Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling, who started with the department as a 19-year-old auxiliary officer, announced Tuesday that he will retire in June after spending his entire career in the Queen City.

During a news conference attended by more than a dozen officers and a smattering of city councilors, Schirling, 45, said he is leaving after seven years as chief. 

"It's not the years that get you, it's the miles," Schirling, 45, said. "I want to be able to have a long life, and there's no question that this work takes a toll."

Even after they obtained a conviction in January against a Bosnian refugee accused of lying about his involvement in war crimes, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Burlington remained tight-lipped about the origin of their case.

Federal prosecutors would say only that they had learned of Edin Sakoc, who settled in Vermont in 2001 after he was granted refugee status, while investigating other offenses during the Bosnian War. 

The New York Times on Sunday provided some vital context to the case. The Times reported that the Department of Justice has initiated a wave of cases across the country against Bosnian immigrants who may have lied about their involvement in the early 1990s Balkans conflict.

Officials have identified 300 Bosnians living in the United States who participated in war crimes or ethnic cleansing during the conflict, and the suspect list may eventually grow to 600 people, the Times reported. "The effort to identify suspects included an appeal broadcast to Bosnians around the world in February, urging witnesses to come forward with any information about war crimes," the Times reported.

Kathleen O’Connor, a human rights prosecutor at the Justice Department, said in a message translated into Bosnian on the Voice of America network that "justice can be served in the United States despite the fact that many years have gone by and that the conduct occurred overseas, far away."

Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger has raised $93,057 — and spent $63,817 of it — since he won his first term three years ago, according to a new filing with the secretary of state's office.

Those numbers far exceed the $3,175 raised and $2,334 spent by Progressive rival Steve Goodkind in his campaign to unseat the incumbent Democrat. Neither of the other two candidates in the race, Libertarian Loyal Ploof or independent Greg Guma, filed fundraising reports by Monday's deadline.

Unlike Goodkind, who accepted his first contribution — a $35 loan from himself — in December 2014, Weinberger has been raising and spending campaign cash for years.

The incumbent's latest report covers his fundraising activity between August 2013 and the end of January 2015, during which time he took in $74,307. In a July 2013 filing, Weinberger's campaign reported raising $6,750 from others and $12,000 in loans from the mayor himself.

Since he began campaigning in earnest this year, the mayor has collected $27,350.

This afternoon a jury convicted a refugee accused of rape during the Bosnian war of lying to immigration officials in order to gain U.S. citizenship. 

After 12 hours of deliberation, a jury of eight women and four men found Edin Sakoc guilty on a charge of unlawful procurement of naturalization. He now faces a potential prison term and deportation. 

Sakoc sat stone-faced as the verdict was read in U.S. District Court in Burlington, just as he had throughout his two-week trial. After jurors left the courtroom, he exchanged handshakes and hugs with his attorneys and shrugged his shoulders.

Afterward, prosecutors said they will seek to deport Sakoc, 55, who does not have a prior criminal record. The conviction can also carry a 10-year prison sentence.

Judge William Sessions III released Sakoc to live with friends in Essex Junction while he awaited his sentencing later this year.
  
He's told his lawyers he hasn't committed any crime, and his family and those who know him believe in him, defense attorney Steven Barth said afterward.

“It is an important case because we have laws that govern immigration into this country, and when we receive information that raises questions about whether a person has abused that system in coming in there’s an obligation to investigate it and follow through,” Acting U.S. Attorney Eugenia Cowles said.

Sakoc’s attorneys said they would file an appeal.

“It would be a tragedy for him to be deported,” attorney David McColgin said. “It would have a terrible impact on him and his family.” Sakoc has a wife and 7-year-old daughter in Vermont. He also has an adult son and a grandchild in Bosnia.

Prosecutors this morning began their final day of presenting evidence against a Burlington man charged with concealing his involvement in a rape and two murders in Bosnia when he applied for U.S. citizenship.

Prosecutors played video testimony from another Bosnian who claims to have witnessed a kidnapping and two murders in 1992, when brutal ethnic fighting roiled Bosnia. Authorities say that Edin Sakoc, who settled in Vermont more than a decade ago, and a fellow soldier identified only as "Boban" stormed a home where a family was sheltering three Serbian women.

The men kidnapped a woman whom Sakoc later raped, prosecutors allege, and then Boban fatally shot the other two women.

Nilokina Ljubic, who lived with her parents in the home, recalled that Boban was more aggressive, while Sakoc consoled her.

Updated at 5:53 p.m. with additional testimony.

A Bosnian Serb woman testified via a pre-taped video in federal court today, saying that she was raped in 1992 by a masked man during an ethnic conflict. 

Prosecutors allege that man is Edin Sakoc, a Burlington resident who is on trial this week on charges he lied about his actions in wartime Bosnia when he applied for American citizenship.

The woman, 49 years old at the time she says she was assaulted, was one of a few ethnic Serbs who remained in her tiny village of Pocitelj as brutal fighting broke out across Bosnia. Other Serbs, fearing violence from ethnic Croats and Muslims, had fled, but the woman's mother didn't want to leave.

In July 1992, she said, two armed men stormed the house where they were staying. They took the woman, saying they would interrogate her and bring her back. Instead, they took her to a prison camp.

One of the men raped her twice, once inside a home where they stopped, and again in the backseat.

"He cursed my mother, pushed me down, and raped me," the woman testified. "Did whatever he wanted, and that's it."

After the first assault, she said, the man kicked her, leaving a scar below her right knee that she showed to the attorneys.

As a general practice, Seven Days does not identify the victims of alleged sexual assaults.

Stewart Dunoskovic didn't know anyone at the Ice House when he started working as a server there in the spring of 2012, but that didn't last long. Kevin DeOliveira, who had arrived at the restaurant only a couple weeks earlier, quickly introduced himself and invited Dunoskovic out for drinks, where he ordered them a concoction of gin, ginger ale and cranberry juice that he made up on the spot.

"He was like that with everybody," Dunoskovic said. "He was super friendly. He was the life of the party, real quick with a joke."

They became inseparable. In the summertime, they would hang out together after work almost every night, chasing girls and good times on Church Street. In quieter times, they would see each other a few times a week, even after they both left the Ice House to work at other downtown restaurants: Dunoskovic at Leunig's Bistro, DeOliveira at L'Amante Ristorante, which he left a couple months ago.

Dunoskovic was at work on Sunday morning when his girlfriend came in and broke the news he still struggles to believe: DeOliveira, 23, had been found dead in his Greene Street apartment over the weekend, killed by an unknown assailant.

Police declined to say whether they have identified any suspects in the shooting death of a 23-year-old former University of Vermont student found dead in his Greene Street apartment over the weekend.

In a press conference, Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling said that Kevin DeOliveira was killed by firearm. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled it was not an accidental death or a suicide, Schirling said.

Citing the ongoing investigation, Schirling did not release how many wounds DeOliveira suffered.

Police said they do not believe the shooting was random or that the public is in any danger. However, they are withholding key pieces of information such as when they believe DeOliveira was killed. Two friends found him on Saturday evening after DeOliveira's family, concerned they had not heard from him, asked them to check his apartment.

"We are following many helpful leads, and as a result, the investigation has a number of specific directions unfolding," Schirling said.

The Burlington City Council on Monday night approved initiatives supporting non-citizens’ rights to participate in local elections and serve on city boards.

After more than a dozen people, including many refugees, voiced support for the proposals, the council took the first steps in what would be a lengthy, difficult process to bestow local voting rights on people who have not secured American citizenship.

By an 11-2 vote, councilors placed on the March ballot a non-binding referendum that would urge state lawmakers to change the Vermont constitution and give non-citizens the right to vote in municipal and school elections, with councilors Dave Hartnett (D-Ward 4) and Kurt Wright (R-Ward 4) opposed.

And in a unanimous vote, councilors ordered the charter change committee to draft a proposed ordinance for the March ballot that would allow non-citizens to serve on city boards and work as department heads. 

Even if city voters approve the measures, they would face a lengthy journey before being implemented. The legislature would have to approve both them, and the constitutional amendment would also require a majority vote from all Vermonters. The city has launched similar campaigns at least twice in the past decade, but they foundered well before they could get to state lawmakers.

Speakers urged the council to try again.

Jeetan Khadka, a refugee from Nepal who has been in Burlington for six years, mentioned that the city’s website features a welcome message from Mayor Miro Weinberger touting Burlington as “vibrant,” and “diverse.”

“It’s about building a city that stands up for its values,” Khadka said. “Burlington will be a better place to work, live, and raise a family if all residents are involved in the voting process.”

Burlington High School teacher Erika Lowe, the daughter of a Chinese refugee, said she teaches students in her school —14 percent of whom are learning English as a second language — to value their civic responsibilities.

“We spend a lot of time encouraging our students to value what’s happening in our community and to pay attention to the news,” Lowe said. “Essentially, we’re preparing out students to be a part of the community when they won’t have a vote in that community. Hearing that voice, it’s important.”

While the measures might face long odds in the legislature, Councilor Rachel Siegel (P-Ward) noted that one year after Burlington voters passed a non-binding referendum urging lawmakers to decriminalize marijuana, legislators made that historic step.

“The legislature really does look to us in Burlington as leaders for change,” Siegel said. “I think change is coming.”

During the academic year, Naomi Winterfalcon works as an adjunct professor at Champlain College — a post she's held for the last eight years.

During the summer, she said, she relies on food stamps to get by. 

"When I graduated with a master's, I really thought it would be life-changing and that I would have a decent income and a marketable skill," said Winterfalcon, who got her advanced degree in her early fifties. Now 59, she went on, "I certainly have a marketable skill, but I don’t have a decent income and I certainly don't have benefits." She gets paid roughly $3,500 for each of three humanities courses she teaches per semester. She used to get health care through her spouse, but her spouse recently lost her job; now both are on Medicaid. 

Tapping into that type of frustration, the Service Employees International Union is attempting to organizing adjuncts at Champlain, Burlington and St. Michael's colleges. This Friday, it filed a petition with the U.S. Labor Relations Board to request union elections at Champlain and Burlington colleges, where officials got the required 30 percent of employee signatures. SEIU plans to do the same at St. Michael's.