One year after a national task force issued guidelines for reforming and improving police work, state and town law enforcement and officials gathered in Montpelier Friday to learn what those reforms might mean on the ground.
An all-day seminar, hosted by the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, attracted a crowd of 120, including local and regional police officers, town officials and others from municipalities across the state.
The former chief of the Rutland City Police Department, Jim Baker, now director of advocacy for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, returned to Vermont to lead the seminar.
Jim Baker, former chief of the Rutland City Police Department and currently of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. File photo by Elizabeth Hewitt/VTDigger
Baker encouraged attendees to embrace the report from the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing as more than a fad.
“Don’t discount this as something that’s going to pass,” Baker said.
The report, released last May, laid out recommendations in six main areas for improving policing practices and relationships with communities: building trust and legitimacy; policy and oversight; technology and social media; community policing and crime reduction; officer training and education; and officer safety.
“Change is happening,” Baker said.
Baker called on members of the group to give examples of how policing in Vermont has changed in recent years. Participants volunteered examples — including that many departments now employ social workers, increased use of body cameras, and more frequent requests for public records.
The daylong event included a panel discussion on liability issues and policing, which included attorney Nancy Sheahan, who chairs the Vermont State Police Advisory Commission, and Richard Gauthier, the executive director of the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council, among others.
The event also included a speech by David Kennedy, professor of criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the director of the National Network for Safe Communities.
Sgt. Nelson Tift, a constable in Mt. Tabor and a member of the Wallingford select board, said that the six pillars in the report work differently in rural areas than they do in big towns and cities. Local police in a small town are generally already very familiar with the community.
“Usually we know who’s drinking in town, who’s getting a divorce,” Tift said.
Tift said that policing in small town Vermont is very different than in places like Ferguson, Missouri or Baltimore because of the lack of racial diversity. The community where he works has a population of roughly 2,000, and is predominantly white, he said.
Tift’s biggest concerns are about the increasing prevalence of drugs in small towns, especially opiates.
While Tift is embracing changes in law enforcement practices — he always wears a body camera on duty — but he noted that the changes will take more funding. Footage from the cameras can be expensive to store, he said.
Small towns want to have full-time high quality law enforcement, he said, “but they don’t want their taxes to go up.
Doug Robinson, the chief of police in Norwich, said that he is familiar with the report, and noted that he sees it as a work in progress. The guidelines must be updated to reflect changes in technology and society, he said.
Robinson is familiar with the report, and thinks it is a good thing. He said it was “encouraging” to see the room filled with representatives from other police agencies alongside town mayors and select board members.
“We do the same policing as they do in big cities, but on a smaller scale,” Robinson said.
Law enforcement in Vermont towns can be very different from in other parts of the country. In his town, for instance, the biggest complaints are around traffic, he said.
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