what we can to care for our most vulnerable neighbors. And I think that the Pods are a way to do that. That said this is something that our city’s never tried before. Something that most cities have never tried before. And certainly very, very few cities of our size and no cities in Vermont to my knowledge. We are on, you know, in new territory and we're trying to figure out how to make that work. There has been some disorder associated with the vicinity of the Pods. I don't think a lot of that involves people who are actually residents of that facility. But I do think that it involves people who were brought there because of the residents, people who are associated with the residents, etc. And that is something that we are trying to work through. You know, our CSLs, those Community Support Liaisons our in-house social workers that I talked about, are in the Pods regularly. Our CSOs stopped by regularly. We're working on making certain that we have a more of a foot patrol presence with them. And you know, officers respond to that area when called. Certainly if any neighbor needs an officer because of a safety issue, something that actually has a risk to human safety, that is a Priority One call for us. We do our best to respond to every single call like that anywhere in the city.
What do you think is the top public safety issue right now in Burlington?
That's a terrific question. You know, I think that this isn't a public safety issue per se, because it actually is a public health issue. But certainly the volume of substance use that we are seeing and the volume of overdose that we are seeing is a tremendous concern. But it is not a specifically policing issue, right? We cannot arrest our way out of the drug issue. I think we've learned that over the past 50-plus years of public policy in the country. Law absolutely has a role particularly because unfortunately drug use and substance abuse often brings with it other kinds of criminal enterprise. People steal in order to be able to feed their substance use disorder. People sometimes cause crime in the marketing and trafficking of drugs. People are victimized by this process. And so there are criminal elements around it. But the mere use, the suffering from the disorder, is not purely a policing matter. And yet it is a public safety matter. It is a public health matter. And that probably is the one that is currently the most pronounced in Burlington. And it's something that we are really trying to look at. Other issues are property crime. Our larceny numbers are up, our stolen vehicle numbers are very high, much higher than they have been in the past. And a lot of that, unfortunately, has to do with user behavior. Please stop leaving your keys in your car. And please stop leaving your car and your other property unsecured. I think that for a long time Burlington and other Vermont communities lived in a world where fortunately they could leave their homes unlocked or their cars with the keys in them. And we don't right now. We're seeing our stolen vehicle numbers are skyrocketing. And the vast, vast majority of those are cars where the keys have been left in the car or the car has even been left running. I really cannot recall an instance in which we've recovered a stolen vehicle that was hotwired. They're always about fobs or keys left in vehicles.
Chief Murad, I have another question that I'm not sure if it's a policing question, but it's something that's kind of piquing a lot of people's interest right now. How did you end up in the “Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse” credits?
So I, you know, it's I think it's known that I was a technical consultant on the television program “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” That was a program that two creators of that program were friends of mine from college and when they wanted to create a Barney Miller for the 2000s, they said who do we know who's a cop and I was the only person they knew. Because we live in a society where, you know, most people who go to Harvard don't know directly cops, which is unfortunate. But they knew me. I ended up working with them as a technical consultant over the course of that show's history. And then, you know, that sort of led to this. The writers of the Spiderman sequel were looking for some consultations about sort of how the testing process works for policing because one of the characters, the main character Miles, his father is taking the tests to be promoted in the NYPD. And so they, they sort of called me and talked about it and to me about that a little bit. I gave them some, you know, discussions about what policing is and how the test process works. Technical consulting. Very, very small scale. I was incredibly surprised to see my name in the credits. I didn't actually think that was part of the deal. I was very glad to see that there, but I had not expected it. My contribution was really small. But I'm proud to have had small contributions to two terrific cultural products. I think that both “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and the new Spiderman movie are just amazing. And I'm eager to see number three since number two sort of left us with a cliffhanger.
Would you do the technical consulting again?
Absolutely.
All Burlington department head appointments, including the police chief, are confirmed annually by the City Council.
