Officer, thank you. Do we need to do all that over again?
Nope, it's okay. I have notes. Thank you, though.
Thank you. I don't see Officer Millis yet. So what I will do is go to our next item,
Item 5, which was a presentation from the Burlington Police Department's recruitment
team.
And that is Corporal Carolyn Irwin.
Hi.
Hi there.
And thank you so much for coming tonight.
Really appreciate it.
And I don't want to mispronounce your name.
Is it Ahnhaag?
Yes, Ahnhaag Bajwa.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Ahnhaag Bajwa.
Is that correct?
Yes, ma'am.
Okay, thank you very much.
I really appreciate you taking the time
to join us this evening.
Recruitment and retention is definitely a very big topic
in the city, not just amongst the city councilors.
Any city councilor can tell you
that we constantly get questions
about how things are going,
how many officers they have,
who is in line for training, and things like that.
And I got the idea of inviting you.
It is something I wanted to do for a while but I loved the video that was produced a few months ago.
I thought that was a really great product and it made me think about what else you might be working on
and also maybe at the end after your presentation of the information you'd like to give us we
could have a quick conversation about how to highlight your work more through city counselors,
through social media and another few ideas that we could maybe follow up on
afterwards but right now the floor is yours.
Hi, so I'm Carolyn, Corporal Erwin,
others know me. I just hit my 20 years on July 12th so I've been at BPD for 20
years and I know I celebrated with a lobster roll and a lobster in Maine
both on one mail.
So I've recruited, I've had 20 year career and I've recruited for
a really long time. I recruited back, so I was hired in 2004, six years after I was
an officer for almost nine or ten years, and then I worked patrol. I've been
bike patrol community affairs with Lacey and then the current recruiter
left and we were so short after COVID, after the movement, after the
Floyd era and our recruiter left and we were so short on officers too where I kind of did it so long
there like Carolyn can you go back in recruitment kind of help out for a little while and so now
I've been there like in a year and a half in this role kind of really different recruiting now
from, you know, back in 2010, a really different number of applicants,
different, I guess I'd
say attitudes, like I'll set up a physical fitness test or I'll set up a polygraph which
cost us $450 and so
did. I'm like, what does that mean? Not in the dating world but married
for years. I didn't know what ghosting was. I was like, Oh, I'm going to ghost it all the time.
People aren't showing up to PT tests and not showing up to this, but we're also paying for
out of our budget. I think I'd say prior back in the 2010 eras, like if your paperwork wasn't
filled out correctly, you wouldn't get through very far because attention to detail is so
important for officers. If you didn't show up for a PT test and even let me know, we'd kind of
be like, Oh, you're done. You didn't show up for appointment. We're now in this different
era too, where I was like, Oh, you didn't show up. It cost us $450. I'll still schedule
We'll be for another one because you already made it this far and really, you know, want to see more and length you and then
I had somebody like not show up twice
Anhad and I I've never had this before either in every position
We finished a background investigation, which is our very last step before you get into law enforcement
So it's a pretty important role. We say it's sort of our gateway like the last step before you get in
And it's a long process somebody applies
via NEO go online
It actually goes to HR first
So we don't even see some of the applications because there's some automatic disqualification.
So if somebody uses marijuana with them a year, I'll never even see their application.
The downfall to that is somebody will call and be like, we haven't heard from you.
So sometimes it looks like we're not responding when really we never saw it because they didn't
make it past that. But so once somebody applies and it makes it to Anhad and I,
I kind of work more on this sworn and Anhad will do most of our civilian professional
positions I'll invite them to a physical fitness test and also I send them our big like Burlington
police application a pretty long detailed application so then when they come I'm trying
to consolidate the hiring process too so people used to take you know six to eight months a lot
of steps a lot of traveling back and forth so somebody comes now and I'll say all right let's
do our physical fitness test and if you pass we'll do the panel interview on the same day
Or vice versa let's do a panel interview so you're not all hot and sweaty first if you pass that we'll do your physical fitness test
And if they pass that they have a psychological exam that cost $90 to do we used to do the MMPI to they just switched
I'm gonna say that it's the Academy so our hands are also sort of tied because you're doing kind of like the Academy's physical fitness test and
BPD could have their own that's more applicable
But there's no point because you have to pass this test again the Academy
So if I did a different one and
And I want to hire them.
They have to pass this test again in the academy if they fail that.
So I want to ensure that our applicants are passing this test.
So we do what the academy does, which is a mile and a half run and a 500 meter row.
So you do the physical fitness test, you pass that, you do a panel interview with
three people on it.
If you pass that, you have the MMPI because that costs $90 now, which also BPD covers.
It used to cost 25 and I had applicants cover it, but $90, I feel like there's
a little steep.
And a polygraph, which is a lie detector test.
And that's mandated through also the police academy.
A lot of states do not do polygraphs.
And so that's $450.
And then if you make it past that,
then we're doing a background.
So it's our very last step and usually it's a detective
and it could take a month to two months to three months.
One, because they have tons of calls too
and they're doing this during their workload.
And then we're calling family, friends, references.
We're going to their house, we're going to addresses.
is a little poking a little prying, seeing their work ethic.
Well, we're getting people to the background phase
and we're calling them and saying, we want to hire you
and we can't get ahold of them.
And we can't say we want to hire you.
Like they're just not answering their phone
after all this work and after this process.
So I've had a police officer in that role.
I ended up setting the application
with like parents' names and sisters.
I mean, I called one's mom.
I was like, okay, where's your son?
But she never called back either.
And on how we've had it in every position, I think dispatch a CSO and police who have done the whole proc and
future in park patrol
Where we did the whole background and just never heard from them again. So it's a really long story of but one
It's a long process and two would just it's a different. It's it's
It's sort of that
mix with
Not a lot of interest in law enforcement with there being a shortage and
kind of dealing kind of what the whole
you know, nation is. And now maybe a mix of law enforcement not looking that great to people or them wanting to join. And unfortunately, I'm not are you able to just share this.
I took a snippet I deleted the names, or blacked out the names for you. But unfortunately, back when I recruited back in 2010 I'll get maybe 300 or BPD would get 300 to like 350 applications.
Is there a way, can we zoom that in or no?
Is that good?
It's better. What you can't see is, so in January, you'll see all the people, all right, well backing up.
So this is a spreadsheet that when an officer earlier was recruited that the chief set up,
and it was kind of a quick way to look and see who was applying and where they were in the process.
So I got rid of names for privacy, but in January you can see when people applied, February
is another month, it's light gray.
So you can see, but it's hard to see that, but so only four people applied in the whole
month of February.
Only three people applied in March, two people in May, and this is how many applications
we received total.
So in one year, we've received 26 applications so far.
Last year's number, I think we've had 112.
So this trajectory is insanely low.
So since January, this many applications.
And you can see, so green is sort of moving you forward.
Pink is where you're out of the process.
blue is pending and yellow has been hired and already 19 people are out but
either and most of them withdrew themselves you can see one I mean somebody
applied and they had a Brady letter meaning are for like they worked at
VSP got into some trouble Sarah George said they wouldn't prosecute them or
the paperwork so we can't hire somebody who has a Brady letter somebody
with a injury, somebody didn't have their work authorization, so they're a non-U.S.
citizen, which is fine.
We hired that, but you also have to have your permanent resident card.
So this person didn't have that.
Somebody applied who just got tased, maybe like last year on an incident and gotten a
fight with officers.
I couldn't hire them.
So a lot of it isn't us saying, we don't want you.
It's a lot of people drawing up.
And when I say that, it's Anhad and I calling.
So I'll usually call people. We email twice and then physically make the phone call.
And if I don't hear from them like two weeks, sometimes we call again or sometimes I'll be like, okay, and let them go.
And then sometimes when I get the person, they're like, oh, no, we're not interested anymore.
So I'll still put them as a withdrawal, but really they didn't really put much effort in.
It's kind of us like being like, are you still interested? How can we help you?
So really, I just, it's going to be really hard.
I don't know really how to build BPD up with that amount or that little of applications.
That means I'm working with four people, right?
19 were already rejected or withdrew.
Four people have been hired, three from that group, one from last year's 2023.
So that leaves me with four people I'm working with right now.
And somebody signed up for that PT test.
I think August 8th is my next one that somebody signed up for so I'm not really
sure I kind of move forward or what to do and I think our biggest problem I mean
is just getting numbers like how do we get people to apply to BPD what makes
BPD stick out with how will we get people what makes it attractive and right
now I feel like when you Google Burlington there's not much like we have
of that Reddit that's making us look horrible.
We don't have a lot of housing
and I think it's 16% above national average.
So it's expensive and our rent's expensive.
Our politics here don't usually align
with what officers look for.
Where people see that we arrest somebody
and they're out the next day, like,
it's just, I don't know.
I mean, really, I just really don't know what to do.
So I love like the brainstorming and ideas too.
so we do our advertising. We created movies. We'll still do this. We do job fairs. We still do this.
We're trying different ever. We did New York Post. That's probably the one we,
which Anhad can brush on. This is more her. I don't even have like a LinkedIn Facebook
that is not my forte. That's where Anhad comes in. But we try, New York Post,
we've probably got the most hits from, but we've tried our local. We're the biggest
This agency for mom, people know how to find us too, but I was telling Anhad to the definition
of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results.
So this isn't working, so what should we be doing?
And we came up with some incentives.
We're trying to be really creative.
So Anhad and I created a sabbatical idea, which would be the first agency that I
know that does a sabbatical.
And there's more when I just met some friends from Alaska and she was a lawyer.
and talked about it. I was like, that's a brilliant idea because it's all about like getting refreshed
and what who more than like officers right like 64 controlling the city like if you have two on
shift like just kind of get an overworked and burned out and I just heard an officer say
maybe he's even last year that he returned on vacation and he was just going going going
and you don't realize it you don't realize your body's like in this fight in flight this
whole time in that we're we're doing that 40 hours a week every day and he took a vacation
he was like oh my god and then he came back and then he had to get readjusted again to this
and but he didn't even know he was doing it and I was like oh that's gotta be horrible for us
so we were thinking a sabbatical could really benefit from off or officers could
benefit from it and we came up came up with this proposal I think it was kind of you know
Mayor Miro's last week, so he's sort of like table it and then our new mayor I've never
met and obviously she's been super busy with funds.
So I don't know if it's ever been looked at, but we're trying to get creative that way.
And we have a web proposal written after your five, 10, 15 years you could apply to
this.
You'd have to let us know what the plan is.
Multiple officers couldn't do it at the same time, but hiring is every two years
because the police economy is offered every two years.
So it is staggered. So I'm always trying to hire for August and February Academy class.
So our next group for officers are starting on Monday for a two week pre-basic.
We'll get them ready for the Academy and they go to the Academy
August 5th for 17 weeks.
But I kind of lost my trail thought right there.
Anyway, but also I've just done a lot of talking. Do you have questions?
Thank you. So first of all
Well, you have, one of the notes that I had was challenges, right? So you already out the
gate reviewed a bunch of that. This has been very, very interesting and very thought-provoking.
Could you just expand on the concept of a sabbatical? Would it be something that would be added
to the benefit package? Would it have to be negotiated into the contract?
Yeah, so our idea, so we do have a proposal written which I'd be happy to send.
It hasn't been looked at or approved or anything yet.
I believe from them, but the chief did look at it.
And this is us being creative.
It could be a no, but we're like just trying.
We're throwing stuff out.
So the idea was after your five year, 10 year, 15 year, somebody could apply for it.
And it has to be used on how I think it was within like a year and a half.
But I believe it's within 30, I'm looking at it right now.
I think it was within the 30 months.
30 months you'd have to use it.
So if somebody else did have it, like say,
so my academy class, there's four of us still here
out of five, which is pretty impressive
if we just hit 20 years.
So there's four of us.
That also means four of us could go right now.
So these four were I just hired
and they're not even guaranteed.
They almost just knows it outright
because us four could leave and now we have these four.
But they still have to get through training and FTO,
which is why it's so important to retain officers because they're a known entity,
where we're losing a lot of people sometimes in field training, too. And on them, too,
like being like, this isn't what I thought it was, or some aren't making it like prone to
paces very fast. So we thought you would apply and you'd also have to say the reason
or what you want to do. So, you know, my friends did Habitat for Humanity, or they went to
another country and participated or tried, but we were thinking also you could do a training
or already missing a lot of family time. And then it would get really expensive too or
say I have a seven-year-old. So I don't want to be gone even more like three weeks away
from them. So I was trying to do if we could do like a project, but then also maybe you
just need to like have a week at home with family or work on a house project and recharge.
And not everybody will do this anyway. Like some people it's not their style and some
like we're not interested in this like they want more of the
Eunice to be able to go into or like what we used to have but you need officers for that and I
totally get that but I was like we need to build up our PD again um I'm not do you have it pulled
up more were there other um qualifications sort of um no just that um you have to be um the only
officers that can apply that have completed either their 5, 10, 15 years and they would
submit application and it's not you won't automatically get granted. I believe we put
in there that it has to be approved by our command staff which is our chief and deputy
chiefs along with the BPOA if they consider you know this officer is eligible for it
and they would also have to let us know what they plan on doing. So whether it is like
going abroad to teach English or work on a project with a habitat with humanity or even
a local community project, they would have to give us a write up before and after to show what
exactly that they did do. And even if it was some sort of training related to their position,
they would also have to include an afterwards kind of like a post write up of what they learned
it was beneficial for them. And this would be extra. So this is not taking their
vacation time. Correct. If somebody applies and does the effort to go through. So this
is also something like extra. Yes. But I think it was just nice to have an extended break
because again, like it's just a recharge or what officers are seeing. Like I've been
there 20 years, but these newer officers, but I don't know if I would know exactly
what I'm doing anymore on the road, it's changed so much for these newer officers
are seeing so much more faster and like higher crime and more violence like I
probably went to three you know homicides and so it is just we used to
have one like every 12 years or 20 so it's it's a little different and again
we're just trying to be creative another and this was more retention so
this isn't helping like how to get officers to apply but it's like maybe
be just something for the officers here.
And then the other one we came up with,
we used to have like, if you get,
say I not make some other recruiter,
I'm supposed to hire people.
But if another officer suggests
that somebody should apply to be PDE or says,
oh, come work for us.
We got a great job.
And they get hired, that officer gets a day off.
But for, on how to deny what you're saying,
we need something more along the way
because it's such a long process,
that officer and so the academy is four months long.
We do a two-week pre-basic, then you have a post-basic, then you have four months of
field training, and you have to get off all that so you get your day off, but almost a
year later.
So we're thinking if we could come up with something like if somebody applies, here's
$200.
If they pass the academy, here's $1,000.
If they get off FTO, here's $2,000, and they make it a year, here's your day off,
or something.
like it should be more like something along so it you're vested in this person even more.
Some kind of a tiered referral that would encourage officer to for lack of a better word
right now be like a buddy to someone to to help check in on this person with regards to that.
Yeah, no, that's great. I am jotting that down. Could you send to the Public Safety
Committee the copy of the document that you had put together regarding the sabbatical,
and we will be happy to follow up with the mayor to see if we can start a discussion
because retention is definitely part of recruitment, and that is something that we've all been
If you allow me, I'm going to go, I see that my fellow counselors have their hands up with questions.
I'll start with counselor, new visor, please.
Yeah, no, I just appreciate it. I had a couple of clarifying questions and then I really just clarified questions and I appreciate the work and I appreciate you coming and sharing about it.
So I'm curious about the drop-off rate, like looking at that spreadsheet, I know it's a lower amount of applicants, but in terms of the number of folks applying versus the percentage who are starting the process and not finishing, if that's been consistent, even though it's a total, and if you have to get back to me, that's fine.
But I'm curious of the drop-off rates of sort of the – I don't know if it's fair to say, but part of me – my gut is telling me that it's somehow a reflection of the quality of the pool, because if someone's applying and they just don't respond, it feels semi-unprofessional.
And so, so yeah, I don't want to be like assigning a value judgment to it.
But is that sort of changing in addition to the total numbers?
If that's clear.
So it's hard.
So when I used to get the applications for the 300s, that one's interesting because
like page and page and page and maybe I didn't organize it this way.
So I didn't know so much to drop off rate, but what's interesting about that is
somehow it's still sometimes only get four people or six per Academy class.
But I think and not even purposely doing it, but our standard has changed a little like I said
I wouldn't have accepted if you had I applied to South Burlington PD and
Maybe it's not right either. But back then I was like, oh attention in detail. It's so important as a cop
You're not here. We're now we're like, oh, you gave us the wrong cover letter
Please send us another one so the tension in detail isn't there so you're right like I it is it's
changing a little that applicants were seeing and not saying, I mean,
I'm hiring four gentlemen on Monday and one has his doctorate and was in the
Korean military and he's so smart. So it's not that either.
We also have some amazing people. It's just,
I mean,
if I got four people out of 300 applications that won class versus A,
I don't know what to do now right now with four that I haven't even done a
PT test or gone any paperwork. Like it's just, it's so, so it has,
I don't know if I'm answering your question. I don't know the statistic. I definitely have a lot. I might have had as many responses back then, like, oh, no responses, but I think we had so many applicants coming in.
And it was busier, right? Like, I would have a test date and I'd be down at the police academy and we would have 100 people there because it was for every agency.
We're now, I'm offering the physical fitness test every other Wednesday at BPD and nobody signed up for the past three. So I do think August 8th is my next one.
as one person, where we used to have, as a Vermont agency,
like 100.
Am I asking, what are you, am I getting
to what you're asking or no?
No, that's helpful, though.
And I mean, you touched on it.
But I mean, I guess like per, I don't know,
like I'm thinking about like, and maybe if I'm hearing you
right, this is what you're saying, which is like per 100,
the folks who don't end up replying or like apply
and sort of like don't follow up with you on their end,
maybe per hundred people that looks consistent, but you just made it up because you were talking about three or four hundred people applying to something or 200 people applying.
And maybe it's, if I heard you right, it's sort of, it's also hard to compare because how persistent you were following up with an applicant might have changed.
So it's hard to compare the two.
It is. It's a little different.
And I don't think I've had as many, like even back then,
though I think you'd say like, oh,
Corporal Irwin, I'm no longer in the process.
So again, somebody would let us know and we'd like to say,
thank you.
I don't think it's been this,
I'd say, again,
like attention to detail like Anhad and I,
probably most of these cover letters,
honestly, we're not complete.
And it was us saying,
can you please write the right agency
or apply to the right position?
Like one was like,
I want to be a men's basketball coach.
I'm like, well, that's Burlington PD.
You have to attach a resume and cover letter, somebody attached their like roof quote, like
so I got their roofing stuff and I was like, oh, okay, please.
So, but also that's almost because you don't also want somebody attention to detail you
want those great cover letters like you want your officers to be at a higher standard
like so I also sort of, I remember Chief talking because I also have a lot of people
not passing the run and our PT standards used to be crazy harder and right now
I'm struggling with people and he's like, I don't know how I feel about the run.
And I was like, but I believe you need a standard for somebody to reach to and
also have a goal and work hard.
So if you can't get it, all right, you're going to put some effort in.
And at least that's what I want.
Like to show that you want to be here and that it is a tough job, but
it really is out there too.
So if you can't like help this little stressor work towards it.
And maybe that is old school thinking too.
So I mean, I'm all these, like, I believe in both.
There's things obviously we can do better and we need to do better, but
But there's also some things that I believe in and have it there for a reason.
And I don't think lowering standards, but you can definitely change standards if I don't
want to lower it.
We've got to make sure our PT things are clickable to the job.
I'm going off on a tangent.
No, no, no.
I think no, it's a good tangent.
I mean, so I have two more things, Councilor Grant, if that's okay.
One of them is for you, Councilor Grant, actually, which is or anybody, I don't
know.
But I know that there's this public safety advisor group that the mayor put together and I'm wondering if it's and maybe this is too granular for the purpose because of the scope of work.
But I'm wondering if like because it sounds like to me that you both are sort of and maybe if this is wrong but just not understanding fully the structure of the police department.
that you are each other's thought partners.
And so I want, like, do you have
either like a professional development like couple bucks
or are you in touch with other folks who are doing
similar work?
I'm just thinking of ways,
because like I'm always happy to brainstorm
and like how to prevent burnout,
like is, yeah, like the statical idea
of these other things that were mentioned
I think makes sense.
But I feel like it's such a industry specific thing.
that, like, we might not actually be the most helpful people. So I'm just wondering, oh, sorry,
I'm just wondering if those supports exist and if not, the role that maybe we could play
in being supportive is trying to make that happen, I guess.
Yeah. Good question. If it is out there, we're not using it. Like, we're not using,
I mean, if you think about it too, like, I really am a police officer. So my scope is,
like, I'm an officer doing this role. I'm trying to do it the best I can. But,
But again, social media is not my forte.
I didn't come to be that, like I don't know, I don't have that.
So I'm definitely, it would be open to you if you're, you know, if there's like a professional,
we get inundated, like Anha and I and stuff.
I just don't know sometimes too, like also to look everything up and I don't know all
these things that are legit or not.
And so I'm like a hot male and being like, you have today to respond to us.
So the urgency, something like, okay,
on has much more like, again,
like the social, we're doing our networking there too,
but no, we haven't used anybody professional.
It definitely open.
We're open to help because we need something.
We need more than 24 applications since January.
Yeah, Carolyn, did you want to mention anything
from IACP?
IACP.
When you went to the conference.
I don't think so.
Okay.
Are you thinking of something that I should be saying?
No, because I thought you had mentioned that other people had shared like similar concerns
and stuff. Or like that's one of like the professional development tools like you know
there's this big conference and of all the law enforcement professionals were there.
So that's I guess a way a tool that we use to kind of brainstorm of all law enforcement
people to see what else we can do.
The thing is it was interesting because we're all sort of are in the same problem
and nobody has this answer to like change it.
A lot of it too, sometimes we're trying, right?
Like we have the hiring bonus,
but obviously that's not working
with 23 people applied, that the money,
and a lot of people are saying it's a different culture
and they want this work-life balance.
That's also hard to change a whole workforce culture.
Finally, we had another question too.
So the answer to your other one,
we haven't looked into professional help would be
Thank you.
Yeah, and I'm just throwing out, I'm just trying to think a little bit off the top of my head, but I think that that, yeah, because you guys are in an incredibly difficult position than like, if we as a city expect any one person or any two people to like figure out one of the hardest challenges we're facing, that's not fair to you all either.
So, yeah, I can, I can think through more or maybe do some follow-up there.
The only other, well, just this, I mean, I would be supportive.
I don't even know really if that's, if it would ever come to the council, but just to throw it out there.
Like, my work has sabbatical and, I don't know, I guess just as a resident,
like if we said we're going to take one of our high stress jobs, really, really mentally grinding
jobs and just give people time off unrestricted, you hit five years, you get a month and a half off,
two months off paid versus like or maybe there's like a desire about what I heard was this sabbatical
was tied to some sort of service project or professional training or etc but just getting
Yeah, like, in the same way that I think of teachers getting the summer off, it's like
a huge work of the job and, yeah, just getting good time off to take care of yourself, hang
out with friends, do nothing, enjoy yourself.
Yeah, and our suggestion was like two weeks after I think it was two to three weeks,
not even, but it was like two weeks after five years, maybe three weeks after 10,
15.
Yeah, so it becomes something that people say, hey, I can get this here, and I can necessarily
get this if I go start someplace else.
It helps them become more dedicated and committed to the area and to the department.
It promotes longevity.
Yeah, so I would definitely, once again, would love to see what you came up with.
And I think we all three of us, all three counselors, we would be in agreement that it's definitely worth taking a look at because part of recruitment is retention as well.
I'd like to go to counselor Barlow who's been waiting very patiently for his question.
Thank you. And thank you for this presentation.
I can't, I mean, I just want to appreciate the work you're doing and underscore how critically important it is, because you're at the front end of this pipeline that we definitely need to have in order to rebuild the ranks of BPD.
I was struck by your comment. I agree with it that like we can't do the same thing and expect different results.
And to that end, it seems like we really have to be,
start to get creative.
And, you know, one of the things we put into
this latest budget is recruitment dollars.
And I would maybe be interested
in hearing your comments about,
and maybe you already have spoken to it
because Councilor Nubizer had asked a similar question,
but we need almost like a marketing effort,
a professional marketing effort to sell service in BPD and just to figure out how to do that.
So that's one idea.
The other thing, it seems like there's some friction points that we need to overcome.
One that I've always talked about is, you know, we need the people that come to work
for BPD have to feel supported by city government and city officials, and I think we're doing
a better job at that. But that has to be there, because we can have all the incentives in
the world. And if people feel like they're either not appreciated or their service
is more at risk than it might be in another local agency, we're not going to be able
to recruit those people regardless of how much better our compensation is to our
benefit packages or our bonuses and other incentives.
But so along that
lines I'm wondering about laterals we talk a lot about getting getting new
recruits in and the process it takes to get those folks trained and working in
the department and it takes a couple of years sometimes before you have someone who's really
effective and on the job. Of course, laterals is a much quicker path. I understand everybody
is after the same laterals. So I'm interested in hearing about that. But the other thing,
the other friction point I think that is the residential academy. And I'm wondering
if you could speak a little bit about if we could come up with a process that didn't
require a residential academy and instead would have some sort of day training. It would seem like
it would open it to a wider pool of applicants than we can currently get. If you have someone who
wants to serve in the police department, but they have a young family and they can't be
away for the number of weeks that they'd have to be to serve in a residential academy. I mean,
have you, has that been discussed? I know that there, I know it's been brought up in the
past and I've heard that there's resistance to it. But can you speak a little bit about that?
Yeah. Which one do you want me to hit on first? Lateral?
I guess Residential Academy.
So it's a 17-week academy and you have to live there and you're home on weekends and you have
to leave on weekends too. So it's also interesting with our applicants because
some are from Connecticut, one is from New York.
So they're not driving home the five to six hours after,
so they're having to find a place while they're here,
but they're not really living here on weekdays.
So on weekends only, they just need a place.
So it puts strain there too.
I think the Academy also has maybe the biggest class
they've ever had, almost with 60 officers.
I don't think the building in staffs that.
So I love the idea of the day and going home
because it would get people physically here too, in housing, get situated versus being
out of the academy and then now finding housing too and becoming a Brandon officer with a lot
going on and like you're saying kind of families or moms with young kids or dads.
Is our chief on? I don't know because I might know more because it's more like
I don't think we can change the academy standard. I don't know who would change that
And people talk about having one of our a BPD one only and that probably would have worked best because it's some of the best instructors to
When we had more officers. I don't know how we'd pull it off now
The only thing I'd always say that I missed about that is it's very small
I think she just sent something to be hundred media officers in the whole state
So you get that networking when you're all at the academy together
So my closest friends were from that and I've used them and I've used their resources
The other recruiter right now at VSP was in my class 20 years ago
who turn it around McKenna. So you get that networking. But I don't think we could. Yeah, chief.
Do you get the feedback that people would be interested in becoming police officers, but
that the residential academy is a reason that they can't?
I haven't got... Oh, I'm sorry. I was just going to say when I was a police commissioner and this
came up. People said that. People said that they walked away from the academy because it took them
away from their family. They had family obligations and they couldn't be there that long. And then
there was a there was also a previous discussion about Champlain College doing something. But
I'll go back to allow you to finish a corporal earn you were saying. And then we can go to
chief mirad for his feedback on anything that has been more recently discussed thank you so much
yeah I don't know but I mean I've definitely had a few people talk about become you'll be like oh
you know I'm a new mom and I have a baby at home so I've had that but I haven't had as much as you
think because I think by the time they talk to me I'm like these are the standards and there
is no in between so I have to be like this is so I don't people aren't trying to argue with me
or anything or I mean I've had a few who are like okay or I can't do that now so I'm sure I've
lost people because of that but I just I bet it's greater too than what I know because for me I'm
like all right this is the academy this is when you're going this is so I'm already kind of more
a little sticking
to the standards of what they have to meet. I understand.
I don't know if the
Councilor Grant if you're having the Chief weigh in or yes Chief Murad would you like to weigh
again with any recent discussion about the possibility of having the Academy in a different
place or whatever more recent information you can provide for us would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Sure.
So I'm part of a group, a subcommittee of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council called
the Entrance Test Working Group.
We have changed the standards for the entrance exam.
That is both a not both, but it is a a three-part process. There is a written entrance exam
There is a physical PT test exam, and then there's also a
psychological inventory essentially a
test a psych test we use the MMPI 3
That came from our review on our subcommittee
We chose a vendor to create a written exam that we've had some difficulty
implementing that, and the academy itself has had a certain amount of turmoil.
The academy works, as Corporal Irwin mentioned, it covers all departments throughout the state.
The only way to become a level 3 certified officer in the state of Vermont is through
the Vermont Police Academy.
There are only, however, about 880 officers throughout the state, and so the number
of recruits that are going through at any given time ranges from 30 to 50, which
is high.
50 they really can barely process, 30 is low, but the idea of having an entire
academy for four recruits as we currently are going to field in August is
completely not feasible. Even the idea of having an academy for let's say 15
recruits which is what the totality of Chittenden County may be sending to
the August Police Academy is a really narrow margin for feasibility. One of
One of the challenges that the academy has had around splitting and trying to do more
than one in more than one location is that economy of scale.
They're already not realizing an economy of scale even with the full state academy splitting
it would reduce that further.
There are also concerns that they've had, a lot of concerns they've had around different
standards and or different methods of instruction at two different academies.
I am much less concerned about those simply because I believe the Chittenden County
Academy, if such a thing were to exist, or Northern Vermont Academy, if such a thing were
to exist, would have good standards of education.
I believe we send some of the best instructors down there.
Recently in the last class, one of our instructors was voted the most effective instructor by
the class itself.
We have really good people that go down there and do it.
Could we do it ourselves?
Absolutely not.
Even when we had 105 authorized and 97 officers, we could not have run a police academy
ourselves.
It just, we are not able to dedicate resources to that.
When I was in New York, I was one member of a 35-person company, and that was one of 49
companies in a 1,750-person class.
That is the size of an entity that runs its own academy.
New York City runs its own, the State of New York runs its own separately.
Most other agencies do not run their own academies.
they almost always pool with other agencies simply because of economies of scale.
As the talk of moving the academy just stopped, I mean when we think about Chittenden County
being the most populous county and having to send people to such a remote area really causes
It is a remote area, but it's also central, and it's remote in a fair way for everybody.
So whether you're coming from Bennington or whether you're coming from Canaan, it's basically
the same kind of distance.
And it also exists in the old Vermont sanatorium.
So they had an existing building that was sufficiently sized.
It's got rooms.
It's got grounds.
it's got investments in the infrastructure with regard to a shooting range and a place where they
can drive and do driving instruction and a gymnasium and a cafeteria to serve, you know,
50 people living there during the whole week. All of those things are challenges to try to
erect something new. Give me 75 million bucks and I could build one here in Chittenden County
and probably staff it and get it running for us. I would love to do that and actually change
the sort of pedagogy for the profession throughout the state. That would be pretty awesome. We'd
put it right in Williston on the interstate and make it close to everybody with regard
to 89. But I don't think anybody's got 75 million bucks to make that happen.
But maybe we need to be asking. I mean, one of the things I know that I've been talking
about is that we as a city council, we constantly see a lot of money come through federally
for various infrastructure programs and I've been listening to, periodically I listen to
police podcasts and I've just been hearing some things about how at the federal level
it may be just us lobbying our representative and our senators to say, hey, we need money
for this to start that conversation I think I think that we don't ask the
answers always no but we have to start more to think
Think out the box, but thank you for that. That's a good, we start with the figure of $75 million and we just see what happens. I think there'd be a great benefit to that.
Any other questions, Councillor Barla?
it. I guess one of the things I am interested in and I mentioned was lateral hires and I know
laterals were pulling from the same small universe of law enforcement professionals but
have we had success in pulling lateral hires with our incentives and
and bonuses?
I would say no for a lateral in Vermont. So I'm not getting other Vermont
officers not leaving their agency to come to ours, which they used to. Everybody would lead
and everybody wanted Burlington or BSQ whether the two largest agencies are considered the
two best. That narrative has changed a bit. We're getting laterals. We have two or had
two most recently I'd say from Texas. We have one from Virginia. We just had one. He was a retired
officer out of Texas but with New Hampshire. But I would say our laterals are more by a lifestyle.
So somebody else's partner got a job at UVL. Stephen Williamson from Texas. His wife is at
NFI as a CFO. So it's more something bringing them to Vermont and then they're choosing our agency.
Not because of out-of-state recruitment efforts that we have going on through marketing or anything
like that. Correct. Okay, thank you. And not because they're attracted to probably Torpedi,
I think it's something that brought them here but then they do choose us from either we pay the
modes, maybe our bonus largest municipal agency.
Just for a little point of clarification, I'm sorry, Councillor, just for a point of clarification,
from 2010 through 2019, we averaged 2.1 laterals per year.
I'm not counting 2020 and 2021 when we weren't allowed to hire, but from 2022 through 2024,
we've averaged 3.2 laterals per year.
So we have improved that number.
Good, thank you for that.
And then I guess the last thing I mentioned earlier,
maybe a marketing effort with a professional marketing firm
might be something to consider into that end.
Also, do we attend like national trade shows
and law enforcement trade shows
and those sorts of things where that kind of networking
that might be useful in recruitment could happen?
I haven't been to a trade show,
just the one on how I mentioned
kind of the international chief of police,
that networking.
And then regarding the marketing,
the chief a little while ago put out an RFP.
And I think one of the people,
All-Star Talents, who he said no to at the time,
really liked this other company two years ago,
but that was like 250,000.
But all-star talent was somebody else who put their proposal in, and I actually have a meeting
with them on August 8th just to see, again, like, what's changed or what can we do?
So Anha, Shannon, and I are supposed to meet with them.
And that's exactly what they're, like, a professional marketing firm who was interested
in working with us a few years ago.
And it seems like there's got to be some kind of, I mean, what we're doing isn't
working.
So, and in my business, we had a hard time hiring like sales representatives.
And so we, we just keep on running what we call experiments to try to see if something catches.
And, you know, for, for every 10 attempts at something, maybe only one of them works.
But if it works well, and it works for a while, you can sort of increment those numbers more.
So I would encourage running some marketing experiments to try to see what appeals and what kind of, you know, to help build that.
pipeline on the front end of applications that you had mentioned. So it's so much less than it
used to be. So thanks. I would also say that one of my concerns was when I was on the police
commission there were some things that were being said about oversight and accountability
and kind of the politics of what was going on in the city, and oversight being blamed,
or saying people didn't want to be here because of those discussions.
And I'm like, really?
And I, so the correction that you recently made with regards to the department's listing,
that was out of date on the Vermont criminal justice counsel site,
That was not the only place where I found our salary wrong.
And I did bring that up when we got it fixed in other places, but for whatever, I couldn't
– glad we finally got it to you to have that done.
But I went and I said, if I'm a lateral someplace else and I'm searching and I would do searching,
I would literally be searching for Burlington Police Department and other agencies would
come up.
So that kind of told me that other agencies were using digital advertising and maybe
we don't need a full-on marketing, but we definitely at the bare minimum need digital
advertising. And I did talk to HR about it when now we have our HR director recently left.
That was something that they said they were talking about. So I'm definitely going to bring
that up with the the mayor again, because I feel that that is a tool that is now standard.
And when we talk about social media, it is just very clear that we need to be using social
media for multiple things, number one, to increase support of the department.
Number two, that can help with recruitment as well, and I think we need a plan for
that.
I think we'll discuss that a little bit later.
I want to say thank you for both attending tonight.
This has been very, very interesting, very thought-provoking, and hope to follow up with
you soon, maybe have you back, but I think definitely the three of us will be interested
in following up with you, maybe, you know, off schedule of the meetings, just to have
some internal conversations, maybe we need a subcommittee to brainstorm for
recruitment because we are in different times and we do have to think in
different ways and once again I can't I can't tell you how much I appreciate that
and being on the commission I learned a lot I've learned even more today and
I that's really great and it's just great to see you it's great to see the
faces of the department which doesn't have it as much as I like to see and I
think other people like to see so glad to have you on this meeting and I'll
definitely I think three of us we're gonna come up the plan and we're gonna
promote this meeting and we're gonna really ask people to look at it and I
think it'll be an interesting experience because it's about saying
okay we're gonna put this out there but we're gonna be intentional about it
we're gonna put it on this platform this platform this platform we can see
who's viewing it, who's interacting with it, pushing views.
We can make that work so we can see how effective it is because social media allows that.
And Courtney Lambden, I see you, hint, hint.
I think this would be a great discussion to do an article on, especially the challenges,
you know going in more detail with that. So I thank you both very much for your
time. Is there anything else you'd like to quickly add?
Just very quickly. I think
Anhaan too is working, she's again like the promoting NAPR and I think working
with Digital right now and creating something with the local news department
too but you guys can talk about that too at a different time for time. Yeah
like maybe I would love to see working with like the Media Factory or Town
meeting TV. They have resources, production resources that are significantly less expensive
than other agencies in their high quality. And I just feel like we should be able to
also get some pro bono work. I would really, it's something I talked to Shannon and I'm
I'm gonna deep dive that more next week
and we'll let, you know, maybe I'll start like a thread
on that.
Well, thank you very, very much.
Again, we really appreciate you being here.
Your time is valuable and we understand that.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you, thank you for having us.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you both.
And I think I see Lacey
And I think I, did I see BC, McCromby, but under Lacy's name?
Yeah, I shared the link to the webinar and it was pre-named.
So unfortunately for Marcia, she's also named Lacy tonight.
And we can't change it.
I was dry.
I was like, is there, no, no.
So here we are.
Well, thank you very much for your patience.
While the last presentation went a little bit longer,
but it was, it was very, as you heard, very interesting and very important. So we have
BC that's short for battalion commander, some people were correct?
Almost, battalion chief of EMA. Battalion chief, thank you very much because the,
the, the ranks are a little bit different for the fire department versus the police department.
And if you could just give us first, just a little bit introduction about you and when
you joined the Burlington Fire Department, because I am to understand you are our first
female commander at the level.
So that's fantastic.
Yes.
I don't know if this is normal policy in your meetings, but just so you know, my presentation
patient is a little long in case anyone wants to take a little break before we get started
just to use the restroom or something.
But yeah, so I've been there a year now.
I'm the first female.
I think what's another important part to bring forward is that I'm also the first chief
ever of EMS and we've never had one person that was solely in charge of EMS.
So it's really been a unique experience and blessed to have been given the opportunity
community to come in with, based on my experience, even though I had a lot, there's people have
more, you know.
And so, yeah, it's just great to be back in my home city.
Thank you for that.
And I know that, I think we all know how busy the fire department has been.
I know when I first, I had been on the police commission, and when I joined the Public
Safety Committee, one of the things I wanted to do was immediately reach out to Chief
LeChance.
I'm like, tell me about the fire department because I see you out here all the time with
regards to dealing with other medical emergencies, but primarily very visible to people with
regards to the overdoses or the reports of overdoses or the wellness checks, et cetera.
And then we have the CRT team that was recently brought up, and you're here today along
with Lacey to talk about another project that I know the last time we were talking in email
there were still things that were being worked on, but I will just let you take it away to
give an introduction and then show your presentation. Is it okay for me to share my screen?
Before I do that, I just want to say that the Burlington Fire Department has been working
on two different initiatives.
And today I'm going to dig deep into the prevent initiative, and that's where we'll start
off.
And then the portion where Lacey and I and other people within the city have been working,
which later you'll find out was called CityLink, that is something that was in
emails, you know, very much still in the works, but they're both interconnected. But for the sake
of trying to present what we're doing first, we're just going to focus on pre-hospital buprenorphine,
which is really suboxone that we're giving. And so let me pull, I'll share my screen first
and then get over here to the slides.
I do have notes that I'm also referring
to while I'm talking to you just because there's so much that I want to keep that as organized as
possible for you. So this is the prevent initiative. It initially started at the level of the Vermont
Department of Health and also UVM Medical Center, Dr. Daniel Wilson as you probably know. He has
created this prevent initiative as pre-hospital buprenorphine out in the field for EMS and
fire. As you know, I'm battalion chief of EMS. Some of the stuff that I'm going to go over in the
beginning is really just like an overview of why addressing overdoses are so critical, our goals
and objectives with this initiative. And I expect that there's a lot of this that you might already
know based on, you know, these are conversations you have all the time. So forgive me, it's
someone is not familiar with it,
they have a little bit of idea why it's so important.
So to start off with our number one reason
why it's so important is that we have seen a major increase
in responding to overdoses since the year of 2017.
As you can see,
Everyone can see the slides at this point? Can just one person say yes? Yes. Okay, perfect. Thank you for doing that.
So if you look at the bottom of this chart, it will show you that blue is one year ago. We have our OD totals, the OD transported and the OD not transported.
From 2017 all the way up to now, we've seen 100 or to 2023, we've seen 188% increases of overdoses.
So some of the other reasons why it's so important to address overdoses.
And the first one is going to be the public health impact.
So, you know, overdoses lead to severe health outcomes, including death and long-term disabilities.
There's an increasing number of overdoses strained within the emergency services and in the hospital services.
Mortality rates, it's impacting the community health, reducing the life or the average life expectancy.
When it comes to economic and social costs, just significant economic costs due to emergency medical response, hospitalizations and rehab.
social impact. You know the families and communities suffer from the loss of a
loved one. There's increased crime rates and homelessness are often
associated with high opiate abuse rates. We have our role of the first
responder and they're really that frontline person that's out there in
defense combating this opiate crisis. Obviously in our city we have a lot of
social services that we're very fortunate to have. And we need to really have this need for
supporting first responders. I do apologize. Let me just shut this one door real quick.
I have a wind chime that is very loud and I had it all tied up, but you can still hear it.
So I apologize. So we really need to support our first responders with adequate training
resources, just increase, like to help handle the increase in numbers. And then the importance
for immediate action, you know, addressing the issue now can prevent further increases.
You know, we can ensure that the health and safety of the community by reducing overdose
incidences and overall improving public health.
All right. So before I start going into
my story. I want you to know that it's going to sound pretty dramatic and I feel very comfortable
sharing this story with you out of the respect of certain family members still within the city of
Burlington. I won't go into too much detail seeing that this is recording but feel free to ever
ask me more and no matter what I do my voice always gets a little shaky when I do share
the story. So it's odd that that happens despite how many times I tell it. So just
give me one second.
These are my parents. This is my mom and my dad. They're no
longer with us. My parents met in a halfway house. My mom was in the army and
then she was reported to have been raped and had a mental breakdown. My dad was
a mechanical engineer, very well liked student of BHS, used to help teach summer school classes
after graduating college, he developed schizophrenia. I'm going to fast forward a little bit through
everything relating to them, but just know that my mother ultimately died of COPD and my father
So I had a hypothermia by jumping in Lake Champlain at the Boat House back in 1996, thinking
that he was going to be reborn.
So when I was conceived, it was always known that I was not going to be living with my
parents given that they met in a halfway house.
My dad was a patient of the Howard Center also.
So I end up staying with my mom's mom.
The courts, even though my sides of the family
went to court to figure out who would have me,
the courts wanted me to be with my mom's mom
who low income was on government assistance
and I had a half brother and a half sister there.
And so the other side of my family
was a little more well to do in another part of Vermont.
And I really had this privilege of this unique upbringing of seeing the best of both worlds.
I've also seen the worst of both worlds I feel like at times too.
And, you know, and my primary residence was on Riverside Avenue and there was a lot of substance abuse.
There was a lot of drug and just violence, whether physical or emotional.
and you know I protected that side of the family despite other people getting
involved and basically what I just want to say out of this is that yes life
could have looked different and I think that what we're about to start doing out
here in the city of Burlington is very helpful and it's gonna really make a
change it could it could have made my life look a little different. When that
said just know that I very much appreciate the experiences I had
because if I didn't have them I wouldn't be who I am today. So now that you know a little bit more
about me you know why I have such a passion for what I do you know I really want to help people.
I want to help our community. I used to you know living on Riverside I used to go to
the Bob and Mill almost every other day if not daily walking from one place to the other
because my best friend lived there and for years like I would just walk around the city and I
I mean, even when I was at Edmunds,
I used to walk to school
and because we didn't have a car, you know,
and I would stay for after school activities.
And I just was a very safe place.
So it's been sad coming back here,
but I do believe I have a lot of hope
that we can move in a positive direction.
So does anyone have any questions for me on that
before I can start moving on?
Nope, okay.
So let's go into the prevent initiative.
Just switch over my notes, we're going to talk about our goals and objectives, our key partners.
Our primary focus is just really providing immediate access to medications for opioid use disorder.
All right, so we are going to, and I do apologize for this one more time.
Sorry
about that.
All right. So, our goals are to reduce the opioid overdose incidents. We're going to
decrease the number of opioid overdose incidents, or, yeah, that's what we're striving to do.
Implement preventative measures and rapid response protocols to address overdose effectively.
Ensure immediate access to the medications, as we talked about, which are to use for
people that are experiencing withdrawal symptoms from opiate use.
I'll go into that a little bit more because I think I just misspoke.
We want to improve just our continuity of care.
We want to develop partnerships with local health services.
We want to strengthen our community partnerships by working with various departments such
as the Department of Health, local health organizations, community support centers.
The objectives of the prevent, so those were our goals.
The objectives are we're going to train first responders.
A lot of this we've already accomplished and I'll get into next.
We're going to develop and implement protocols.
We're going to establish a referral system and we're going to monitor and evaluate progress.
It's also very important that we raise public awareness.
I
am going to go ahead and switch out of this.
I'm going to go to a different screen of mine.
So now this is the actual prevent initiative.
So this is a draft form.
It's been updated and it's pretty much ready to go,
but this is going to come from the Vermont Department of Health.
I feel so unprofessional right now.
I have a golden retriever lab puppy that just will not leave me alone.
So give me just a second, and we can't hear you or tell, so you're all right.
I can hear the wind chimes either.
He's jumping on me with his toy.
He's jumping on me with his toy, and I just, I thought we were good, but he must be getting bored.
Well, and just FYI too, I think we're still seeing the slide show.
Oh, okay, thank you.
Or maybe the screen.
All right, so let me go back to that and I'll fix it.
So
this is page one.
Before I start kind of going walking through it, I just want to let you know that we're
the second out of the State Department to start doing this pilot program.
The first one has been Bennington Rescue.
So
the first one has been Bennington Rescue, and so we're up next to start launching
this program. And after that, three more will go in the state. And if all goes well with
this pilot program, the state will actually incorporate this protocol into the state protocols.
So starting off, when we come across a patient who has had Narcan administered or we end
up giving Narcan, we can end up going to this protocol and we can start utilizing
So we have some inclusion or indications which it's acute withdrawal symptoms after reversal of opiate overdose with naloxone.
Boncher indications, for the sake of this presentation, I would be happy to share this with the council and the committee just for the sake that you can get a better look at this with your own eyes afterwards.
But please just know that it is a draft copy.
We're
going to utilize a clinical opioid withdrawal scale to determine if someone meets the criteria
to be able to continue on with this protocol.
It's called the COWS.
You need to have a number of seven or more to continue on with it.
Right now, this protocol is written for once you get from the E to the A level and you
determine that they do meet the score, you then call for a paramedic if they're
are not already on scene to be able to help administer this.
We have put in a variance with the state of Vermont
to request that our AEMTs also be able to give this.
There's about a 10-minute window for people
to start treatment before they just walk away completely
with us.
So they meet the criteria.
I'm just going to keep scrolling up and down,
so we can go back to it and just emphasize what we're
doing.
So we come across someone who's
had on naloxone or we give it, we go to this protocol knowing that they're probably going
to start improving. They're going to be capable of making a decision whether they want to start
this treatment. We're going to use the cow scale to be able to determine if they meet
the qualifications. I can't remember the high number of this cow score, but I want
to say it's either 28 or 48. So, 7 on that list is really not all that much to be
to continue on with this.
So we're going to provide counseling and assess the patient.
We're going to ask if they're interested in buprenorphine and the treatment.
As we talked about, you know, if a paramedic is not unseen at this point until the variance
is either approved or denied, we're going to ask for a paramedic to come.
We're also going to get right on the phone with medical direction as soon as we know
that this person meets criteria.
If they refuse, we're going to do our regular harm reduction protocol, which is offering
them a naloxone-lead-behind kit, and then we're also going to connect them with any services
if we know any that would be beneficial to them.
The patient has to be willing to consent for treatment and a referral for a medication
will be used as an order provider. So, for instance, what that means is we're going to
refer one person to, like, Howard Center of Chittenden Clinic. However, due to Howard
chid-
Public hearing and clinic being on Dorset Street, I believe. A lot of people aren't going to be
able to walk there, so instead, we're going to have a be at the health center safely. Street,
which is a 45 Clark Street in Burlington. So, as you can see, we're going to administer
buprenorphine. They're sublingual strips. The way that this medication works and why
it's not truly like when people just say buprenorphine, it's actually suboxone, which
which is mixed with Narcan, which is naloxone.
And if someone is given the medication sublingually, it'll work as it's supposed to.
However, if they were to melt the medication down to inject it, the naloxone would then
become activated and it would stop the buprenorphine.
Buprenorphine, naloxone, it is a controlled substance.
There's been a lot of legalities when it comes to adding this medication out onto our streets, and then also in particular with AEMTs being able to do that.
So when we give the patient, they agree for everything in the scenario.
And so we give them the medication, they're starting to feel better pretty quickly.
And so, we're going to follow up with having them, we're going to refer them to Turning
Point Center of Chittenden Clinic.
And within 24 to 48 hours, someone from Turning Point is going to call them and they're just
going to really be that resource for them.
They're all of their providers, as you know, or the people that work there.
They've all been in recovery themselves and so they can relate to them.
Now, on the other hand, we're going to give them a little card that says, you
You know, tomorrow at 1 p.m., please go to the Howard Center's safe recovery location.
You're going to get your follow-up appointment and so forth.
Out of all of this, we're really trying to get this patient to go to the hospital no matter
what by BFD via ambulance.
That is the goal of all of our treatment.
We just know from experience that a lot of these patients that should be patients like
walk off or run off even before we can make contact with them.
You know, we'll get a call in for someone who's overdose.
And next thing you know, they've already
had eight milligrams of Narcan, and they're running off.
And we never get to have that contact
because there's no way to chase them down
or something like that.
So we know that we want to transport all these patients
because there still is the STARS program up at the hospital
that can also just get them right into their services,
get them in the right places.
But should they not want to go to the hospital,
then they need to assign patient refusal form that's part of our state protocol as well.
This is just a little bit more background information, like our protocols are pretty
well written, so that way, like, say, should you forget the signs and symptoms, you know,
of what that would look like, you know, they give you examples of that,
a little algorithm of what we're doing. And then that's that. I will share that with you,
So as I said, as long as it's just going to stay within the committee.
And let me go back to this other slide.
Just to clarify, anything that you would want to share, but just to the committee for confidentiality
reasons, you would want to email to us offline.
This meeting is public.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
I will do that. And it's not to say that it's not, it is, it's very much
Bennington right now, they already have this program up and running. I think
they were running for about two months now. They unfortunately didn't see, not
unfortunately, it's a good thing, but they didn't end up having any patients
that met the criteria the first month. In the city of Burlington, while it
might be a slow start, I really do think that we'll get some really good
data out of this and be able to see the effectiveness of this program.
But so if you were to look up Bennington Rescue, it's basically the same thing.
Dr. Wolfson worked with their department when they were getting started, and then he just
made this other document that's a little more appealing to the eye.
Let me just go back to the slides, nice and big.
All right, so our task list, get my other notes.
All
right, so, you know, the Vermont Department of Health has created this protocol.
As I said, the BFD has a pending variance request for AEMCs to be able to administer suboxone.
Training has been provided to all BFD members.
That training consisted of three different shifts that were very long days.
We had six sessions.
The first hour was a medicine and evidence-based research presentation by Dr. Wilson himself, along with a Q&A session for the employees to really ask what they wanted to directly to him.
Turning Point Center of Chilling County did an introduction to motivational
interviewing and then operations was myself where we just talked about like
what does that look like internally when it comes to the protocol and like our
own policies and procedures and then Lacey's team over at the CATE programs
they came in and we opened up this discussion about city length and which
we'll touch briefly on in a little bit.
And just really like,
I don't wanna bring you into the weeds,
but just know already it's very common
for street outreach from Howard Center
and also the CSLs from the CAIT team
to be able to come on scene and help us
with some of this referral stuff
that maybe we're not as familiar with
and or the patients sometimes just really do better
with people that already know them.
So they are already responding to some of our calls, sometimes they call us to respond to their scenes, and so we've already started this partnership a long time ago.
So the upcoming milestones, UVM Medical Center Pharmacy by the 18th will have a drug box that is completely separate from the current paramedic controlled substance box that we have.
And they are going to, they have a paper and a log, the same way they document with the paramedic control notices right now, they're going to have one separate that mimics it for suboxone.
We've been working with legal, making sure we cover everything on that.
We anticipate that the variance request looks good for our AEMTs.
we have purchased added NOx med vaults in a smaller size that the AEMTs would
only have access to and so we will install those in all of our ambulances
or one of our we have a new ambulance so we're gonna have a reserve ambulance
and then also we do have a reserve ambulance we're gonna have two reserve
ambulances and then also our community response team. Should they use the
box ideally you know a paramedic would go right up to the hospital and
get a new one for them, but that's still to be determined how that will look overnight
and stuff.
So data recording, the state has, currently the state uses a program called Image Trend
where it's free to all agencies if they want to use it.
It's a great program.
We all use the same like universal base of it, and then if you want you can add
supplemental questions into it or you can pay for added packages. But the point is that the state
for the Burlington Fire Department, the only agency they've done this for, they have created a copy
of the form that has all these added buttons that, you know, really lay out the data that they're
looking to collect. The state is also working on trying to come up with some MOUs with some
of our partners, particularly Howard Center, to be able to collect some of that data and
it would be de-identified, but just, you know, who's going to these referrals afterwards,
that kind of thing.
So, yeah, we're very close.
It's more about being in legal's hand at this point and working with the various,
you know, turning point and Howard Center.
And we've accomplished a lot in a very short period of time for such a complex program.
we're going to move on to why this is so important to make sure that we have a
proper like QA system and basically you know the opioid crisis is constantly
changing. I'm not sure if you've heard about this but there is a new
medication that's out there. I have yet to learn how to pronounce it. It starts
with an M and it's hit major cities and other areas and Dr. Wilson has told
me recently, he has not seen it in the ER, however, they are expecting to see it. It is very scary in
that sense because that medication, it's an animal tranquilizer, acts differently on the body than,
you know, say xylezine. And so, you know, we need to be able to keep, if by doing a proper QA
system and making sure that we're always improving what we're doing, this is going to help us
stay ahead of these trends that we're seeing in other parts.
We can evaluate the impact by doing this and refine the protocols as we see
necessary. We can meet the community needs by
engaging with the community and gathering feedback.
We can build stronger partnerships. We can utilize new tools when it comes
to technology,
improve communication,
By doing a proper QA program or continuous improvement program, it really helps us ensure
that the initiative remains sustainable and effective over the long term.
It keeps it aligned with funding landscapes, it's embedding a culture of learning and
adaption within the organization, and it prepares our team for future challenges.
And, you know, by looking at case studies from other places, because there are many other states,
this pre-hospital treatment with buprenorphine or suboxone, as you will, it really has started
to take off in other places, and people are seeing a lot of positive responses from it.
All right, now that was a mouthful. I'll definitely open this all up to questions
and answer, you know, a Q&A session afterwards, but when I mentioned that Howard Center and
the CSLs are already coming on to scene with us now at this point, the CARES team as well,
now that Janelle's out there, what happens is sometimes we'll be on scene and we'll
actually call dispatch and say, can you please send street outreach, can you please
send the CSLs, they have their algorithm of who they try to choose, if one's
not available, they'll choose the other.
But sometimes when they show up on scene, even though they know the person very well,
they know that the other organization or department is already really well known with or like
has a close relationship with that person.
So they come on scene, they're just so great.
And if they're on scene with us, we're allowed to refer that patient to them, right?
Like, you know, the patients right there, you know, they're consenting to talking
to them.
So they're going to get that name and date of birth.
But what's unique to the fire department and like medical side of things is that you know, we have HIPAA laws that we have to follow.
And so if they're on scene, it's okay that they're talking to them.
But outside of that overnight hours when people aren't around, maybe a powered seminar comes on scene one day,
but they really want to tell the person the next.
We can't just go to them and say, hey, just so you know, we had this person with us the other day and they got suboxone and we really, you know, we talked to them.
They gave us consent that we could refer to you without having proper MOUs and consent and referral forms.
And we know right now one of our main problems within the city is that tree outreach and the Cape programs are amazingly helpful on scene.
However, when we have these overnight shifts, we often don't have anyone to turn to or we don't really have anything we can give to these patients to help them right then and there, but by allowing us to get consent from the patient and these MOUs established, this will allow us to ensure that the next day we follow up with contacting them.
When I talked about the state data management, the guy's name is Connor who's new to the state for doing data.
And he is somehow, this is beyond my knowledge, but sending it the patient's patient run form,
it'll be electronically delivered to Howard Center and to Turning Point with just the information that,
you know, is agreed upon such as a name and date of birth kind of thing, which is nice.
It kind of takes out a step.
By allowing us to also have this relationship, it would be really nice for the Burlington Fire Department to be able to contact our own departments such as the CATE programs to be able to do that same community outreach.
As CityLink develops and what that means for us, without trying to bring it too far into the weeds,
just know that it is growing and it's growing at a fast pace and everyone is really excited.
So it really starts with, you know, the City of Burlington is taking on this prevent initiative,
which was started by the Vermont Department of Health and the UVM Medical Center.
And we're taking that, and CEDO is coming in, and Scott over there, he's helping a lot
of the administrative parts and the data collection.
Really good positive or just really good questions that he's bringing to the table and, you know, he'll work closely with you and the mayor's office.
The BFD is obviously responding to these calls and we do have the community response team vehicle still. And, you know, while the future of that is unknown, we're still very much out there and they're a part of the city link group.
They'll focus on our repeat patients for this time being and how they can really get them
to the services they need.
Still for right now we're talking about people that have been given this prevent initiative
but we do see a future with CityLink going outside of this initiative.
You know, the CAPE teams, the CARES, the CSLs over under the BPD, Turning Point Center
of Chittenden County being the peer services, peer counseling services.
because Howard Center is just termed Howard Center because they have so many umbrellas,
or it's one big umbrella, and they have so many programs, but we're working with Safe
Recovery, Chittenden Clinic, and Street Outreach.
There is one more partner that we're actively talking to, and that is Community Health
Center Safe Harbor.
They have a location right down, drawing a blank of the name of the street, but
over at the end of Church Street, near King Street, and it's right across from
turning point. And they have primary care services there and they also have walk-in appointments
and all this stuff. So even though they're not specifically linked to the Prevent Initiative,
they're very much a big part of this resource referral service.
Conclusion, we are coming
together for a healthy Burlington. That was the slogan that went along with CityLink,
always open for, you know, suggestions on that. But all right, that was a lot. I'm
gonna escape out of this because I like to see people's faces if that's okay.
Thank you that it was a lot but it's very exciting. It's very exciting. One of the
The topics in the mayor's committee of community safety advisors was discussing how we have
all these great organizations but at times a little bit too siloed and couldn't always
share information with each other due to the privacies.
So, the fact that there would be these MOUs or Memorandums of Understanding for the public,
where you're going to be defining the relationships with regards to being able to share information
with the agencies if you have permissions from the patients, it's really great to hear
because it sounds like we're actively addressing that issue of trying to reduce this.
The word silos kept coming up, but reducing these barriers between these agencies to be
more effective for the people that we are trying to help and trying to help them in
a faster way.
So if they don't want that transport to the hospital, where they do this automatically,
if you get transport to the hospital, this is part of the protocols is to offer medically
assisted treatment with these drugs that do help people. There is still a stigma. There
shouldn't be. I mean, if someone needs insulin for their diabetes or needs to take medication
for high blood pressure, and that's what they need to remain healthy, that we don't have that
stigma and we still as a society need to understand that these drugs really help people
you get into recovery and stay into recovery. So, yeah, great presentation. A lot of information.
Really happy to be updated. Before we go for any questions, Lacey, do you have anything that you
wanted to add?
No, this is really Marcia's baby. I just kind of came around along for the ride
in the sense of knowing that, you know, system change within the public safety system is
and inherently just something that should be happening
at the police department.
It is really about public safety as a whole system.
And so, and I know the CSLs and CARES and like us
as a CAPE, we see ourselves as working along
as being a part of the public safety system.
So it was really important to us to have
a good working relationship with FIRE
and to make sure Fire knows that we want them to utilize us and that they can call and ask
for us to come to live scenes.
So this just really felt pretty natural, I think, and from us, from us and Cape, we
were really, was what we were hoping for.
And this just formalizes that.
And it really also kind of makes it succinct in that, like, dispatch note is when Marsha
says when if she were to call and just say send us from someone from sitting
link internally we go through like a triaging of like who's dispatch knows
who's available and and again like where we're gonna start and kind of triage
down from and then if we get on the scene and we know this person has a
relationship with someone else we already do that like it's just kind of
transferred through osmosis but it's really you know no matter what so the
continuity of care and it's really about showing up for people in the same in the
sense of like you know whether they get the matte treatment or they don't
city link you know and fire knows that we can always come out but this just
what allows a different avenue for a different conversation and for a
different type of connection and then we can come on scene to really help let
fire do fire so they can focus on getting someone the treatment that
they're interested in and then we can take them you know really be
working on the connections after the fact and then let fire get back and
available to what fire does and then we can kind of take the person and lead
from there so yeah we're excited about it. Before anyone says anything I just have
to say that I talked to Lacey and the group and I said whenever we start
presenting to everyone you do not say this is Marcia's baby that this is
literally a group effort because while I get to reap the benefit of all
these organizations, departments, just because I came up with a little operational plan, right?
But like, these are the people that have been doing this for years on top of it,
the people that helped my dad a long time ago. We were just missing this link of how we can,
with the staffing at the police department, and trying to figure out how we can make
our communication better, how we can make our city more connected. And like a lot of this,
Like Scott Pavek had already had ideas of this.
Maybe it was in a different way,
but different administrators at the time, who knows?
But like this wasn't like just all of a sudden I came in
and like it's like my thing.
Okay, we're all grouped together.
Thank you.
You do a lot of the work though.
That's really what I mean by your baby.
You're the one taking care of the baby
and you're helping to feed and grow the baby.
I love it.
Well, I heard Janelle's name in conjunction with Ayres.
Yes.
So I was not aware.
Can we have a quick introduction and confirmation of when you go?
Absolutely, counselor Grant.
So my name is Janelle Dumas and I am the CARES team clinical supervisor.
I moved into this position the end of March.
I do have a clinical background.
I did come from Howard Center.
Most recently I was a clinician at treatment court.
So there's a number of individuals in which we connect with within this program that already have a preexisting relationship with.
So that's served me very well in this role.
And prior to that, I was a program manager in developmental services at Howard Center
as a part with a part-time position as a clinician at outpatient.
And so I've worked collaboratively with Turning Point, among other agencies that are part
of our city link.
It's been wonderful working with Marcia and Lacey on this project, as well as my
colleagues, the CSLs that we work with.
So it's been really great to see this and I look forward to it coming into fruition and what it looks like and where it leads us.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Do my fellow counselors have any questions about this program?
Great. Well, thank you. Oh, go ahead, Mark.
were you going to meet? Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you for the presentation. It's exciting
and I look forward to hearing more as it gets you on, so thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. I really
agree and I appreciate you taking the time to put together the presentation. If you could send us
a copy that would be great and a public-facing copy as well. So if there's something you feel
really shouldn't be in there yet, you know, please feel free to take it out. And we're definitely,
I'm definitely going to be forwarding the meeting once we have the recorded copy to our fellow
counselors, because I think we've had a, I think we've overall had a lot of information tonight
that it'd be important for everybody on the council, as well as members of the,
the public to be caught up on. And I really appreciate the work
work that everyone's doing. We're still need deep. But I think with some of these solutions
that we are creating locally and statewide. So it's great to hear that Bennington is doing
this as well and that the state is looking at this. We haven't always felt really supported
by the state at times when it comes to dealing with a lot of issues around the drug crisis.
With regards to this program, to see that there's some support at that level is great,
and then continuing to work with, I think you mentioned Dr. Wolfson, so for people who didn't
know, he provides up at the hospital in the emergency room where a lot of people who have
of overdose end up.
And so when they're in the emergency room, they get offered.
These protocols are worked through with them
and they get offered on medically assisted treatment.
And what's very important about this program,
once again, is accessing people in the street,
people who are refusing,
because we have more and more people
who are refusing to be transported.
So how do we still take the opportunity
to offer the same level of help?
that's where we're trying to get. Any additional comments that you may have?
Sounds great. Well, I want to thank you so much. We love your dog.
If you're now free, just spend some time with him.
Can I just say that, well, one, I will be taking him for a walk, and I just feel mortified that,
you know, Chief of the Chance wasn't able to be here. And what he's going to hear is that,
You know, my dog was interrupting and all that, and I just apologize about it.
My husband and kids are camping right now and it's just me, like, it's all there.
He's not going to hear that at all.
What he's going to hear is that you gave a really amazing presentation and that we are
really excited about the work.
That is what he's going to hear.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate your time.
Thank you, counselors.
Have a good night.
Thank you.
take care. Thank you. Have a good evening. So we always try to aim for 730, but we're
going to be a little bit past that, but I want to see what we can do to get
through. A quick question for Chief Murad.
So you might not have seen the
email, I sent you an email actually during the presentation that you gave
today, just at your earliest convenience, if you could send over your July report and we will
have it added to the meeting, have it added to the link to the meeting's agenda. If you want to do
just a couple of minutes of the highlights, people are always interested in terms of where
were at with the number of officers. Your recruitment team mentioned earlier that there were four
going into the academy in August. So if you wanted to just summarize that briefly.
Sure. Thank you. We are currently at 66. We are onboarding four on Monday. We are also losing
a sergeant on Monday, so that will bring us to 69 as of Monday, the end of business on Monday.
That's exactly where we started 2024 after the best hiring year in our history in 2023,
or at least our modern recorded history. So that is both exciting, but also we wish we were
further along. Incidents are up approximately 3% versus last year and I think 5% versus 2019,
which is the last year it was this high, close to this high. I think we're even up a little
bit over 2018, although I don't track back that far. I track in five year increments.
We are looking at, you know, as I mentioned before, our lateral higher, we've improved
on our history of lateral hires and are doing well there, but we do have more work to do.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
And once again, we'll have your full July report available.
If we have any additional questions about it, we can discuss it at next month.
Months meeting. So I appreciate you being here and we'll appreciate receiving the document
to review. Sarah George is on vacation, so I don't have the July statistics from the court.
I will say that it has been consistently either a little bit over or a little bit under 3,000
cases for the Chittenden County essay. I will say, because it does continue to come up, people
who are interested in the status of cases that they feel should be made, right? Because sometimes
there may not be enough evidence to make a case. Sometimes a case could still be with
BPD and not with Sarah George. It's all about the incident numbers. People need to have an
incident number, so that request can be made to check the status in order to
determine if it's made it to the SA. What's supposed to happen if something
makes it to the SA's office and they are proceeding with working on that case.
When that case gets assigned to when the assistant
state's attorneys, or deputy state's attorneys, they are supposed to be reaching out to the
victim.
The victim is supposed to be knowing that the case is with the state's attorney's office
is going to be either prosecuted or resolved in some kind of fashion and they're going
to be kept informed.
So if a case doesn't go to trial, but there's some sort of restorative justice, someone
is supposed to be walking the victim of the crime through that process. So if we have any other
questions on that, I am hoping to, I'd asked her, George, before if she was able to join us,
and I'm going to try and have that happen again so maybe we can gather some more specific,
not happen again, but ask her again in order to have her do a presentation on kind of like a
a little history of a, remember Schoolhouse Rock?
Maybe not my head of counsel knew I was winning,
but Schoolhouse Rock, and they have this thing,
how to have a bill, like what happens to the bill,
the Congress, like I feel like what happens to a case?
Let's talk about a case from start to finish,
because there's so many questions about those.
I'm going to kind of skip some things.
I would like to just say regarding the fire department and Chief LeChance looks at numbers
once a week, and he did provide his most recent report for this week, which is attached
to the agenda in Civic Clerk.
So quick lesson again for the public about Civic Clerk.
you go to the City of Burlington's website, you click on calendar and you're literally able to
search for meetings that are being held, be it city council meeting, be it commissions and
other committees, and you just click on the meeting that you're interested in and you're
going to see the agenda, you're going to see the meetings and in most cases we're not
Not a hundred percent yet, but we have more and more of these meetings are connected under
meeting media.
So in one place, without having to go to YouTube and search for something, although TownMeetingTV
is awesome for posting most of them, not all the committees and commissions are on TownMeetingTV.
So this way you can look at meeting media just to give that information.
With regards to their responses, a year ago, they were at like 55, 22, and so far in 2024,
they're at 53, 72, which is a slight increase.
We continue to see, we just had the presentation about people offering treatment to people
who refuse to be transported. And we do see that number continue to go up. Average overdose
responses. And then he has maps that kind of show how we dipped the beginning of the year
and in March and now we are skyrocketing up, which people kind of expected. We kind of expected
as the weather got warmer that we might have more problems. Calls that are about people
who are unresponsive or what they refer to as person down, sometimes people are overdose,
sometimes they're not, or sometimes they're what he refers to as experiencing the desired
effect of their substance or have another non-emergent need. So those calls are
actually down updated through 714. There were 236 last year, there are 164. The
trend continues. We're looking at 305. I
think I will leave it there. He does
provide information on the CRT team as well in terms of what their responses
continue to be and we see some good numbers there. So that is
just for time's sake because we have the longer presentations today. Once
again the full reports are available for our counselors and our public to look
I am going to consider item eight, which is a retention update done, because I feel in
our earlier conversation with the recruitment team, we touched on issues around retention,
and I don't think we need to, unless there's any other questions or something you think
we need to feel good about that.
And then, Nye, I want to thank Sarah Tim, who is our public information and community engagement
officer.
It's a mouthful.
Thank you for being with us and being through those presentations.
I kind of want to do items 9 and 10 together, which is a community engagement report and
And then also kind of a social media access update, if Sarah, you would be available to
talk about that right now.
Absolutely.
And then Chief Murad, if you have any, as we discussed this, if there's anything that
you want to add?
Absolutely.
As of right now, our main community engagement update for this month, and I believe Council
grant I emailed you this as well is this summer BPD is participating in the
creamy from a cup program run by the Vermont Agency of Aged Culture. The
program supports community connections with local police departments and the
Vermont dairy farmers and earlier this month specifically during our BTV
Independence Day celebration on July 3rd officers started distributing the
public safety coupons, which is for a free small creamy. So earlier this summer
myself and executive manager Trammell and I worked with finding some
participating vendors to sponsor and be recipients for those creamy coupons. So
that'll be continuing through the months of summer. And as for the social
media update, it seems that we are in the process of starting a new Instagram page
because I believe that command staff and IT are still troubleshooting the lack of
access that the Instagram page was that the BPD had previously. So right now I
think to just expedite things we may be meeting later this month to see when we
can re-engage on a new one.
Okay, thank you. Quick question about the Creamy from
a Cop program. So for these vendors that are accepting the coupons, are
they Burlington vendors, I assume? Yes, we have two participating vendors. One is
the Bagel Cafe in Delhi on North Avenue and the other one is Burlington Bay on
battery streets. That's great, that's great. And then let me ask you, I'm going to throw this out here,
you do not need to answer now because I understand you may need to check with people. The ramble
is coming up in the Old North End and I believe the ramble is on, I want to say the 27th.
I want to say the 27th.
I will email you for sure, but I'm pretty sure it's the 27th, and the Ramble is an event
to kind of celebrate the Old North End, and there's all kinds of activities throughout the
Old North End, and I would love if it's possible to have one officer or representative
from the police department available to give out some of these coupons at the
ramble. You know maybe they because with the ramble you can they can do a walk
around whenever they want or we can have it as a scheduled event so there's a
program that's done for the ramble and we can say hey go to this location the
Old North Inn and you can get a coupon from a creamy sponsored by the
the Burlington Police Department and Burlington Bay and Bagel Cafe.
Something like that.
And just to see if someone from the department would be interested in doing that, I think
that would be great.
I'm trying to do kind of a counselor's table as well at the Ramble, working on finalizing
that, those details so they could be at the same table, or they could just simply
be walking around at the different events to do that.
Thank you for putting that on my radar. I am already marking it down. I'll see if I can
get an officer or two to come with me. But if anything, hopefully I can at least attend
and represent BPD. And full disclosure, we do only have a limited budget that was allotted
to us from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. So we are limited with a number of coupons.
but I do have been spacing them out, giving them to our lieutenants and sergeants for our team.
So I will definitely keep an allotment set aside for the ramble if that's possible from our end.
That will be great. And I have in front porch form some ramble details. So I will just forward
you one of the front porch form emails that has the full details. And I think what would be
Great, so kind of going back to the social media thing,
that would be a great social media opportunity,
like to have like buddy up with you,
take some pictures of distributing creamy coupons
to people, and that can be a post.
I think what would be important at this time
to just like just let's create,
you know, it was one North Avenue,
and maybe it'll be the number one North Avenue to,
and then tag the other account and maybe work with some of our staff that's been
doing some social media for us in terms of community engagement for what the
council's been working on. I think we can be really effective in a way that we
haven't been able to. I appreciated Chief Murad listening to me earlier
today because I do feel very strongly that we can improve the support in the
city like when we when we talk about how officers feel supported or not
supported because of strange relationships in certain communities
that won't improve unless we start to take some intentional steps and we
been doing that and they don't have to be huge steps, but if we're doing like small steps and we're
we're having these conversations and we're letting people see our officers,
I just think that's really important and I have a lot of ideas around that and I would just love
an opportunity to really flesh some of them out in a real sincere way so that we can track
results, right? Results are very trackable when it comes to social media. I was on
Instagram just looking at things but not really and got more involved when I
decided I wanted to run for city council and then my whole life kind of
changed because I was like oh I see the power of it if used correctly and I
I think when it comes to recruitment and as Councilor Barlow brought up the other time,
when we talk about lateral transfers and we do digital advertising, social media is part
of that.
And I hear that over and over again on some of these police podcasts that I listen
to where I'm specifically looking for podcasts that are talking about recruitment and retention
And social media comes up all the time. And as we know, social media is one of the pillars of 21st century policing.
I'm going to leave it at that because I see Councillor Varlo would like to say something or has a question. Please go right in.
I have a question. Thank you. I just wanted to know in the, in the old days of creamy with a cop.
Um, police officers would come to like the bagel cafe, which I know is underlist again this year.
Is there are there any events planned where there actually will be.
Days when the public can come and have a creamy with a cop at the Mayo cafe.
Yes, thank you for that question, counselor. Yes, so my understanding is that historically creamy with a cop was an actual event where you did have, like you said, an event where officers were stationed at an area and individuals were invited to get that.
However, the correspondence that I got this year from, I believe, Scott Waterman over at
the Vermont Agency of Agriculture is that this is the first year that they've really
revived the program since, like, pre-pandemic.
And so instead of creamy with a cup, it is now creamy from a cup.
And so what the agency is doing is they're only allowing a certain amount of coupons
for a select amount of agencies.
So we're given a certain dollar amount that we are allowed to partner with with agencies.
So right now the coupon distributing is still that from our officers, but it's more so
just organically out in the community.
And one of the little fun things on the coupon itself is the public safety treat is in
recognition in recognition for making safe choices and being awesome.
So really officers are out and about in the community engaging with others, which
Which is why I think the launch date for that on the July 3rd was perfect because there were
family, friends, community members out and about.
But in summary, no, we will not be having a specific event where officers will be at a
specific location.
Okay.
Well, I would just put it out there to you.
If you're interested in doing an event like that, because I think there's great value
in something like that, I'd be happy to work with you to try to sponsor that
something like that at like the bagel cafe. So if that's something that you're
interested in trying to coordinate I also understand and appreciate the time
pressures on officers right now and they may not have time to do an event like
that but if there is an appetite for it no pun intended let me know.
Absolutely thank you and just some foresight hopefully in the future we are
hoping to also re-engage our annual barbecue maybe sometime in the future too, that's something
I know that was done historically along with creamy with the cup before my time here.
So it's been fun to listen to what has been done in the past and now that I'm a year
in now with the BPD and my position that's not only new for myself but new for the
departments, I feel like I'm finally starting to get my feet wet and getting these great
support and ideas for what we can do moving forward.
Well, thank you for all you're doing.
That's great too.
And I think to Mark's point about getting sponsorships, I mean, I would definitely help with that
as well.
And I think we need to have – we're in this – it's rocking a hard place where
we need to do this engagement, but officers' time is really precious.
so if we can maximize an officer volunteering to be at an event and we
maximize the time at that event so that there's maximum engagement with the
public and then we are also grabbing pictures, video, audio then we can use it
for multiple things. So just, again, being strategic about saying, okay, we had this event,
but the event can be shown and be searchable. Like, we need to
counteract all the negative
postings, especially what would happen with the Yes program, because that really
went viral. I believe we can do that. So that's why I'd like to, I would like to see the department
resolve the issue with the Instagram. I talk a lot about Instagram because right now Instagram
is kind of the main social media platform. There are people that still use Facebook,
not as many.
There's literally platforms where you add in all your social media
And you can post, you can do a single post across everything as opposed to having to do individual work.
Maybe we do a TikTok account, you know, different people at different ages use different social media.
We know younger people use TikTok and Instagram.
And Instagram is actually becoming really popular with people my age as well.
But we know if we want to be talking about recruitment,
meant we have to be on social media.
It's, we have to be doing more.
And I would like to see more posts on Front Porch Forum
and I have some ideas about that.
And I think it would be great to develop a schedule.
I would like the department to think about that.
These are things you can mull over
and we can talk about it again.
But if you have a goal for X amount of posts each week,
X amount of information you're giving to, say, the MPAs, maybe get ready for presentation
in the fall.
Or the MPAs also, they have Ward 5, I think, is doing a summer picnic event on Saturday.
Things like that, like knowing what's going on and being very intentional about being
and more spaces than we have been. I think that can make a difference and I think if we do it in a
very sincere way to give it an opportunity, we can measure the results. We can measure the results
like if we have that great recruitment video but how are we pushing people to view it?
How are we getting it out there so more people see it and we can see the numbers of times it's
being viewed. It is a great piece to put in digital advertising to have that. What was
it? The Australians or people from New Zealand who did that, the video, the police force went
there and it went viral. I will have to find that. That gets talked a lot about in these
podcasts about the effectiveness of social media. I mean, obviously, what they did
It was extremely unique.
It was very fun, but it was effective for them,
and it showed other departments,
wow, you can do something and be really effective.
And I think the video that was produced locally
can definitely be used.
We just need to be intentional about pushing it out there.
Absolutely.
Yeah, let's get that Instagram account coming up.
Please, it would mean a lot.
And I think I've just had the opportunity
to like one month, one month, let's do some stuff
and then look at the effectiveness.
And if nothing happens, y'all can tell me shut up
and I'll leave you alone.
Well, I'd be happy to highlight,
yes, I completely agree.
Moving forward, our Instagram will definitely be
collaboration with both my team
and that of recruitment and retention.
That's what I call them, recruitment and retention
because I agree it's, they're both.
But yes, they are our recruitment team and Odd Hot and Caroline host me and I have them in my office quite often.
I was in their office quite a bit today, but yes, that'll be a natural collaboration.
I was very happy that my team and I were able to have our most recent informational video series episode be that on recruitment.
A lot of that content that we gathered was organically from exactly what you were saying.
My team and I, and that is, I am joined by our digital media redaction specialist,
Shawn Chen.
She's our amazing basically videographer, editor, unofficial photographer for the BPD.
So her and I go out into the events and such to gather that information.
And then that's how we put together those episodes.
So again, for those who may not be aware of it, but the BPD does have a YouTube
channel that we put that informational video series and the purpose of that video series
is to educate the public on different teams and aspects within the BPD to better understand
the work and importance each have here at the departments.
So as mentioned, the most recent episode was recruitment, we've done one on our community
service officers, one on our community support liaisons and one with our emergency response
units.
And right now we currently have in production one on our emergency communications specialist
also known as dispatchers.
So that one will hopefully be in the pipeline soon.
And then for where I'm focusing on right now
with what BPD has currently,
when I stepped into this role
is we do have our Facebook page
where you can see some of those lovely photos
and captures of already current creamy
from the cops recipients.
So a lot of our photos of our officers at that event
as well as highlights from different recruitment posts
that Anhad and Carolyn creates.
And I help highlight from the HR office
of the city of Burlington.
And then yes, front porch forum.
While we are limited to post,
I always kind of sit on that last one
to make sure if anything does come up last minute,
we have that capability,
but front porch forum we like to be active on
as well as the ring neighborhoods public safety.
I'll also do safety tips and street closures and event notices to that as well just to give individuals heads up for parking and such.
Okay, that's great. With how many posts do they limit you to?
From porch form I believe it's two for the municipal account that we have.
Two a month.
Two a month. Okay, I will email you about that.
we get four and it seems to be and it's also a little bit different because you
can do an announcement but if you do an event an event doesn't count as part of
your four as I've been trying to learn. Yes two announcements throughout like all
of the I believe all of the different jurisdictions and neighborhoods.
Okay let
Let me, I'm going to email you because I'm going to see if we can get you more, especially
as the public safety municipal account.
Yeah, I'll help you communicate with front porch form on that just to have an understanding
of how much you can actually do and it may need to be, because of the announcement and
the event, there's different things with the events.
You can do things under the events and it doesn't count against your announcement.
So I'll leave it there for now, but I'll definitely get some more information.
I appreciate those updates and your willingness to collaborate.
Do my fellow counselors have any additional questions or does Chief Murrat have anything
that he would like to add?
Okay, great.
So we just really quick here.
Oh, I'm sorry.
No, no, I'm sorry.
I was fine in the button.
I was just going to say, Sarah, thank you for your work.
And if there's ever, I know Shannon had reached out about doing some
community engagement with the MPAs.
But yeah, if there's ever anything in my neck of the woods that can be
helpful with either promoting it or just brainstorming different
community events that are happening with one. I think it's, yeah, I agree with
Councilor Grant the more that folks are connecting with officers in the
department in positive ways. I think the more trust we can build, so I
appreciate that work. Absolutely, and I just realized my video was not
active, so my apologies. It's nice to see all your faces. That's okay. So we, we
We had a very full meeting, even though we did not have Officer Miller, so I'll find
out what happened.
Maybe he didn't get the link.
I will find out.
The bare minimum, he really got me thinking about a lot of this, is he was over at the
Ward 6 NPA because people had questions specifically about traffic enforcement because
they were having some serious issues in that area.
I think we can all relate to the fact that there's various types of traffic issues, especially
with speeding through our neighborhoods.
And I saw that, I saw part of that, and I was like, that guy is public engagement gold.
And I had no idea that he was out there doing this.
I think that what he is doing counteracts some of the negative things that people have.
I think the people that were in the room that were watching it were really appreciating.
He was answering questions and things like that.
I will forward my two fellow counselors the link to it.
And maybe what we'll do is we'll have the link added to this meeting so at the
bare minimum people can watch that meeting.
but he's great. I mean you could even like do some snippets of him and you could
maybe say you know traffic enforcement with Sergeant Millis you know one through
four and and just use that video and then people see an officer that they
are they can become familiar with. I feel that people don't know what our
officers look like and I still feel that we could do you know at roll call at
roll call maybe you could get two officers before or after roll call to do
like the five questions you know how long have you been what made you want to
be a police officer how long you've been an officer
Where do you live? What's the, you know, the best thing that's ever happened to you on
the job? What's the worst thing? And what's the one thing you want all Burlingtonians to
know about public safety? And they can answer those five questions in less than five minutes.
And you have a post. You have a post that you could have fun with. And you could have.
And I also understand that some officers may not want to be on the camera, especially
those who work with a drug unit. But those that are, it's like giving visibility and creating
an opportunity for support because I really do believe it can be improved on. And I am in an
area that there's a lot of issues around a lack of support. And I know it can be improved.
I
I was very happy that Sergeant Mellis was able to join for the NPA.
I believe that last year was when I first met Councilor and Advisor before he was a
City Councilor.
I heard about the NPAs, I started researching Burlington before I relocated here to New
England.
I'm originally a Midwesterner, born and raised in Wisconsin, but I was living in
Europe the last four years, wanted to come back to the States and always found
this area fascinating.
But I learned about the MPAs, and that was one of the first things I started doing my first year was I wasn't able to justify going to every single one every month, but I made a point to go to all eight wards seasonally.
So I was able to go in spring again in fall and in winter. And this year I've been really trying to be able to have an officer join me specifically for that.
so it was great to get Sergeant Mellis too. I believe it was Ward 6, I believe.
Yeah, it was. It was Ward. Yeah, it was Ward. Thanks, and I would...
That's an... Yes.
Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Please continue.
No, that's essentially something that I would love to continue and whatever
facet that, again, our officers have that availability. I know that's a lot and
it's really nice to hear the empathy and understanding of that from the community
because as much as I always say that they're always organically community
engaging throughout but there's a time and place where an MPA is a specific
format and it is with each of the different areas of the city so again
something I would like to build on and if you go on our Facebook page Sargent
Melis is definitely one of our top contenders of photos that we have of
him and hopefully we'll be doing an episode on specific gun patrol and
And again, expand those informational video episodes into maybe shorter reels and videos
that are more short and digestible.
And it's a great reminder about that YouTube page because I haven't been on there, you
know, since I watched the recruitment video.
So when we're talking about getting those videos out, that is like Instagram is all
about that.
then you can use those videos to make smaller reels because the reels were
like people told me this and then I'm like okay and I did it and and certain
stuff blew up and I was like whoa this is this is real the reels are real so
they're like really effective I know I would love to get an officer in in the
We haven't had BPD at our MPA in an extremely long time.
And maybe that's something we could work on for the fall.
And maybe Chief, you might be able to come back.
But I think that that would be really important
into the Old North Inn to have showing up.
And we're also in the Old North Inn
with the redistricting, we are trying to deal with the fact that all of a sudden we went from being Ward 2 and 3 to our MPA being mostly Ward 2,
because so many people were moved over from Ward 3 to 2, and then Ward 3 is expanded out to the King Maple area,
and we are realizing that we really don't have any participation there, so that's one of the projects we're looking at.
how do we get people over to the Old North End Community Center or maybe we need
to be doing our NPA at a different location that's closer to King Maple to
accommodate that but that's kind of off topic at the moment. Sarah I thank you
very much for your time and the updates. Any questions from my fellow
Councilors.
Well, that is awesome. Upcoming meetings sticking to the third Thursday would be
August 15th and September 19th. Does that sound okay?
Wonderful and shout out to our new city attorney Jessica Brown.
Thanks for attending tonight
And we will close the meeting at 7.56.
And as a reminder, this has been recorded and will be,
our staff person is usually very good about adding it very quickly to Civic Clerk.
I will let you all know when it's live.
Thank you and have a great night.
Thank you, Councillor Grant.
Thanks, counselor.