By Michael Bielawski,
The Burlington Police Report for January notes how per officer the number of serious “priority 1” incidents they are having to deal with are getting more frequent.
“Prior to 2020, no single officer had ever responded to more than 200 Priority 1 incidents in a year,” the report states. “In 2023 and 2024, half the officers assigned to Patrol did just that, and all of the full-year Patrol cops responded to more than 100 such incidents.”
A graph on page 12 appears to show some correlation between the decline of officers available starting after their defunding by about a third in 2022 and the increase in frequency that individual officers see priority 1 calls.
From 2012 to 2019, there have been no cases of officers facing more than 200 priority 1 calls in a single year. Starting in 2022 (after COVID restrictions), it rose to around 13 to 15 officers seeing at least 200 calls. Also, 48% of officers in 2023 and 42% in 2024 saw more than 100 such incidents, again up from the high 20s/low 30s from before the defunding.
A full list of Priority 1 incident categories is on the report’s tenth page. It includes homicides, bomb threats, arson, robbery, overdoses, sexual assaults, and more.
Guidance from New Orleans?
The department looked to New Orleans - and their recent terror attack - for pointers on how to safely manage last month’s soccer championship parade.
It was the Catamounts’ 2024 National Championship parade on Jan 26. This event went “without a hitch.”
The report states, “The BPD was involved in planning from the beginning: DC LaBarge put together a comprehensive safety plan, shaped in part by the New Year’s Eve terrorist attack in New Orleans. In the end, everything went off without a hitch.”
New recruits
On Jan. 30, the Mayor, along with City Council members, the Queen City Police Foundation, the Police Commission, and the public all witnessed the swearing in of ten new employees.
New hires include dispatchers, Community Service Officers, Community Support Liaisons, a new member of their crisis response team, and a new command assistant. They also have a new sworn officer who’s now off to the Vermont Police Academy.
“Shootings” down, gun crimes high
Through Jan. 15, there were 3,188 this year compared to 3,202 incidents last year. One area that has seen no action yet is gun crimes.
The report states, “Although 2024 saw 15 incidents, which was more than any year prior to 2022, the nature of those incidents reflected a change: fewer ‘shootings,’ in which a person was struck, and fewer incidents in which someone was targeted by gunfire.”
It continues that using guns in reckless ways is still commonplace.
It states, “What remains are reckless discharge incidents—still concerning, but of a different character than incidents in which people are known to be trying to shoot other people. That said, Burlington has a long way to go before returning to the two-a-year average it experienced prior to 2020.”
It says that hard police work has made a difference with more serious gun crimes. The report adds, “The incredible spike in gunfire that began in 2020 is being driven down, in part by great patrol and detective work and arrests for most cases in which anyone was struck by gunfire.”
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle
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