 Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us and being here for this important announcement. Today, I am announcing that I'm appointing John Murad to serve as Burlington's next permanent police chief. Serving as Burlington's police chief is always a big job. Burlingtonians rightly expect a great deal from their chiefs. We want someone who will keep this special place, one of the safest cities in the country, and we want a chief who will ensure that the department consistently earns the trust of all of our residents and lives up to the ideals of 21st century policing. At this moment, at the beginning of 2022, the job is even bigger than in normal times. The next chief will need to turn around two years of troubling local crime trends. The next chief must meet the current moment and work to eliminate racial bias and racial disparities from policing and law enforcement. And the next chief must stabilize and then rebuild a department that has been decimated by the city council's flawed and then recently overturned decision to eliminate 30% of our officers. I know that chief Murad is up to this enormous challenge because he has already demonstrated that he can do it. He has served the department with distinction since returning to his home state of Vermont and accepting a deputy chief assignment in 2018. And for the last year and a half, he has led the Burlington police department as acting chief through one of the most challenging periods in its 150-year history. Chief Murad was called to service, called the public service by the 9-11 attacks. After starting as a police officer in the NYPD in 2005, he rose extremely quickly through the ranks of detective, sergeant, and eventually assistant commissioner. He then served for years in and out of government as the right-hand man to Bill Bratton, one of the most consequential figures in American policing of the last half century. Chief Murad has demonstrated his commitment to this community throughout the last 18 months. He's a chief who rolls up his sleeves and we've seen him do that repeatedly throughout his time with the BPD. He works incredibly hard, often assigning himself very early morning or late night duties. He has lived in this community with his wife, Bonnie, who I'm happy to say is with us here today. Thank you for being here, Bonnie. And his two children since starting his career with the BPD. He shows up to be present at important community events, whether that is a Thursday night, MPA meeting in the Old North End, vaccination pop-up, or one of Patrick Brown's MLK Junior celebrations. And at a time when so many are stepping away from the challenges of policing and the contentiousness of the current public arena, Chief Murad is stepping up. As a rule, leaders must make decisions and take actions that do not please everyone. This has been particularly true for the last 18 months as we've had a polarizing debate about the resources that are necessary to keep this community safe. As a result of his leadership during these challenging times, I know there are some in this community who have concerns about Chief Murad becoming permanent chief. I respectfully ask Berlintonians who have these doubts to give Chief Murad a fresh start in the chance to earn their trust. Permanent chiefs have more authority, more credibility, and can lead in a different way than even the best acting chiefs are able to. Let's give him the chance to show what he can do in this different, larger role. Finally, I want to share that I've seen Chief Murad win over doubters before. Really big doubters. Some of them may be in the room here even. When I first signed off on the decision to bring in John Murad as a deputy chief, the police union was very unhappy and communicated grave concerns to me that he could ever successfully serve as chief. When I asked Chief Murad to serve briefly as acting chief at the end of 2019, the union again strongly voiced opposition. Today, two years later, the union is strongly supporting Chief Murad's permanent appointment. I appreciate you all being here today. With a yes vote on Monday, Chief Murad will have the opportunity and the responsibility of serving and earning the trust of the entire community, including those who currently doubt him. Let's give him the chance to demonstrate what he can do in this critical moment with the full powers and duties of the office of Berlinton's chief of police. Chief, thank you. Good luck. Thank you. That was really something, Mr. Mayor. I am honored by the Mayor's confidence. I am grateful for the opportunity to continue to serve Berlinton. I'm excited to enter a new chapter with the city council, with the police commission, and with other community stakeholders. And I am eager to keep working with the men and women and the women and men of the Berlinton police department so we can keep moving forward for the Queen City and for our neighbors. Our officers often grow tired of me using the word neighbors, but that is what this job is about for me. It is about our neighbors. It is about the people that we serve. Ours is a wonderful city. It is a city where I was born. It is a city where my wife and my children have made our home, where my parents, my father who is here, spent their careers at the university. It is a place where I've been privileged to lead the BPD for the past 20 months in times of extreme challenge for the men and women inside and for the community that expects and deserves so much from us. I know that I have more to give than we have seen in these 20 months that we have a farther road to walk together, that it is a road that we must walk together, and that we can strive together to make this city safe and fair for everyone everywhere. And I am incredibly grateful for this moment and for this opportunity, sir. Thank you very much. Okay. I appreciate that we have many members of the Vermont media here with us, and we'd be happy to take some questions if there are any. So, yes, that is the way our process works. The mayor has the responsibility under the charter for making all department head appointments, including the chief of police. And then the council has the authority to approve those appointments, to confirm those appointments. I just mentioned in my remarks that I'm certainly aware that as a result of Chief Murad's service during this challenging time and through, as a result of some of the difficult debates that we've had over the last couple of years, there are some in this community who have concerns about him stepping into this role. And I think it's fair to say it's clear that there are some counselors who have concerns. I guess as counselors are weighing this really consequential decision, there's really three things that I hope they will be considering as they make this decision. One, under our charter, under our division of responsibilities, the mayor is responsibility for managing day-to-day operations. And as a result, the council traditionally has given the mayor a great deal of space to create the management team that the current mayor feels is necessary to lead the city on a day-to-day basis. And there really is very little precedent in recent times. Maybe if you go all the way back to the 80s, you could find some different examples. But in recent times, I'm not aware of really any precedence for the council rejecting mayoral appointments over process concerns or a difference in policy opinion. Two, I hope counselors will reflect long and hard on the fact that it is very rare for any organization or any community really to thrive and to make progress on major challenges like we clearly have before us with interim leaders. It's just, I think, kind of a function of organizations that stable leadership is critical for making progress. And three, I hope the council will consider that just a few months ago, we all agreed that the department was in trouble. It was losing too many officers too quickly. And that public safety depended on stabilizing the department. And together, the administration and the council acted to take some steps in that direction. We approved, I believe unanimously, a recruitment and retention plan. The council raised the officer cap back to the levels recommended in the CNA report. That work of stabilization is not done. We remain at a precarious moment. And I hope that the council understands that that shared work is not done and understands that at this point, I believe the most important thing they can do to support the department and turn this situation around is to approve Chief Murad. He's the right leader for the challenges we face right now. He's the right leader to lead that stabilization effort and rebuilding effort. And we're very fortunate that he has served through this challenging period and that he still wants to serve. And I hope he will earn the council support on Monday. Yes, Mike, that's exactly right. I thought I was pretty clear about that. We had gone through this process that started last May and got to the point where Chief Murad, where we had two finalists when I spoke to the council in December. And I was clear that Chief Murad was one of those finalists. And as we came back after the holiday break in the new year, we went through the final steps of the process. And I'm here making good on what I said I would do back in December, which is to come forward early in the new year with a permanent appointment. I'm not sure I'm following the question exactly. I think I've continued forward exactly as I said I would both in my November memos, two memos to the council when I suspended the search and said that if the council wanted the search to continue, that I needed substantial help with that. And that if we did not get that help from the council, the help that only the council could give, that I would be moving forward with the candidates that we were fortunate to have. And that's what we did. And that's how we got here today. And again, this is a time when every day we wake up and we see headlines in all your publications. This is a tough time for it. We have workforce issues everywhere we look. There are particularly workforce issues in policing. You hear that from Commissioner Sherling. You hear that from the governor. The whole state is struggling to find men and women who are willing to do these critical and challenging jobs that our officers do. It is also a very challenging time to secure new police chiefs. In the wake of events in the last couple of years, there are many communities that are seeking chiefs who are exactly like the ideal candidate profile that I wrote and shared with the community after talking to dozens of stakeholders last spring and summer. We are fortunate to have a candidate in Chief Mirad who has lived those values, who is in many ways that ideal candidate. And I'm proud to bring him forward. I'm grateful that he has been so committed to this community through this challenging time. And I wish him, and I think we all should be wishing him great success in this important role at this very critical moment. Yeah, I think I understand your question, Cam. I think if you look at my record over a decade now, you will see that I worked very hard to get these appointments right. I've had more than three dozen successful appointments over the last decade. I certainly always listen very carefully. It's always part of my process to go and listen to the frontline workers, the people who are the members of the department, everyone in the department who wants to share their thoughts on what the department needs. I always listen to that, but I don't only listen to that. I also listen to outside stakeholders. I listen to counselors. I listen to commissioners. I try to take, and we did that in a very deliberate way this time. And so there are benefits of hiring someone from within, but sometimes those benefits are outweighed by the importance of bringing in a new perspective, bringing in fresh capacity and experience. And I was open to that this time. That's why I launched the national search process, and that's why I was very committed to that process. And we put a great deal effort into it since last May. And I take issue with some of the suggestions that, to the contrary, that have been made. But now here we are at the end of the process. And again, we're fortunate to have a very strong candidate in Chief Murad, who is the embodiment of a lot of what I heard over the course of talking with dozens and dozens of Brawlontonians and officers. And I'm proud to be bringing forward his appointment today. I think it's an important step for the city. Yeah, I'm happy to respond. Well, I guess I'm not happy, Courtney, to respond to it. And I think it's very unfair and baseless criticism, baseless in the sense that we've been very transparent about what the process was. We've shared in detail, in writing, all the communications that, all the steps we took, all the communications we had with members of the search committee. I know some members of the media have requested those. We'd be happy to share that packet with others. I challenge anyone to, and I've seen individuals make that claim that this was somehow a biased process, but I don't think anyone has pointed to actually any specific element of it. It was a process aimed at securing as many strong candidates as we could. And I, you know, it's particularly hard to hear that because a lot of the work of that fell to me personally. It fell to my Chief of Staff. And I've spent, you know, really, I don't know how many hours talking to potential police chiefs from around Vermont and from around the country, talking to candidates who had been runners up and in other processes, reaching out to all the networks that I have developed over the last decade in law enforcement, asking people to put forward strong candidates, working with this 13-member search committee, following up on every lead the search committee brought to us, talking to two different professional firms that deal with recruitment and doing everything we can to make good on that idea. I thought last spring, the reason I announced that we would have national searches, I thought it would be good for the community, good for the department ultimately, if challenging because there would be some months of additional uncertainty to go through that process. And I put my back into it. And the suggestion otherwise is baseless. I don't think any, there's any specific anyone can point to that backs that up and also doesn't make any sense. Why would I have gone through all this trouble? Chief Mirab is here serving the community well and working hard last May. If what I wanted was just to bring forward the chief, I could have done at that time. So I don't understand that. I don't think it's right. I know it's not right. I don't think it's fair. I think frankly it has been stated by individuals who were not there for me and were not there for the administration when I asked for help in this process to have additional tools to expand the candidate pool and this attempt to shift responsibility as a result of that. But I mean here's the good news. The goal of any search process is to have one strong candidate at the end that can serve successfully in this role. We have that. We didn't have a lot of strong candidates at the end. In fact, at the end, you know, we had very few that reached the final stage. But we, you know, that reached the final, you know, I'll just say in the end when coming back, I said in December there was, we would go forward two candidates and as we moved from that in January to move towards the final process, the other candidate withdrew. So in the end, we had, we had, we have Chiefs Muirad and I'm very fortunate and grateful that we have him and that he's continued to be willing to serve in this role. Yeah, please. I want to say that at no point did I ever feel that this process was a foregone conclusion. There was no fix as it were that was in in this process. I took this process incredibly seriously. My materials are directly addressing the things that the search committee and the process stated that it wanted. I am eternally grateful for the Mayor's support. We work closely together, but I have not believed that this was my position. At any point, I have worked very hard through the process and through now and frankly have been in the midst of a 20-month job interview. And I don't think that anyone here who has ever hired people has sat with an applicant or a candidate who got every single part right, every single part. You walk away sometimes saying, wow, that person really knocked it out. But for the most part, there's always something where you say, you know what, that one could have been a little different, that one could have been a little bit of a bit, holy moly, this one was great. Maybe that's what you have. I've been in a 20-month job interview and I have done my best at every stage of that to perform. Not because it was a job interview or I saw it that way, but because I want to serve this city. I want to serve the people in it. I want to lead the men and women who do the real work of making public safety happen in a way that takes care of them and gives them rights. And I want to make sure that we are treating every single member of this community equally and fairly, that we are addressing things that we know we have as issues with which to deal, that we are talking about disparities that we have seen, that we are talking about fairness in the way we apply the law, that we are talking about making certain that we are at the cutting edge of everything that our profession does, and continuing this agency's tradition of that, because it has been doing that for many, many years. But insofar as this process is concerned, this was a fair process from my perspective as a participant in it. I did everything that I needed to do to make it through that process. There is nothing that I would have done differently had it been a process for another city. And ultimately, I feel that we have a place where I have hopefully earned the city's appreciation and the city's trust, not all of it. But I am willing to work more to earn the parts where we have not yet succeeded and to reach out to parts of the city that maybe have concerns about that 20-month job interview and have desires for where we go together. If we can find common ground, and I know that we can, because every single person in the city wants to be safe, every single person in the city wants it to feel like a place where we can be, where it is a welcoming community, where we have a strong economic base that is in part driven by public safety, where we are all equal before this process in the law, all of us want that. That is our common ground. And to the extent that we can work on those things together to find ways around the parts where the common ground shifts a bit and where fairness is of concern, where disparity is of concern, I want to work in those ways with everyone. I don't consider this job interview over, to be frank. But I am hopeful that we are at a stage now where I can change the title and begin to work in a way that a chief can work and an acting chief cannot. No, Courtney, as we move towards the final interview and did some additional vetting, the candidate withdrew. We sent them a note last night because I had told them that they would be involved in the finalist interviews. That is what I had expected in December when making that decision. I expected something like the process that we had in 2015 where we had a large number of people, the committee as well as other stakeholders participate in extended interviews. But it seemed not a fair use of everyone's time when we were down to, when we had one candidate. And so I did have a final meeting myself before fully committing to the seven with Chief Mirad, the HR director or the city attorney and the chief of staff participated in that final meeting. We had some confirmation that the priorities we would be working on that we saw in a similar way, the immediate challenges ahead. I think both of us feel very, I confirmed that both of us feel very strongly that the top priority of the months ahead needs to be seeing a reduction of this alarming increase in shootings that we experienced over the course of 21, seeing the numbers are not good with respect to the burglaries. And that's got to change. It's something we've brought down a previous point in my decade of service. And I'm expecting the detective team and Chief Mirad and the whole team to make progress on that issue in the months ahead. We need to have a very different 2022 in the downtown than we had this past year. We've got to the point that none of us, no one in recent memory has seen the downtown at times out of control and really scary for many members of the public as it was at times this past summer. That's got to change. I expect Chief Mirad, both of us are very troubled by the racial disparities that we see in the use of forced statistics and some of the other police metrics where Chief Mirad and the department can directly reduce those disparities. It's my expectation that he be laser focused on that and achieve that where the issues are more complicated and they need to be addressed upstream. I expect them to be a part of that conversation as well and really help lead those conversations with other community partners to help address the issues that are causing crime upstream and see a reduction in disparities that through that kind of partnership work. And I think that in particular is an area when I talk about let's give him the chance to succeed and as a permanent chief in a way that he's been unable to as an acting chief. I think that really stands for outside partners in a very significant way. He will have a new ability to do that kind of, marshal that kind of work as a permanent chief. I expect, we've gone back and forth on this many times. I've heard like you the projections that to get back to the number of officers that we properly need to police the city is going to take many years. It can't take many years. We need to prioritize this. We need to put resources towards it. We need to find a way to get back to the size of the team we need as quickly as possible. I'm going to look to Chief Mirad to lead that effort and to strategize and then implement that effort. I'm looking to him to make good on this. We are very shortly. We've been working on it hard. He has been leading this for months. The crisis response team RFP. We've been in detailed conversations with the medical center and the state about this new program. I'm expecting him to lead a successful RFP process very soon on that and then get this new capacity deployed as well as to keep expanding the use of our CSLs and CSOs. I can keep going. The point is there's a lot to do. There's a lot to do. These are serious times. We are seeing public safety challenges like we've never seen in this community. We can't be complacent about it. We have to actively work on them, address them, forge, re-earn the safety that this community so long enjoyed. That starts with having a permanent police chief. You can't do that without a permanent police chief. I hope the council will see it that way. I'll leave it at that. Immediately. I think sometimes there is a reason to make some kind of delay, but in this case there would be no reason. It would be for many reasons. The sooner, the better. All right, Jack, I appreciate the chance to address this once and for all. I think I've been really clear about it, but let me try again. There were two critical votes and they happened the same meeting. They actually ended up happening on different nights because it turned out to be a two-day meeting, but they happened the same meeting. Never had a two-day meeting like that before. The first vote was on a big package, was on a resolution that was dealing with many, I believe, 10 different elements of racial justice and racial equity, the great majority of which I fully supported and believed in and have since the passage worked hard to implement, such as the creation of a task force to study the Burlington's role in racism and what northern racism, sorry, slavery, looked like prior to its abolishment. There was a commitment to expanding REIB. There was many things in that that I am a full-throated supporter of, and so that was point number one. Secondly, at the same meeting, the council was voting on the budget and I brought forward a compromise resolution. In the budget resolution was a compromise that was explicit, that notwithstanding that resolution, which had left open the time period in which the department would be shrunk by 30%, it clarified that time period and said in the year, or end up being a year, in the time before this operational and functional assessment was done, that the department would remain at a size of 85 to 90 officers, and that until the report was done, and we had the data and we can make these important decisions. I thought it was a very reasonable compromise. Five city councilors agreed and voted for it, unfortunately by the slim majority of seven to five, that was stripped out and language allowing that language is entirely stripped out. That left me in a very challenging place, Jack. I did not think the community was at a moment where vetoing a racial justice and racial equity resolution that had many fine components to it was something that was responsible. I had expressed very clearly and you can go back and look at the videotapes of it, my grave concerns about that. I had made this attempt for compromise and I knew that this was something that would take some time to be fully implemented. I knew we could come back and discuss this again, and we did so just a few months later. It is shocking to me that when we came back, when we had dozens of former elected officials from all parties urging a compromise that the council would not listen to that, it was shocking later when the police commission called for a change that again the council did not make a change. There was a lot of time to fix that error and frankly I never imagined that on such a serious issue there would be such stubbornness and obstruction for over a year before, even after counselors admitted they had gotten it wrong. They still were unwilling to make the change as the damage piled up and piled up until the report was in and even then some counselors were unwilling to make the change. So that's it. I mean I think that's transparent. I was against it at the time. I was very clear I was against it at the time. You're right, I could have vetoed it, had I vetoed it, I'm not sure we would have made it through the summer of 2020 as one of the cities that came through that period without violent demonstrations, without clashes between the police and protesters. I'm proud that we came through that period better than a lot of communities making progress on racial justice issues in many substantive ways. That's why I made the decisions I did. All right. Thank you. I appreciate how many have come out to be part of this and again congratulations chief. Thank you for your service. I look forward to our continued work together and I look forward to talking about your appointment on Monday with the city council.