If approved by the full City Council, the officers will fill new positions. The current city budget has money to fill 100 existing officer positions. In recent years, the number of officers has hovered between 90 and 95, according to city officials.
Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo and Mayor Miro Weinberger. File Photo by Morgan True/VTDigger
The grant is from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Known as a COPS grant, the money will cover close to $41,500 annually, or roughly 42 percent of the total compensation package, for each new officer, according to a Police Department memo to the city.
The money phases out over five years, and when the grant is exhausted in 2022, the total compensation cost to the city for the five newly hired officers will be $549,400, according to city officials.
Mayor Miro Weinberger acknowledged that would put pressure on future city budgets, but he said paying for the additional officers is a priority because of increased mental health calls and challenges presented by the heroin epidemic.
“The grant money helps us bridge the growth (in the Police Department),” Weinberger said. “That bridge is valuable, and we will find strategies to pay for this locally going forward.”
In its grant application, the Burlington Police Department said the new officers will help meet its goal of reducing crime and addressing the opiate crisis while enhancing “public trust without increasing rates of arrest and incarceration.”
To that end, Chief Brandon del Pozo has increased foot patrols in the city, asking his officers to spend more time outside their cruisers as a visible and approachable presence in high-crime areas.
The application says the new officers hired with the COPS grant money will bolster the police presence in “hot spots,” high-crime areas determined by mapping crime reports coupled with the perception of city residents.
“Foot patrols are deployed to these areas, which most often focus on open air and residential drug markets, disorderly and intoxicated groups, and areas where theft and vandalism prevail,” the application says. Hot spot policing has led to an 18 percent reduction in calls to police from one high-crime area over the past year, according to the application.
The grant money follows an announcement last week of an ambitious effort led by city and state officials, as well as medical providers and social service nonprofits, to end the opiate epidemic in the region.
Del Pozo recently acknowledged that traditional police tactics won’t achieve that goal on their own. He has promised that his officers will work closely with the partners in that effort to get help to people who are struggling with addiction and to help develop alternatives to arrest and incarceration.
The measure approved Monday by the finance board would allow the department to hire the first officer during the current fiscal year, bringing the total number of officers to 101 by the summer of 2017.
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