Wednesday, September 16, 2020
In a new policy she intends to release this week, Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George instructs her deputies to refrain from asking the court to set bail as a condition of release.
“Imposing cash bail penalizes individuals based on their financial status rather than on their flight or public safety risk,” she writes, calling the system discriminatory and counterproductive.
Courts typically impose bail — an amount of money one must post in order to be released from custody — in order to ensure that defendants show up at trial. But according to George, the system is fundamentally unfair because it allows the wealthy to go free while others remain incarcerated.
“We’re holding poor people in jail and completely destabilizing their lives and the lives of their families to put them in a place that is always violent and dangerous and prone to create more trauma and harm,” she said in an interview. “It’s just appalling.”
George’s office will continue to request that those accused of violent crimes be held without bail when they pose a threat to public safety, she said. And because judges make the final decision about whether to impose bail, the court could continue to do so even if George and her deputies decline to request it.
Tags: Sarah George , Chesa Boudin , Sara Puls , Web Only , Image
Sunday, September 13, 2020
A 20-year law enforcement veteran, Ziter has been a Winooski police officer since 2016 and the district’s armed, uniformed school resource officer for the past three years. In that role, his job has included responding to a variety of on-campus incidents, making sure students got to school safely, visiting classrooms, and teaching classes about topics from drugs and alcohol to water safety.
The school district has had the school officer position since 1999, according to Winooski Police Chief Rick Hebert.
Ziter was supposed to be on campus this year before his position is phased out of the district next school year. But disagreements about whether he can be armed in school, and whether he can wear a uniform with Winooski PD insignia, have landed him in limbo.
Tags: Winooski , school resource officer , Jason Ziter , armed , students , Winooski Students for Anti-Racism , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
It stops short, however, of protecting the demonstrators from being ticketed or told to leave. The resolution also does not address the protesters' primary demand that the city fire three cops accused of using excessive force.
Sponsored by all five council Democrats, the resolution directs the body's Charter Change Committee "to review options for who makes and reviews police disciplinary decisions" and report back in October.
The measure also asks the citizen-led Police Commission to study ways the city could introduce stronger discipline for cops who use brutal or excessive force. That report is due by November 30.
"The resolution is forward thinking," Councilor Karen Paul (D-Ward 6), its lead sponsor, said. "There are action steps many of us have called for."
Tags: Burlington City Council , protest , Battery Park , Burlington Police , camp , Web Only , Image
Monday, September 7, 2020
Off the job since June, Jennifer Morrison told officials this week that she won't return as Burlington's interim police chief, citing frustrations that city councilors "are more interested in social activism than good governance."
Morrison laid out the reasons behind her decision in an email and letter she sent to Mayor Miro Weinberger on Sunday, about a month before she was to return from an unpaid leave to care for her husband, who received a stem cell transplant this summer.
"This journey has proved uncertain, prone to dramatic shifts, and exhausting," Morrison wrote. "It would be easy to just walk away by saying that our
medical situation doesn’t allow me to return, but that would not be the whole truth."
Tags: Burlington , Burlington City Council , Jennifer Morrison , Brandon del Pozo , Jan Wright , Burlington Police Department , Black Lives Matter , Web Only , Image
Friday, September 4, 2020
Racial justice activist Mark Hughes resigned from the Burlington Police Commission on Thursday, citing frustration that the citizen-led board is powerless and ineffective.
Hughes announced his resignation during a massive rally in front of City Hall. Protesters have been gathering since August 25, demanding that three Burlington police officers — Sgt. Jason Bellavance and officers Joseph Corrow and Cory Campbell — be removed from the force for using violence, particularly against young Black men.
Hughes says Mayor Miro Weinberger is ignoring the protests, which are led by the group The Black Perspective.
Hughes was appointed to the police commission in June 2019, a month after two young Black men said in a lawsuit that Bellavance and Corrow used excessive force against them the previous fall. At the time, the city was reckoning with the death of Douglas Kilburn, who died days after Campbell punched him during an altercation at the University of Vermont Medical Center. The state medical examiner classified Kilburn's death as a homicide.
Hughes joined the citizen-led body to "restore community trust to the department," he said at the time. Since then, Hughes has proven an influential voice in the fight for racial justice in Burlington following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. As coordinator of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, he successfully led the push to cut the police force earlier this summer.
In his resignation letter, Hughes wrote that the commission is ineffective because the city attorney and police union undermine its ability "to provide adequate oversight."
Tags: Mark Hughes , Vermont Racial Justice Alliance , Burlington Police Commission , Cory Campbell , Joseph Corrow , Jason Bellavance , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
A St. Albans police officer told a disabled student that he was "acting retarded" for not obeying the officer's commands during an altercation inside Bellows Free Academy high school last year.
The City of St. Albans and the Maple Run Unified School District agreed this month to pay the student's family a total of $30,000 to settle a human rights complaint alleging that they discriminated against the 17-year-old student on the basis of his disability. Officer David French, who worked at BFA as a school resource officer, was reassigned to a street patrol unit in June 2019, after the school year concluded.
The city released some information about the case on Wednesday in response to a public records request Seven Days filed on July 16. The city and school did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which includes a $8,750 payment from the city. Insurers are paying the remainder.
Tags: City of St Albans , St. Albans police department , David French , Maple Run Unified School District , School Resource Officers , Marilyn Mahusky , Vermont Legal Aid , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
In a brief video posted to his personal Facebook account on Tuesday, Sheriff Peter Newton criticized Donovan for clearing Vergennes Police Chief George Merkel of any wrongdoing related to allegations that Merkel had falsified time sheets so that he could make more money.
The sheriff accused Merkel of the misconduct in a report to the Vermont State Police earlier this year. But Donovan said last week that the VSP investigation revealed discrepancies of only 15 hours over a two-year period, with no evidence to suggest anything more than "clerical mistakes."
Tags: George Merkel , Vergennes , Police , Sheriff Peter Newton , T.J. Donovan , Web Only , Image
Monday, August 17, 2020
Thirty additional inmates have tested positive in recent days, bringing the total number of infections to at least 176 out of 219 total Vermont prisoners.
The new cases stem from a second round of mass testing on August 6.
"I cannot tell you how disappointing it is to look at a piece of paper in front of me that says 80.4 percent of the inmates that the commissioner of Corrections of Vermont — that's me — is responsible for, are positive," Department of Corrections Commissioner Jim Baker told reporters during a press conference announcing the results.
Tags: Jim Baker , Vermont Department of Corrections , Tallahatchie Regional Correctional Facility , CoreCivic , COVID-19 , coronavirus outbreak , Web Only , Image
Friday, August 14, 2020
Ariel Quiros, 64, the former owner of Jay Peak and Burke Mountain ski resorts, appeared at a virtual hearing in federal court in Burlington on Friday morning and admitted to conspiring to commit wire fraud, laundering money and making false statements. The charges stem from a massive embezzlement scheme in the Northeast Kingdom involving the EB-5 program, which offers foreign investors U.S. residency in exchange for $500,000 investments in approved job-creating businesses.
Tags: EB-5 scandal , Ariel Quiros , Vermont , Bill Stenger , Ponzi-like , AnC Bio Vermont , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, August 11, 2020
The federal complaint says that U.S. Border Patrol agents use the interior checkpoints for general crime control instead of immigration enforcement.
As a result, Border Patrol detains hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals who are lawfully traveling in northern New England without any suspicion that they have broken any laws, the ACLU affiliates said in a press release.
Tags: Border Patrol , ACLU Vermont , Checkpoints , Immigration , Web Only , Image