Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo. File photo by Morgan True/VTDigger
BURLINGTON — City police held a meeting with community leaders, members of the public and stakeholders in the social welfare system to discuss the recent police killing of an elderly man with mental illness.
Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo said the Thursday evening meeting was an opportunity to share more information about how officers respond to people in crisis and listen to public concerns about last week’s shooting.
Officer David Bowers, 23, killed Ralph “Phil” Grenon inside Grenon’s downtown apartment after a five-hour standoff during which police say they went to great lengths to resolve the situation without hurting him.
Bowers is on administrative leave, and the Vermont State Police are investigating the killing. Prosecutors will review the case, but residents and public officials have called for a wider review of the use of deadly force, especially in police interactions with the mentally ill.
The meeting at police headquarters on North Avenue was by invitation only and closed to the press. Del Pozo said it was organized that way so community representatives could speak candidly and ask questions without worrying about how the meeting would be reported by the media.
Limiting the attendance was intended to make sure everyone was heard at length, he said, adding that roughly three dozen public officials, faith leaders, mental health workers and residents attended in addition to the police command staff. The meeting lasted more than two hours, he said.
There will be opportunities for other residents to have their concerns heard at upcoming meetings of the Police Commission, City Council and Public Safety Commission, del Pozo said.
“People were asking pointed questions,” the chief said.
Their concerns focused on whether police could have waited longer before forcing a confrontation with Grenon, why such a young officer was given the option of deadly force and whether social workers who knew Grenon could have safely played a larger role in the police response, according to del Pozo and several people who attended the meeting.
Workers at the Housing Authority, who were going through a difficult eviction process with Grenon that precipitated the standoff, felt left out of the response and believed their relationship with Grenon could have helped achieve another outcome, del Pozo said.
“One of the big concerns out there is everyone has a piece of the puzzle — Housing Authority knows its tenants, the Street Outreach Team knows its clients. The hard part in a crisis is putting all those pieces together and using all that information to get a good outcome,” he said.
As for why Bowers was the officer chosen to wield a firearm in the small police unit that entered Grenon’s apartment, del Pozo said he reminded attendees that the average age of officers on the force is 25. The Burlington Police Department is too small to have a specialized unit of more experienced officers for particular situations, he added.
Attorney Robert Appel. File photo by Cory Dawson/VTDigger
Robert Appel, a civil rights lawyer who attended the meeting, said he still wonders about one thing. “My remaining question is, ‘Why didn’t you wait? Why didn’t you just wait?’” he said.
Police have said Grenon had been making threats to his neighbors and had armed himself with two large kitchen knives before retreating to his bathroom and getting inside the shower with the curtain drawn. At that point, Appel said, it would appear Grenon was a meaningful threat only to himself.
For his part, Chief del Pozo said he heard a “genuine desire for us to wait whenever it’s reasonable to wait, and we want to wait whenever it’s reasonable to wait.”
“We just need to find some common ground about what ‘reasonable’ means,” he said.
Appel said he believes the response shows progress from a similar situation in 2013 when officers shot and killed 49-year-old Wayne Brunette, who was wielding a shovel, within minutes of confronting him at his New North End home. Brunette also had been identified as having mental illness.
“This is a step forward. Five hours is not five minutes,” Appel said, but he added that “you can’t go around unnecessarily killing citizens.”
Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, who was invited because she’s a longtime advocate for people with mental illness, said it was encouraging that del Pozo was willing to have the type of dialogue that occurred around the use of force and police interactions with people in crisis.
Appel said he agreed but added that he sees a certain amount of savvy in del Pozo’s decision to reach out to potential foes directly. “It’s much harder to bash somebody when they’re engaging with you,” he said.
People shouldn’t hesitate to call police when a family member is in crisis, Appel said, but tragedies like Grenon’s killing undermine the trust that needs to exist for them to feel comfortable doing that. Del Pozo’s engaging is a positive sign, but it remains to be seen how that translates going forward, Appel added.
Asked if he felt better about the police response after attending the meeting, Appel answered: “The ultimate result is he’s dead. How good can you feel about that?”
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