 Good afternoon. So throughout 2022 we've been experiencing as a community a much higher number of gunfire incidents than we have historically. Ending this spike in gun violence is the city's highest priority and it's both Chief Mirad and I have said before if you commit a gun crime in Burlington we will do everything we can to hold you accountable. The city is making good on that commitment to the public and to the perpetrators of gun violence. Today two people responsible for last weekend's homicide are now in custody. This is the third week in a row in which we've made major arrests for recent gun violent incidents. I want to thank Chief Mirad and Lieutenant Jim Trebe who manages the our detective unit for the excellent police work that has made these arrests possible. I also want to thank the many law enforcement partners including a couple that are here today. States Attorney Sarah George and then Alex Schmidt who is the regional agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms for their partnership. These aren't the only partners that we've been working with but these are a couple of the most important ones. I'm going to hand over the podium to Chief Mirad who's going to share more details about yesterday's arrests and then the Chief and I will have a broader update on our current understanding of the factors that are driving this spike in gun violence and on our efforts to bring them to an end. Chief, go ahead. Thank you, sir. So thank you everybody. I want to begin by acknowledging the work that was done both inside this building and by many, many partners. I had hoped that our Detective Lieutenant Commander, excuse me, our Lieutenant Detective Commander Jim Trebe would be here. He is not, he doesn't like to stand in front of cameras but his team did absolutely extraordinary work on this, extraordinary work. And some of those men and women are in the back. They are, they're right up there with any detectives you can imagine across the country and so far as being able to handle a case like this. But we didn't do it alone and I want to express great thanks for the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, specifically Agent Alex Schmidt here who is the leader of the ATF in this region. Tremendous partnership with members of the ATF who are at these scenes who do work that help us immeasurably around particularly ballistics evidence collection, a lot of technological assistance and just being able to work with federal partners. The Drug Enforcement Administration or DEA, Homeland Security Investigations or HSI, the Vermont State Police both their patrol resources who assisted in the response to the incident on the night of the incident and their Northern Investigative Unit, the South Burlington Police Department who also responded in the aftermath of the incident and assisted with scene security but also have assisted in the search since. The Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles Enforcement and Safety's Investigations Unit which we leveraged in order to determine the vehicle that we associated with this incident. The Swanson Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigations or FBI, the Chittenden County State's Attorney's Office who oversaw the production of our search warrants, the production of the affidavits that came out of our Detective Bureau and has now been able to arraign both of our involved persons and get holds without bail for each of these individuals. The Winooski Police Department and the Franklin County Sheriff's Office. Yesterday we arrested Christopher Crawford, 42, for the murder of Brian C. Rogers, 32. A person that we also believe was associated with the crime, Joseph Craig, was also arrested yesterday. Today Mr. Crawford was arraigned and held without bail. He has a long criminal history in other states including eight felony convictions in the state of New Jersey. The affidavit has been filed at the arraignment today and the summary of our case is this. That on September 4th, 2022, Brian Rogers was murdered in City Hall Park at approximately 0041 hours, so just before one in the morning. He was shot twice in the back of the head from close range without any warning or immediate proceeding event. This was witnessed by his girlfriend who was sitting with him at the time of the attack and it was recorded on security footage that is on the Burlington City Hall. The path and the actions of the perpetrator in the moments prior to this and a long period of time prior to this are the basis for our affidavit. We were able to, detectives were able to look at his progress through that part of the downtown all the way up until the moment of the murder and then also to assess his flight with associates in a vehicle. This was however an incident in which we did not have a lot of information. We didn't know who our, our suspect was, our victim was relatively new to us and new to the city. Our suspect was new to us. This was not akin to many of the other gun violence incidents that we have dealt with over the past two and a half years. Most of those spring out of immediate altercations. Many of those are associated with a small group of people who are local with whom we have previous law enforcement engagements. This was not that. This was a, in the terms of law enforcement and police books, a stone cold who done it and the officers here did a tremendous amount of work in order to find this individual and be able to then go out and canvas for a vehicle, find that vehicle with the people in it and actually make an apprehension. This was extraordinary work by our detectives and it comes on the heels of a workload that is absolutely unprecedented in the history of this city. We have never had a period of two and a half years where we've had 49 gunfire incidents. We've never had this kind of volume where these detectives have been working. Basically, unfortunately, almost every other week, there has been some kind of gun violence incident that has needed investigation and needed the work of a detective bureau that is understaffed similarly to the department as a whole. They dig in and they do the work. I am tremendously proud of them for doing this kind of work. I'll take additional questions and the state's attorney is available for questions about this specific case as well before we transition into a presentation and a discussion of the overall picture of gun violence as it's existed in Burlington since 2012 when our computer system was first implemented and we've been able to track the data, but more importantly since 2020 when we really saw something change, something drastic. But for the time being, we'll take questions about the case in front of us. I guess just to start, obviously on Saturday night in the Sunday morning, state police was in town and as many of us know, they were kind of located on that Church Street side. This should be happening in the city hall park. I mean, if state police is going to be in the city as a deterrent, I mean, did it not work this time? So, well, we have a homicide, right? So, obviously, we had somebody who was brazen enough to walk past police officers on two occasions moving in a circle in order to get to where his target was to assess that there was not coverage in that immediate vicinity, even though it was right there on the other side of the buildings that are on the east side of city hall park and on the west side of Church Street and make a decision to take this individual's life. There were a number of, I had called in the Vermont State Police again as I had on August 13th. On August 13th, it was predicated on the fact that we'd had a double shooting the night before, a shooting for which we made an arrest and have apprehended a suspect. But in the wake of that, we called in the Vermont State Police to assist us. They sent 10 Vermont State Troopers. On this particular occasion, this was about the fact it was a Labor Day weekend. It was the first full weekend where the students for our colleges had really been back. We expected a boost to the nightlife and we wished to have a sense of presence, to project a sense that there is going to be a public safety presence in our downtown. And so in discussions with the Commissioner of Public Safety and more importantly, Colonel Birmingham of the Vermont State Police, we determined to make this request, ask them to come and assist us on that night. We had a total of six troopers. There were five Vermont State Troopers and one major. I was also there. I ran into you that night, Cam. I know you were off duty but managed to actually get a small piece out of it as well with some cell phone footage. We were there on the downtown. We were able to respond within seconds to the shooting. But this individual was willing to undertake this act despite the presence of that much law enforcement. And then that too separates this from many of the other incidents that we have seen. This was a very different incident and it was of great, great concern. And the fact that we did make an apprehension here and are on our way to having a strong prosecution is a great relief to me personally. So that is something that we're still trying to determine. And, you know, motive is often important, but it's also incidental to an act. When you have the proof of an act, why people do what they do is oftentimes very compelling for reporters and for television shows. It's not necessarily what we need in court when we have proof of the act. And what we have here is a pretty strong case of being able to witness this individual do this act. I strongly suspect that both the victim and the perpetrator are involved in narcotics trafficking. Again, these are not people who are long-term residents of Burlington. These are relatively new arrivals. And I do believe that that is a factor certainly in their presence in the city, if not in this particular act. So my message is that we, when these incidents occur, we do every single thing we can to make certain that we find the person and bring them to justice. And we've been successful in that in more cases than not, particularly in cases like this. My message is, you know, also that the very next day, there were people in City Hall Park enjoying themselves, families and children and people with, you know, enjoying just a space that all of us can enjoy. That's a park that we spend a lot of money to reinvigorate. We have people here who do a lot of work with the park and making certain that it is fully kept active with regard to events. And those events do proceed, they proceeded the next day. These incidents are awful incidents. We take them tremendously seriously. And the men and women inside this agency dedicate themselves to bringing the people involved in these to justice for behalf of the victims, behalf of our community. But they are also rare incidents and isolated, even though we've seen a tremendous uptake in them, they remain small numbers. That may or may not be of some degree of comfort, but I know that our community is concerned about this. I know that people are fearful about what's going on. We are concerned about the direction in which the city is going with regard to certain kinds of crime, certain kinds of incident reports, and particularly gunfire as well. You stated that, based on the presence of state police, that you guys may be able to respond in seconds. So I guess during these peak hours when people are outside, especially with the college students, are we expected to see heavier presence in downtown? I also know that the Browns and Business Association is trying to bring back their security details. So is the BTB working with them to kind of enforce those and make sure that people are safe, especially when they're out partying? That's a great question. And we are looking to work with any entities that want to create and assist with creating a public safety environment in the downtown core and throughout the city. Are we going to see Vermont state police again? Not on a regular basis, by any means. This has never been something that was supposed to be regular. The fact that there was actually a relatively short period of time between August 13th and September 4th, the third actually is when they were deploying, the incident that occurred on the morning of the fourth, was simply a matter of an incident that occurred and then a holiday weekend. Will we see them again? It's possible if specific conditions align, but it's not something on which we can count. Are we going to see Burlington police officers downtown more often? Certainly we're going to be doing what we can to focus on it with the resources that we have at hand. We're working to build those resources back, and that includes not just police officers, but other kinds of resources. In the meantime, yes, I do think that there are going to be explorations of other kinds of other means of projecting public safety presence. I don't know if you want to weigh in on this, Mr. Mayor, particularly around the BBA. The city helped fund that BBA initiative last year. There is interest in some kind of employees support program continuing again as we get into the kind of darker part of the year in the city, led by Carl Nasrawi, the head of the tertiary marketplace and business workforce development department is working on that. It sounds like Craig? No, I don't believe that's the case, at least not in association with the incident that they spoke to him. So not a detention to my knowledge. I think they spoke with him, but I don't know that there was, I'll have to add actually, if you've got more information about that, if we can come back to it, I'll find the specifics on it. If you have another question. Yeah, the other question was, could you explain a little bit more ATF's assistance in the role in this? Leslie, thank you. So I'll get to that. I have a quick statement for you and then I will answer your question. So as chief said, my name is Alex Schmidt. I'm the resident agent of charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives run the field office here in Burlington, Vermont. We cover the entire state of Vermont from that field office right here in Burlington. My agents have been engaged with the Burlington Police Department and others on pretty much every one of these gunfire incidents that have happened in the city in the last several years. Last weekend's violent homicide marks the 23rd gunfire incident in the city of Burlington. There's zero tolerance in the city of Burlington or anywhere else in Vermont for criminal gunfire incidents. The current trajectory of violent crime in Burlington is alarming. And we refuse to accept a reality where gunfire downtown Burlington is the new normal. Together with our local state and federal law enforcement partners, we will aggressively and relentlessly pursue those who choose to violate that and put their fellow citizens in imminent danger. Through both new and existing partnerships, we will continue to leverage all our collective resources to immediately investigate those who willingly choose to pull the trigger in the city of Burlington and we will bring them to justice to restore a sense of safety in a city that has been plagued by far too many gunfire incidents this year that goes well beyond this year. We'll have further information on our partnerships and advances in technology, which we will share with the media in the coming weeks. To specifically address your question, the agents have been and not going into too much investigative detail. My agents have been deploying with Burlington. They've been embedded with Burlington Police Department and other Chittenden County law enforcement as have other federal and state partners. They've been deploying on these incidents to sort of bring, you know, leverage our additional resources, our additional technology. We have some ballistics technology that we're going to share with you in the coming weeks that can sort of link some of these gunfire incidents together, which we've been utilizing a lot in the last 68 months on some of these incidents to link them together from an investigative standpoint. I can't go into it any more than that right now, but obviously this is not tolerable for us and it's something that we're going to do everything in our power we can to sort of change the trajectory of this and, you know, I think the results over the last couple of weeks speak for themselves in closing out a number of these recent gunfire incidents to include the homicide. I just viewed the video myself and to say it's extremely disturbing would be an understatement. That is my understanding. Is that correct? Yes. To your first question, there isn't a lot more than that that we know, but that he was detained. I mean, they use the word detained. He was stopped by BSPS. He was leaving the scene, I think, just to check for weapons. They will have acts on videos, so we will learn more about what that interaction was when we do that. But right now that's all we know. For Sarah, while you're at the podium, you know, we've seen obviously more incidents in the last month, month and a half. And it seems as though as arrests are being made, most, if not all of the suspects have been held without bail. I mean, talk to me about that approach and how the public should view that as well. Yeah. And I've said from the beginning that as we get these cases, we'll take them as extremely serious as they are, which the most we can do in our legal system is hold somebody without bail. That is the most punitive thing we can do. It is the most punitive tool that we have. And we've used it in every single one of these cases where somebody has been arrested for a shooting incident. And we will continue to do that when we have the evidence to do so. It is limited to a 60-day hold by statute, but our courts are now reopening. And so we can actually guarantee a trial in that time and plan to do so. So my hope is that not only will these individuals be held, but that we will get to trial much quicker, which always ensures a stronger case because they don't allow for a case to sit for years on end as evidence gets colder. So it's not only good that we have been able to hold them without bail and in cases where we've been able to have evidentiary hearings that their court has continued to hold folks without bail, but also that we can bring them to trial sooner. No, it's hard to tell. Every case is obviously different. Homicides are going to take longer, of course, than the Halaue shooting that we arranged last week. That hold without bail hearing is scheduled for the end of the month. And it's an attempted murder, so we'll go to trial sooner. This one being a homicide will likely take some time, but it is an incredibly strong case. And we don't have to rely on witnesses. It is very good video, and so I don't expect that the trial will be complicated, but it will still take time for defense to review everything for us to gather as much information as possible. According to the documentation, it's Craig's opinion that they had met, Craig and Crawford had met, sometime when they were both serving time. Is there anything more they can tell us about that, maybe how long they've known each other, or how deep their relationship goes? I was just curious. I don't believe we, at least I don't have any further information about that right now. I'm not sure if the detectives have, but right now that's all we know is that they met in jail and that they have been interacting since being out, but I don't know when that was. Quick question for the chief. Before that, Kim, do you have any specifics on that, Detective Byrne, on the nature of that relationship between the two of them? Thank you. Obviously, we have the two that were arrested and arraigned. Is there a possibility of more people that were involved? I mean, we have this car. Is it just the two of them in that car or the others? I mean, is there a possibility that more people could get charged? Charged? I don't know. I believe that there may have been a third person in that vehicle, but are we prepared, do we, you know, we don't know those associations yet. I think that we're confident that we have, we're very confident that we have the person who pulled the trigger. And insofar as a strong relationship with the other individual, we've got that as well. Whether someone was present in the vehicle or not is something that we're working on. So, you know, the advent of the private camera is a recent thing. And obviously, there are cameras on an increasing number of businesses that stems from the ease of availability of them, the low cost of the systems. It stems from, frankly, an increase in a sense of crime and vulnerability that is in the downtown. There are certain businesses that are more likely to have them, particularly bars, particularly as we move into a place where we are going to have, you know, where we already have CBD and we have other kinds of marijuana and things. I think we'll see cameras on those kinds of facilities, certainly. And then the, you know, very few of these are cameras owned by the, by the city. These are private cameras, and we have used them for a very long time. So cameras have, you know, have been a key component of detective work for at least the past decade to 15 years, where a canvas, camera canvas is almost as important as knocking on doors and talking to witnesses. And in some cases, it's better and is a really frequent use of detective's time. You mentioned in the past, you know, with other incidents that the public's help, obviously, is crucial, you know, for an investigation. I mean, is that really what set this apart from mother unsolved gunfire incidents and or homicides in the city, you know, with help from people that were there, with help from businesses? I mean, what made it so that you were able to kind of move quickly on this one? Well, extraordinary work by, you know, detectives to be able to actually find these. It's just because these things exist doesn't mean that somebody can actually get them and figure out who's got them, and then be able to collate them to be able to go through them, to be able to actually put together a chain of movement. That is the work of somebody who has to spend a long time looking at that and figuring out where, you know, watching just sometimes hours of video of grainy video that are not focused on our person, right? We're talking at times about a person whose feet or merely a person's head moving through a very corner of a screen, and that does establish for us a pattern. It establishes a path, it establishes presence, but it is not the same as having, I don't know, you know, take your pick of a TV show where the camera PTZs and pulls in on people and follows them in ways that are clean and easy to understand. This is really difficult work. And I think that we do want public assistance when we can get it, we need it. There are some cases that have occurred this year where we do have, we have injured parties who won't cooperate with us and give us information about what occurred or not. And that is a real challenge for us. Some of those cases ultimately become sort of put into a bucket where we say there aren't any solvability factors, despite the fact that there's a, you know, a victim, because there are simply not pieces of information there. I'd like to see a lot more public assistance in this. I've said very frequently that public safety is a shared responsibility, and we do need our, the public to help us on this, to collaborate with us on these instances, and the feeling that everybody has around these incidents, these incidents, the feeling that it gives of a, you know, we don't want this. And I think we all need to come together to work on trying to prevent it and get through it together. So I spoke to her that night, and it was, it was my assessment that, I mean, she was in terrible shock. This is unimaginably horrible to be sitting with someone and have suddenly that person murdered in your arms. I believe that her trip to the hospital was primarily around tinnitus, around a ringing in her ears because of the proximity to that gunshot. I can't imagine that she's, I don't believe she's still in the hospital for something like that. That's usually an assessment and then a, you know, go home. There's actually not a lot that can be done for tinnitus oftentimes, unfortunately. With regard to other kinds of mental health, for example, I think I'll have to look into that and see if we've done any victims outreach for her. What happened to her was, was awful, absolutely awful. No, that's, so I would, I would say that that's not correct. I think there were a number there, but I think if you actually do a headcount, you will not see six troopers in that video. You will not see the full, there were four uniformed officers of the Burlington Police Department, myself, two officers and a sergeant. You will not see all of us in that corner. We were moving throughout the area. We went through the, the, the park at times. I made at least a walk through the City Hall Park at some point during that night. We were on post probably from around 1030 or 11 o'clock until this incident occurred. But we were rotating and we had, we, there were instructions to visit when possible the, the Simons gas station at the corner of Winooski and Bank because of previous incidents that have occurred there. There were instructions to be around the perimeter of City Hall Park on St. Paul. We have bars that are on St. Paul and Main. We have bars that are on Church and Main. We have bars that are on Main and Winooski. We have bars that are on Church Street between Main and College. And that was the region in which people were. And I don't believe that you will see any video that shows all of those 10 resources in one place. That is not how we deploy. Are they, are they in groups at times? Yes. And, and you know those groups are people who are at work, who are watching a scene and talking with one another, talking with members of the public who come up and talk to them. Again, the uniform experience until this incident of that night was similar to the uniform experience of August 13th. It was a, an incredibly strong voice of support and of appreciation for these troopers and these officers being out on that corner and a sense of thank you for being out here. We're glad to see you and a real voice of, of appreciation. Okay. So then we can move into some discussion about these other incidents. So if you want to click forward, please, Shannon. There we are. Okay, great. Thank you. So gunfire incidents. I've defined gunfire incidents before. We will post this online for everyone who's trying to zoom in on a, on a video screen, which is difficult. The since 2012, there have been a total of 64 gunfire incidents. I've defined gunfire incidents before a gunfire incident occurs when we have probable cause that a firearm was discharged and reasonable suspicion that it was discharged in a criminal manner. Probable cause that a firearm would discharge would mean that we have eyewitnesses, we have ear witnesses, we have video, we have recovered ballistics, some combination of those kinds of things. We have an injured party who's got a firearms injury. Some combination of those things would equal probable cause that a firearm was discharged. Reasonable suspicion that it was discharged in a criminal manner would include either witness statements that it was being fired at someone else or that they were being fired between parties, indications that it was fired in the air in a crowded location. That is a reckless discharge and is in criminal. What we would exclude from these would be incidents, instant, excuse me, instances of hunting discharges, which do occur at times in the city, particularly in the, in the intervail and in the New North and out over the lake during bird season. We would exclude suicides by firearm from this. And in certain instances, we would exclude an accidental discharge from handling if a person was cleaning a firearm or, or working with it and, and had an accidental discharge. Sometimes we might include that. We had an instance in which a person was mishandling a firearm and shot himself in the leg and ultimately made a false report that he had been shot by a person of color who had fled. We charged that individual and we do count that as one of our gunfire incidents. Since 2012, there have been 64 gunfire incidents. And in that time, there have also been 330,838 incidents. So that's one in 5,200 incidents. It's, it's 0.019% of incidents. So 0.019% of incidents in that time period are gunfire. It is an incredibly fractional component of what we do. It's incredibly important. Since 2020, however, there have been 49 gunfire incidents. And in that time, there have been 62,174 overall incidents, one in 1269 incidents. Therefore, that's a big change to go from one in 5,200 to one in 1200 is a big change. But it's still an infantisimal proportion. It is 0.079% of all incidents, 0.079%. So these are very small numbers. But year to date, compared to the year to date five year average of the preceding years, that is 2017 through 2021, the gunfire in 2020 is up by more than 350%. And as alarming, it is tremendously concerning to us. And as I've stated before, it is a tremendous drain on our capacity to look at these. More importantly, it is tremendously impactful on our community, on people who are shot. We can't even begin to think about the impact that that causes for a family, for people who are left behind, for neighbors, for a general sense of safety. Of the 49 incidents, and I think you can move forward, please, thank you. So here's a picture of all those incidents. The code is this. If it is white, it is a gunfire incident. If it is light blue, it's a gunfire incident where we know they were shooting at one another, but no one was struck. If it is dark blue with an X through it, that is a incident in which a person was struck, i.e., a shooting. And if it's red, it is a gunfire homicide with a person killed. Again, the 2022 figures are only through September 8th, so year to date. You can see the top box, the top graphic shows the incidents as they occurred throughout the year, with the incident on the far left being the first incident of the year, and the incident on the far right being the last incident of the year, or in the case of 2022, the most recent, I hope the last, but I am not going to hold my breath. The bottom chart rejiggers it to show the kind of incident, because there have been statements that these gunfire incidents are not important. It's a made up category. We should only be thinking about shootings or homicides. Well, it's up that way as well. And I completely reject the notion that these incidents are not important. Gunfire incidents are important, irrespective of whether someone gets struck. And we put as much investigatory resources we can into the cases irrespective of whether someone is struck. That said, a homicide, a shooting, absolutely we take those with additional seriousness. Of the 49 incidents since 2020, about 20 incidents have been shootings where a person was struck or killed. And about 11 of these 49 incidents have no solvability factors at this time. They are incidents in which we found casings at a location and we have ear witnesses. In other words, we have that probable cause. We have that reasonable suspicion that it was criminal and that it wasn't hunting. It wasn't a suicide. It was a discharge in our city limits. But what we don't have is any additional solvability factors. This is another way of looking at all those incidents. And here I'm back to the entirety of the 64 cohort, all 64. These are the days of week that they occur and the time of day that they occur. So that's the 24-hour schedule starting at 00001 and that is the seven days of the week. Unsurprisingly, the weekends have a fair amount of activity and unsurprisingly, the wee hours are when these things do occur. Back to our 49 cohort, that is the incidents that have occurred since 2020. 11 of them, as I said, have no solvability factors. 11 of them have taken place in or around downtown and the downtown core and within the five-hour window of bar closing. And about 22 incidents have involved young Berlin Tonians who are known to police for preexisting criminal associations. And those people may be associated in those 22 incidents as perpetrators or as victims or as suspects or in some combination of thereof. So of the 23 incidents in 2022, and I think you can move forward, yeah, so this is a picture of them, of all incidents in the past three years that is the 49 cohort around the calendar to see whether or not we have patterns here. And as again, do we have patterns in that they appear more often on weekends? Yes. Do we have patterns in what they occur during the year? Not really. The rarity of these events, despite the fact that it's more frequent than it ever has been, makes pattern determination difficult. Next slide, please. Thank you. So of the 23 incidents that occurred in 2022, about six do not have any solvability factors. 12 have involved a person being struck, and three of those have been murders. We've made 12 arrests in those 23 cases, excuse me, 13. We've made 13 arrests in those 23 cases of 2022. And in seven of the cases in which someone was struck, we've made arrests. I think that, I hope, is our takeaway for this. We are making progress on these cases, particularly in cases where people are struck, particularly in instances where we have solvability factors present. So in other words, we have witnesses. We have a knowledge that people were shooting at one another. We have an injured party. The work that the Detective Bureau has done on these has been thorough, constant. They are working at full capacity. But we take these greatly seriously, and we want to do more. And I think that that is going to be something that we're going to be talking about further in the coming weeks. I believe the mayor has something to say about this as well. We've been in discussions with the state. We are in discussions here with partners at the ATF, partners at the state's attorney's office, partners in other law enforcement agencies. We are putting together new ways of working with one another of informing each other about gunfire when it occurs. It doesn't just occur in Burlington. There have been incidents in Colchester and in Winooski and in other towns as well. And sometimes these things take us to other places. This case did take us out of town as well with regard to search warrants, et cetera. So with regard to working on narcotics, which at least in this case seems to have been a contributing factor. And that, too, is going to involve work with additional federal partners and with the state as well, and their narcotics teams. So I don't know, sir. Thank you, Chief, for laying that out. It's my sense the public is really eager for an overview like that. When I'm having a public coffee, as I do, interacting with members of the public, there's a great deal of interest in understanding what's going on. And I think, as a result, as you just heard, of the outstanding work of the Detective Bureau, we both have made considerable progress towards holding people accountable that have been committing these gunfire incidents. We also have a greater understanding of what's going on. There is also greater clarity about at least a couple of the major drivers of this spike in gun violence. To bring this fully to an end, and while I think we're here noting a significant arrest and three significant arrests over the last three weeks, I don't think we're done with this. I think we have more work to do. We know we have multiple open cases that work is ongoing on. To bring this really unfortunate chapter in the city to close, I think we do need several things, and there's been illusions to it so far, but I'll summarize it further. We need more of this interdepartmental interagency collaboration. That's the Vermont way I've seen it happen a number of times over the last decades. When we do have a emerging public safety incident, the various law enforcement agencies that have responsibility, overlapping responsibility come together, coordinate, share information. Through those combined efforts, don't just add together all of our work. There's some multiplying effect. There is real efficiencies and synchronicity that comes from that kind of work. That's what's needed here. It's now it's needed more than it's ever been, given the really significant resource constraints that virtually all law enforcement agencies in Vermont are facing. We need that collaboration happening in terms of patrol presence, and I am thankful for the state's help on a couple of nights. We do need more of that, and we are going to need more help from other agencies with specific capacity and various times until we're able to rebuild this police department, something we're also working very hard on, but we know is going to take some time. There needs to be collaboration on the prosecutorial front, and it is welcome that the state's attorney is working with federal prosecutors to develop strategies and make sure we are bringing all of our prosecutorial capacity to bear. There needs to be greater investigatory collaboration as well, and that is an area where I think if we saw even more of it, we would even accelerate the kind of progress we've been talking about today of the Detective Bureau moving forward. So thank you all for being here. We're happy to take some questions on this sort of broader trends, if there are any. So, Mayor, for you, obviously this Friday, Keith Vermont State is planning a forum discussion, public working, right inside City Hall. We kind of talk about this sort of stuff, talk about the data, and I guess just your reaction to that, and I guess does the City Council need to do something like that? Do they need to take this up on the agenda, this overall trend? Yeah. So, and I see we're joined by one of our City Councillors, Council Joe McGee is here. Listen, we've had a lot of conversations in the City Council about the challenges we're facing with public safety. I would say since last October, there's been a lot of alignment between the administration and the Council about what we need to do with respect to the Police Department, with respect to rebuilding our public safety presence, with respect for even, you know, longer than that, there's been alignment about expanding our alternative resources. So, you know, I think there's a lot, I welcome public discussion of this, I do think we have had, I will say, I do think, I'm certainly looking ahead, I'll say this, looking on to the next legislative session, there does need to be a change in the kind of public conversation about what is going on. For years, rightly, we have been focused on ways that we can improve law enforcement and come closer to achieving our 21st century law policing ideals. And a great deal of effort has been made by this agency and many others in that direction. That has dominated the public discussion of public safety for years. What we are facing now is there has been a dramatic shift since 2020. We are facing challenges that certainly we have never seen since in the time that I've been in this role, and we need to publish discussion and focus and legislative focus to shift accordingly. And certainly, I will say, I think as we get ready to lead into the 2023 legislative session, I will be pushing for, and I know many other municipal leaders and law enforcement leaders and advocates of various communities will be looking for legislative change as well. I'm not ready to announce agenda today, but I do welcome, I think we have to have a lot more community conversation about it. There's another good question for the Chief. Given Crawford's criminal background, you know, any other felony charges, I believe, was this the individual who was prohibited from having a firearm? Do we know where that firearm came from? Was it bought here in Vermont? Was it brought with him from Jersey? So not charges convictions. I believe there was a large number of convictions out of state for felonies that would indicate a person is prohibited from having a firearm. The investigation into these is something that's still ongoing. There were firearms recovered in his possession or in his immediate constructive possession. So, you know, that is going to be another potential avenue of exploration. I don't know if you want to speak more to that, but I will say that the, you know, what's key here isn't the fact that he was in felonious possession of a firearm. It's that he murdered somebody in City Hall Park. I think that's a great question. He asked about the fact that there's a pending warrant for him elsewhere. How does that impact what we have here? Yeah, so when somebody has a fugitive warrant, we do file the paperwork often as a fugitive and kind of hold it and then usually work with that jurisdiction to determine who's who's kind of is going to go first. You may recall with Alfred Wishers case, you know, we had filed that homicide charge against him and he got picked up in Georgia on a very serious offense. They kept him until their case resolved and then returned him to us on our fugitive warrant. So, we will essentially do the opposite in this case. We would hold him on our homicide because it essentially trumps their possession of drugs or sale of drugs, whatever it was out of New Jersey, if they determine that they want to go forward with it. But that's how it usually works is we talk with that jurisdiction to determine who's going to keep the person. So, right now we'll keep, we will be keeping him. In the case of of Alfred Wishers, he had murdered Kyan Jones. However, Mr. Jones did not die immediately. And in fact, at the time of Wishers' apprehension out of state, Mr. Jones was not yet dead. And so that also sort of played into the fact that he was retained by the state in which he was apprehended until their charges were dealt with. And in the interim after that, Mr. Jones did die. It's more of a trendy question. You know, we've talked about the involvement of drugs and narcotics in some, if not most of these shootings. I mean, is there an avenue that can be explored, you know, in terms of the drug trade that might help to minimize, you know, reaching for a gun and shooting? Or is it just a kind of a one-on-one? Does that make sense? No, I guess I'm a little unclear on the question. I am sorry. So with, you know, a lot of these shootings involving some form of narcotics, is there any effort by the department to attack that as a, you know, a precursor for a lot of these shootings? So, I wouldn't say that, you know, that narcotics plays a role in a large percentage of them. I think narcotics is incidental to them. I think there's narcotics involved in them. This, right now, appears to be one of the cases that, frankly, is likely to have a narcotics angle once we're able to investigate it more. I think there are other instances, particularly those that involve people who are local to our community, that involve relationship issues between people more so than narcotics, although many of those individuals do in fact traffic in narcotics to some extent, to some extent or another. But what we've seen so far has not been about, for example, protecting trade or about, you know, to maintain territory around narcotics trafficking. Again, this may end up being an exception to that. That said, yes, of course we are continuing to investigate narcotics to the best of our ability. We have, we do continue to have a narcotics unit within our detective bureau. That is something that may not be sustainable forever, depending on how staffing continues to move, but we have maintained it thus far. Why? Because, A, our community cares about open-air drug dealing, about the ancillary effects on quality of life that stem from drug use and drug sales. And, B, because the information that we get about bad actors in our community is tremendously enhanced by the work that gets done in a narcotics unit. There are crossovers between people. And even when bad acts like shootings are not directly related to the narcotics trade, they involve people who are associated with that trade. I do think we need more collaboration. We, I think we need some kind of interagency task force to be working on this issue the way we've seen over the last decade with respect to, at one point, the distribution of opioids, the legal distribution of opioids. There was another task force we were involved with that involved human trafficking. I think these task forces create real value. Again, it has a multiplier effect, not just an additive one, in terms of all this work that is going on from these agencies with overlapping authorities. The chief has been working for some time to try to assemble a task force. I think this is coming at a moment when everyone is feeling pressed for resources and constrain many, you know, it's not just a Burlington phenomenon where resources are down. And it has been difficult to organize it, but from my perspective, it's got to happen. And it's got its past due. And we, and I know Alex shares this feeling, we look forward to announcement there soon. Other, you know, I, we have had direct communications with the state that the single biggest factor that would accelerate this work, and we think bring this spike in gun violence to an end faster, would be if this outstanding detective bureau we've referenced numerous times had more capacity. We have five detectives who are putting the majority of their time into these gunfire incidents to the exclusion of other important work that needs to be done. We have open cases as we've been discussing. I want those cases closed as quickly as possible. We've had direct requests to the state for assistance in this. They face their own resource constraints as well. They've been unable to fully support that at this point. We have seen the release of a 10 point public safety plan from the state that I think we appreciate that there's been some strategic level work done. We're looking for assistance that makes an impact on the ground. And we're going to keep talking to the state about that. I sure hope not, Derek. I mean, I can't, you know, I can't speak for what the barriers might be out there. I would say, Burlington is Vermont's largest city issues that are taking place in Burlington are Vermont issues. This is something we need to be collaborating on working together on to resolve. And I think making progress here will have benefits more broadly than simply in Burlington. 22 incidents, not 22 individuals. So I think it's a fair question, an important question and one that we do need to be asking ourselves if I'm understanding it correctly. You know, we're lucky, we're very fortunate in Burlington to have both within the school district as well as within our nonprofit community a number of really outstanding agencies that work with our youth and work with kids from all backgrounds. And I think there's lots of opportunities that are available here in this community that are not available elsewhere. I do think as we come through, it's a really sad thing, right, to be standing here and to be communicating that really what needs to happen to bring this unacceptable and terrible, we all agree on this level of violence to an end is we need more, we need, we need more arrests, we need more incarceration. That is what needs to happen now. It's not, it's not where any of us want, want this to end up. And it does represent, at some level, a community failure that we have gotten to this point. And I feel that particularly as we, as we move through this period and analyze what is happening here and take stock of it, is my understanding of the number of the people that we have had to arrest in recent weeks, or, you know, during this period are individuals who there's been concerned about for a long period of time and the numerous efforts were made to get additional kind of assistance and support. It's not a narrative I frankly understand well, I think it's one we're all going to have to dig into together. But I think it's important work to do because, you know, this is, this is not, this, we don't want to see this kind of violence. We don't want to be left where our only recourse left is arrest and incarceration. And that's not what this community wants, not what any of us want. And I think we got to examine how we got here. No, it can't function normally with that. And so there would have to be drastic changes made to our dispatch. We're looking into that right now. The four, the resignations, excuse me, the resignations that have been submitted are things that we are seeing if there are ways potentially to reverse that. And if not, then we will be looking to bring in other resources in order to address the gap. But irrespective of what we are able to do, you know, that's an office that is supposed to have 12 persons. Arguably, even 12 was relatively narrow staffing wise, but it's supposed to have 12 currently has seven really has six. And if these resignations go through, as you said, it would have potentially four. You know, where how we change is is something that we're currently looking into. There are two people on shift. They're supposed to be at least three. They're supposed to be at least three. You have two who are working the police desk and one who works the fire desk. Now, fires call volume is approximately a third of police call volume. And there are obviously many more, you know, we've we've only added to the role of dispatcher with regard to expanding the number of resources that we have, not the number, the type, we've expanded the type of resource that we have available to us and the role of resources. And so really, two is is not a functioning office. And right now, having two in there is very difficult. We consider that to be critical staffing when there are only two. And we are in critical staffing far more than is comfortable. So that's our current staffing. And that's uniform sworn officer staffing. We are also and so detectives are incorporated into this number. You see there a nice uptick for the first of September, first in quite some time, we have three new recruits at the Vermont Police Academy. But I have already received resignations from active officers that will go into effect this month. And I will be back to to 61, possibly 60 by the end of September. So when I remake this graph at the beginning of every month, this is the state and the first of each month. And so, for example, those those recruits were hired in August, but they don't get registered until September 1. On October 1, I fully anticipate that this will be down where it was, if not one lower. That's the state of staffing for the uniform part. We are allotted 12 community service officers that is through the great collaboration with the city council in achieving a new budget that the mayor worked tremendously hard to get that new budget allows us to have a total of 12 community service officers. We currently have six. That new budget allows us to have a total of six community support liaisons. Those are our mental health workers. They are social workers trained in houselessness in substance use disorder in mental health. We're allowed to have six. We currently have three. So we are working to hire those as well. And then the city council also reversed its decision of 2020 and in late 2021 and authorized the department to be at 87. Again, this is where we currently are getting back to 87 is our goal and is the key cornerstone of the rebuilding plan that the mayor and I articulated. It's a key component of why we got the contract that the city council approved, which is really one of the best contracts in the state for police incredibly strong. But to build back up to build from that cliff, merely saying you're not 74 anymore, you can be 87 does not achieve that number and merely making a budget and offering a contract. Those are really important. But the next step is the hiring. We've had that budget. We've had that contract for a few weeks now. We have had the budget for two months now. You know, I'm hopeful that we can start digging in that uptick is is a sign. But as I said, it may be washed away by other kinds of attrition in the meantime. So it's a cliff that we need to climb. We have to climb for the sake of our community. And it's one that we want to climb. And clearly, you know, there is support in the community for that from the police commission, from the city council, certainly from the mayor. And we're working to make that happen. But right now, the staffing is pretty is pretty down. We again, we're more than half down in dispatch. We are more than half down in the CSL is more than half down in the CSOs. And although we're not quite half down for officers, we are more than half down with regard to the officers who are assigned to patrol. Not about this most recent policy, but about first one of this year over on luxury. Have you been able to make any headway on that? And at the last, there was an update. It was just a photo of an individual walking through neighborhood. I mean, have we identified that person yet? Where are we out of that? So, you know, we have made a lot of progress on that case. It's it's progress, however, that doesn't rise to the level yet of, for example, presenting it for charges related to that case. We have made apprehensions of people we believe to have knowledge of the case or associated with the case on other charges. And getting the information that we need to make a charge on that murder specifically is something that we have not yet been able to get. We have worked on on having and the state stream may want to weigh in on some of this with regard to we've had, you know, in formal inquiries where people are required to testify. We have also done a lot of work with regard to evidence collection and search warrants. But we're looking for new ways to try to jar something loose on that. That's a very important case to us. I don't know if you want to. No, I don't have anything else to add. We've just been working really closely with the detective unit. We did do inquests and are looking at warrants doing warrants doing they're doing minor interviews. We're working hard on it, but we don't have enough for probable guys. In terms of just the three arrests that have been made for us three cases, the most recent shooting for our gunfire incidents. In terms of just the wider perspective of the wider incidents that we've seen from the police that we're still working on, I guess the real question is, is there any reason for community to be on the fence about certain, you know, everyday life in the neighborhood? Is there more people out there that are dangerous that we should be aware of? So as I said, you know, of the 23 incidents this year, we've made arrests in 13 of those 23. And we've made arrests in seven of the 12 of the 23 that involved people being struck. You know, that says that there are people that we're still looking for. Again, in some of those instances, we have made progress in ways that I feel the public is currently safe from those individuals, but we have not yet been able to put charges on those individuals associated to the specific act. And that what that means is that there are times where an investigation leads you to a person. And well, let's take, let's take, you know, let's take Mr. Crawford, for example, if we had not had the excellent work that was done with regard to tracking Mr. Crawford's movements and being able to definitively show, certainly within probable cause that he was the actor in that homicide, what we would have had was a warrant in New Jersey, and that would have allowed us to hold him for some period of time while we continue to work on an investigation. That happens at times. For the most part, people who commit gun violence, it is not their first time around the criminal justice system. It is not the first thing that they have ever done. And therefore, there are often other charges that are available to us, other avenues that we have in order to hold people or at least get them under some kind of monitoring that allows us to say that this public is safe from this individual from the time being, but do we still want to develop the stronger case for the bigger crime? Absolutely. So that isn't apropos of any specific case. That's simply a general sort of picture of how it sometimes goes. Okay. Thank you all for being here very, very much. We appreciate your time.