BRATTLEBORO — Local government leaders are publicly confirming public safety problems tied to discrimination as they plan reforms to curb the town police department’s targeting of minorities.
“We acknowledge that people here in our community have experienced harm from the existing systems,” Town Manager Peter Elwell said in a statement he read at the most recent selectboard meeting. “We acknowledge that, as people in positions of authority today, we have an obligation to develop a more complete understanding of the harm that is being experienced and to take action.”
A recent study by an advisory Community Safety Review Committee has found local police are “about the worst” in the state for disproportionately questioning people of color, stopping Black drivers up to 60% more, relative to their small local population, and searching them nine times more than white drivers, even though contraband was found in only 0.1% of all incidents.
The $40,000 study’s resulting 224-page report — which also spotlights complaints about how other local crisis responders and health and human service providers treat marginalized populations — lists more than 40 recommendations for improving public safety.
Local leaders fulfilled the first goal by publicly acknowledging the problems detailed in the study, which is based on testimony from some 200 of Brattleboro’s 11,332 residents in a town where 93% identify as white, 2.3% as Hispanic or Latino, 1.7% as Asian and 1.1% as Black or African-American.
“We commit ourselves to an ongoing process of reckoning with the harm caused by existing systems in Brattleboro and with our roles and actions,” Elwell said in a statement. “We further commit ourselves to approaching this work and future corrective actions with humility and reflection in collaboration with individuals and groups who have been negatively impacted.”
The selectboard has frozen police spending — most specifically on training — until the department can plan future programs with minority leaders in Vermont’s seventh-largest municipality.
“There’s a dynamic tension between the urgent need to address some of these matters and the equal and competing need for us to move slowly enough to be thoughtful and fully engaged with the community,” Elwell said. “Elements of it may be able to be done more quickly, and other elements of it will require years to implement.”
The selectboard had considered ranking the rest of the study’s recommendations and tackling the highest-rated first. But members changed their minds and unanimously granted Elwell and his municipal staff the go-ahead to determine what to prioritize and how to proceed.
“The more we give our attention to trying to resolve the urgency versus patience and perseverance, the more we are pulling ourselves out of the work to try to manage it,” Elwell said. “What’s important is that we not try to overly resolve those questions, but rather embrace the necessity of moving forward and trust ourselves and each other that, as we go along, we will develop the appropriate pace and way forward.”
To do that, municipal staffers are determining to what degree the town has the legal authority to implement specific recommendations.
Brattleboro can, for example, pursue more restorative justice practices, disarm police when they’re not responding to problems, invest in basic needs such as food, health and housing, and replace the current Citizen Police Communications Committee with a more empowered board of oversight.
But the town can’t decouple police from traffic safety management because state laws limit such duties to law enforcement, nor can it suspend paid leave for officers facing charges because of federal laws providing due process.
It also can’t make changes at private health care and human service providers such as the Brattleboro Retreat, the state’s largest psychiatric facility, or Brattleboro Memorial Hospital’s emergency department, where some locals with mental health issues have complained about being forcibly restrained.
The municipality launched its safety study last summer when some residents, spurred by the Minneapolis police killing of Minnesotan George Floyd, called for defunding a Brattleboro department that, budgeted for 27 officers, currently has only 20 because of a lack of qualified applicants.
Local leaders instead appointed the nine-member committee, which includes representatives of color, from the LGBTQ community, of lower-income and with addiction or psychiatric challenges, to review the use of municipal government resources “to ensure equitable and optimal community health, wellness and safety.”
The selectboard, in approving the plan to proceed, expects to hold periodic updates at its Tuesday meetings, with the first anticipated in August.
“We believe that it is important to get started on the overall body of work, to trust that we will find the appropriate pace for each separate item, and to use the accountability process as a means for calibrating, and regularly recalibrating, our priorities,” Elwell said. “Accomplishing meaningful and lasting systemic change will require urgency and also will require patience and perseverance.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Brattleboro leaders confirm public safety problems as they plan reforms.