 All right, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Since the beginning of 2020, the city has seen a dramatic surge in gunfire incidents. Incidents were referred to gunfire incidents as incidents in which guns were illegally charged, discharged within Burlington. For most of the last decade, the BPD documented, on average, two of these incidents every year. Since the beginning of 2020, two and a half years ago, we have documented 38 of these incidents, including 12 so far this calendar year. While very few of these gunfire incidents to date, thankfully, have resulted in injury, the most recent shooting last Sunday in which a former city councilor was injured while sitting with friends in his backyard is a stark reminder that if these incidents continue, it is only a matter of time before an innocent bystander is badly hurt or worse. I want to share as an aside that I talked to former city councilor David Berezniak this morning. I know David Welle and had texted him after hearing about his injury. I called him today because I want him to know we were having this event today and he thought about joining us but was ultimately unable to make it. He did specifically ask me to express his and his family's gratitude for the excellent response of the BPD, and especially the leadership of Chief Murad. I want to say, again, these incidents are illegal, they are dangerous, and they have to stop. Chief Murad and I agree that this increase in gunfire in the city is our highest public safety concern. In a moment, you're going to hear a detailed report from the chief about what we believe is driving this unacceptable trend and what the BPD is doing to hold the shooters in these incidents accountable and bring these incidents to an end. You're going to hear that more than half of the 30 gunfire incidents in which we have identified suspects or leads. So of the 38 total incidents, 30 of them, we have identified suspects or we have leads. And in more than half of those 30, they involve a recurring group of individuals as perpetrators, associated individuals, or victims. And the chief is going to detail that we have identified shooters in 19 of these cases and arrested the shooters in 18 of them. To be successful at holding shooters accountable in our system, the city needs partnership from state and federal prosecutors. And I am pleased that Chittenden County State's attorney Sarah George is here today to signal her agreement with the chief and me that these gunfire incidents must end and to detail how she is approaching the prosecution of these cases. The message from the reports of the chief and the state's attorney in a moment should be clear. And I want the individuals who are repeatedly committing these crimes to hear it. If you recklessly discharge a firearm in Burlington, you are going to be arrested and you are going to be held accountable. Further, the job of protecting this community is not just ours. The three of us need help from other partners as well to bring these gunfire incidents to a halt. After hearing from the chief and the state's attorney, I'm going to come back to the podium and detail the action we need from the city council, as well as state and federal lawmakers and the public to be successful at this effort. Chief. Thank you, sir. So again, this is I'm going to give a little bit of extra detail on what our detective bureau does, the findings it's made. I'm going to talk a little bit about the cases that we've seen and about the ways in which some of these cases are interrelated. I'm going to give a little bit of an update on both City Hall Park and Roosevelt Park, those recent shootings. And we'll talk about how some of these cases go. Again, as the mayor said, since January 1, 2020, there have been 38 gunfire incidents in the city of Burlington. Gunfire incidents are described as an incident in which we have probable cause that a gun was discharged. In other words, we are able to recover physical evidence in the form of casings, in the form of bullets. We have audio evidence, or we have witnesses to that discharge. We have a victim, perhaps, or we have an apprehended shooter. But we have probable cause that a firearm was discharged, and we have reasonable suspicion that it was discharged in a criminal manner. There are times where we don't have any of those things that I mentioned before except for physical evidence. We find shell casings. We find a bullet hole. We have somebody say that they heard this discharge, and we go, we investigate, we look, and we are able to determine that, yes, a gun was discharged. We don't have any victims. We don't have any leads. But we do have reasonable suspicion that it was discharged in a criminal way, as opposed to, say, a suicide, which we do see, unfortunately, and sadly, as opposed to, say, a hunting discharge, which we sometimes experience in parts of the intervail or the new North End, people firing out over the lake. Those would not be counted as gunfire incidents. But a bullet in a slide in a playground with a casing found nearby and a person who is saying we heard this or we know that it happened, that is a gunfire incident. But it is one of the eight that the mayor mentioned that we have for which we have no leads. We are tracking it. We record it. But it's not the kind for which we have leads. We do have leads, at the very least, the idea of people who are present, people who are nearby, in some cases, victims, in some cases, identified shooters, in 30 of those 38 incidents. And in those 30, we have made identifications of shooters in 19 and have made arrests in 18. Additionally, of those 30, 17 are associated with a recurring group of people, as victims, as trigger pullers, or as people who are at the scene at the time of police intervention or arrival. And so now, those aren't all overlapped. Those categories don't necessarily overlap. The 17 are not necessarily among the ones that are the 19 for which we've identified people. But none of those 17 are among the eight for which we have only physical evidence that a gunfire incident occurred. So the issue with regard to our desire for looking at these issues, obviously, this is a problem. I don't believe that the three of us actually have been together in the past two and a half years standing in front of cameras and a podium during my tenure as acting chief. This is something that is incredibly important to this community. We are taking it very seriously. It is something that the nation is experiencing with regard to increases in gun violence. It is something that other parts of our state are experiencing as well. But something is happening in our community that is causing a shift that we have not seen before and that we need to get in front of. And we need to be able to address gun violence in ways that are new. That includes the partnership that you see here. That includes meetings that I've had with the US Attorney of Vermont that I've had with the ATF, that I've had with other police chiefs. This morning, we had a meeting of law enforcement executives in Chittenden County and discussed this topic at length. That is only the first of many discussions that will be happening as we discuss whether or not we have means of exploring this through task force, through other kinds of investigatory information sharing. But the big part is a recognition from our community as a whole, because public safety is a shared responsibility, that this is unacceptable, that we get information cooperation from people who are experiencing it, that people who are on the peripheries of this, including some of those individuals who have been seen or noticed at multiple incidents, are forthcoming with information about who is doing this or not. We are on the cusp of a shift, these incidents. We are hairs breath away from something awful happening. And Mike, you've been here for a long time. You know what happens when you have a Melissa Wells. You know what happens when you have a Melissa Wallbridge and a Megan O'Rourke. You know how those kinds of crimes can shift things. And oftentimes, if we wait for those kinds of moments, we shift in ways that we don't want. There are pendulum swings too far. We need to get ahead of this before that pendulum swings and somebody has been hurt, who is utterly uninvolved and hurt in a serious way, and I don't discount what happened to the former counselor. I spoke with him at length on Sunday night. So many of these things are pieces that we're going to be talking about in the coming weeks and months and how we put together a concerted effort to combat these. On more specific grounds, with regard to Roosevelt Park, we do not currently have a lot of information on that and I am imploring the public to come forward. I will say that people who were present at that incident and in the vicinity of that incident are people who have been at other incidents as well. Now, I have no knowledge of their connection to this particular incident, but I question how many individuals in this room have been at multiple gunfire incidents over the past two and a half years. That is not a normal thing. We also are looking for anybody who may or may not have video of that incident, anybody who may or may not have information about that incident. With regard to City Hall Park, we do have one party identified, the other party remains unidentified at this time, but our detectives have strong leads on that. We do have a reward out for any information leading to the identification and prosecution of that other individual and we've put that out to the media as well. We are hopeful to be able to make announcements about that soon, but we have an incredible detective bureau here and that was one of the things I was supposed to talk a little bit about. In June of 2020, there were 15 people assigned to our detective bureau. We had two lieutenants, a sergeant and 12 detectives. We currently have one lieutenant, two sergeants and nine detectives assigned to that detective bureau. In that same time period, our priority one case is many of which are detective cases, burglaries, aggregated larcenies, these instances of gunfire have skyrocketed. Our detectives are working these as hard as they can and they are incredibly talented men and women in that part of our department. We are digging into these cases and making the kinds of headway that we can. Again, of the 30 instances in which we've had leads, we have made identifications and arrests in 18 and identifications in 19. Of those 17 where I talked about the idea of those belonging to a relatively small group of people, nine, just over half have resulted in arrest. Others are impeded by lack of cooperation, but we are working on those and we're hopeful to be able to make arrests in some of those and certainly any that go forward, although our goal here is to prevent any that happen in the future. I think that's over to you, sir. Thank you very much, chief. Welcome to the podium. State's journey. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, chief Mirad. I share both of the statements made and the statements of the community that this is an incredibly concerning time and that we all have serious concerns over the rise in gunfire incidents. I am absolutely committed to a collaborative approach. Everybody deserves to feel safe in their community and I understand that some people are not, they are feeling scared right now and I wanna just acknowledge that and make sure that people understand that I know that. Keeping our community safe is a top priority for me and if somebody does commit a serious violent crime in which we have the evidence that we need, they will be held accountable. But as both the mayor and the chief said, we really cannot do this alone. This is not the sole responsibility of the mayor's office or my office or the chief's office. Rising gun violence is happening all over the state, Springfield to the Northeast Kingdom and we have to work together as a community to address what is really a very complicated issue. Decades of research has shown us that the best way to deter crime is to increase the certainty of being caught, not necessarily the severity of the sentence, but for any incidents in which law enforcement in Chittenden County, Burlington and others have sent us violent felonies in which we believe the evidence of guilt is great. We have asked the court to hold those folks without bail including the ones that have happened this year in Chittenden County. Each of those times to my knowledge we have been successful in that and we will continue to do so again when the facts, the circumstances and the evidence allow. We also do really need to acknowledge the sort of perfect storm that has contributed to a rise in violence both locally and nationally especially gun violence by recognizing that there is the strain on our communities of a once in a lifetime pandemic on institutions and community organizations that respond and try to prevent violence such as community-based programs, hospitals and emergency medical services as well as our law enforcement, the ongoing economic strain for far too many families in our communities, the increase in poverty, the lower numbers or the greater numbers of housing insecurity and the like and record years for gun purchases. The lack of meaningful gun control in many parts of our country including Vermont have worsened this country's existing gun epidemic. And finally an erosion of trust and confidence in the legal system, particularly between black communities and law enforcement, prosecutors included when that trust is fractured, victims and witnesses are less likely to cooperate, they're less likely to report crimes and we have seen them be less likely to engage in the criminal process after charges are brought. If we can strengthen that relationship in our communities I do believe it will strengthen the ability of our law enforcement to solve these and our ability to fully prosecute them. But as Chief Mirad said, we need to also talk about what is contributing to it, how we respond to it but also how we prevent it from happening in the future. There are proven strategies to reduce gun violence that I do believe we need to invest in as a state and a community. Law enforcement are repeatedly asked to do too much. Law enforcement and prosecutor offices statewide are constantly dealing with staffing shortages, limited resources. We have to prioritize investigating, solving and prosecuting violent crimes in our communities. We do need to collect and analyze the data statewide. As Chief Mirad said just this morning, all of us as Chief Chittenden County law enforcement executives met to what we meet monthly but this particular conversation this morning was about gun violence and talking with some of our statewide executives like FBI and DEA and Vermont State Police understanding that this is a statewide issue and that things that might be happening down in Springfield that might be happening here, understanding what those similar trends are so that we can tackle it in a collaborative way. And we have to confront this problem through meaningful gun laws. The lack of meaningful gun control in parts of the country have worsened the epidemic. 2020 was the highest rate of gun purchases in our history. 2021 was the second highest. Nearly 23 million guns were purchased in 2020 and 20 million in 2021. The highest and second highest on record. And again, we need to build trust between communities and law enforcement to ensure that those community relationships are strengthened which will mean better collaboration and cooperation from witnesses and victims and therefore more successful outcomes in our legal system. So I wanna just end again by saying that I am incredibly concerned about these gunfire incidents here and around our state and I am committed to finding solutions for it, collaborating with any partners that are willing and able and not just law enforcement in the mayor's office but select boards around the county, community organizations to make sure that we are doing everything that we can to ensure both equity and public safety. Thank you. Thank you. I've appreciated our work together on other issues including in particular the opioid crisis and I appreciate you being able to stand here together today. In addition to this partnership with the state's attorney the chief has had meetings with the U.S. attorney for Vermont and the resident in charge for the Burlington branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Explosives and we are committed to continuing these conversations and bringing in new state and local partners from other Chittenden County communities experiencing gun crimes as the state's attorney referenced and we'll update the public on these talks as we make progress with these multi-agency efforts. We also need action from state and federal lawmakers to stop and reverse this and other troubling public safety trends. We all agree that we need to work towards the goals of 21st century policing and the state's attorney is quite right that trust in the police, trust in the legal system is critical to that and I fully support efforts to move us in the direction. I was troubled and felt that too often the public safety focus in Montpelier this last session was not in touch with the reality that local governments are facing on the ground. Instead of pursuing reforms that would have made the challenges we face maintaining public safety worse we need legislators to make common sense changes to address impediments to reducing gun violence that the chief and the state's attorney just reported to possible. A huge part of our gunfire problem of course, so if that doesn't, as the state's attorney referenced a huge part of our gunfire problem of course is that it is far, far too easy to get access to guns in this country. We are reminded of this by the recent national tragedies of the Devalde and Buffalo and by the fact that this country has already through the beginning of June seen 18 mass shootings nationally in which at least four people were shot. This challenge we are experiencing in Burlington should be understood as part of this unacceptable reality. No other comparable country lives like this and we should not have to either. We need the federal government to at long last take action to better regulate the access to guns. The only way to fully solve this problem is through meaningful federal action. We're at a pitiful moment right now when it appears that at least some progress may be possible after decades of national gridlock on this issue and I respectfully ask our outstanding congressional delegation and the Vermonters now seeking to join that delegation to make action to stop gun violence one of our highest most visible priorities right now. Further, since it is unimaginable that Congress will take all the steps necessary to fix the problem of gun violence in 2022, we are gonna need continued action at the state level. It's become really clear in recent years that state level action matters. States that have continuously and vigilantly updated their gun violence laws to shield their residents with many different layers of legal protections are safer than states that don't. In fact, you might expect much larger states with tens of millions of people like New York and California to have higher gun violence rates than Vermont does but the reverse is true. They enjoy far lower gun violence rates than we do here in Vermont and there's a reason for that. They have aggressively pursued gun violence laws. So once the outcome of the current national debate is clear and we know the policy areas where Congress is still unwilling to act, I will be joining with other mayors and gun violence advocates to propose another round of gun violence reforms in Montpelier this coming session to prioritize for the upcoming session. Finally, we need the city council and the Burlington Police Commission to join us in making the reduction of gunfire incidents our highest public safety priority and to take action that supports the efforts we have detailed today. We need a strong police presence and availability 24 hours a day for the BPD to play its historic role, deterring and responding quickly to gun violence. To hold individuals accountable when they do fire guns illegally in the city, we need a strong detective bureau and we still do have a strong one but the chief just shared some of the challenges that we are facing because of our capacity constraints. The BPD cannot do all of what it has done historically with less than 60 effective officers, which is where we are now. We are asking too much of the police officers who put themselves in harm's way for our community. To rebuild the officer ranks to the now authorized headcount of 87, we need the city council to approve and demonstrate their full support for the rebuilding plan that I will be submitting in my FY23 budget that I'll be submitting to the council next week. Finally, I know that the public wants to help in this effort. I hear every day from concerned neighbors, from business owners in town, they know that we are facing capacity constraints and still and want to know what they can do to help. I also hear a lot of frustration that we're not able to respond to the calls as quickly as we used to. The reality on the ground right now is that we're not always able to send an officer or a CSO when people's safety is not at stake. Many incident reports are handled best right now via online reporting only. And maybe the chief could come back up in a moment and just make sure everyone's clear on that system and that's meaningful jargon to everyone. We need the public to use the system. We need the public to report crimes and conditions they experience so that as we rebuild, we know how to deploy the resources we have and put the right new resources in place. And the public should know that when people's safety is at stake, we will respond. What we have will be coming and that's a promise. And insofar as incidents that we don't automatically or immediately involve people's safety, we never the less need to know what's happening and encourage people to continue to reach out. Chief, can you add anything to this last point? Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. The mayor's speaking about our modified priority response model. So the priority response model was announced here in this room in May of 2021. This past May, we modified it and we have put that up online. We discussed it with the police commission in public session. It is the first thing that you see at the top of the Burlington Police Department subpage of the city of Burlington website and it is clickable there. You will see a listing of all 130 call categories that we track via our Valcor system and which of those call categories is considered priority one, priority two or priority three and which of the priority threes are now considered to be CSO response only or initially. Any incident that it mentastasizes beyond a CSO response would ultimately become an officer response. An example would be we send CSOs to non-investigatory crashes. Those are crashes that don't have injury or have a low threshold of property damage amount. If a CSO gets there and realizes that an airbag has been deployed, then a CSO is going to call an officer is going to come to that scene instead. But if that's not the case, the CSO handles that call. There are a number of calls now that are CSO response. There are also a number of calls in that sheet that's shown in that presentation clickable at the website that are now online response. In other words, we request that people make online reports. We do have mechanisms for them to do that via phone or other kinds of methods because some people don't have internet access or the ability to make it, but many of those calls need to go online owing to our service constraints. I know I'm not 100% sure that 2244 has been hearing anything we've been saying. Anyway, that's the nature of the priority response model and the modifications to it. However, that said, I know that it is frustrating for people not to be able to receive response. I had a meeting in the Old North End with members of the Old North End talking about a variety of issues, including the most recent shooting at Roosevelt Park, but also around issues of house homelessness and other kinds of crime. And it hits me in the gut not to be able to help them in the questions they are asking for, because what they're asking for is what do we do about these low level quality of life kinds of conditions? And right now, we don't have as much response capacity as we should, and I hate that. That said, I need to know that those are happening. We need to know that those are happening. As a community, as a city, we have to be able to know that these incidents are still occurring so that we can track them so that as we rebuild, we can respond accordingly so that we can have a picture of where our community is vis-a-vis these kinds of incidents, all kinds. And it is nevertheless frustrating to ask our public to make calls about incidents or complaints about incidents for which they know they may not receive a response. I hate that. I want to acknowledge that I hate that. But I do want to acknowledge that we have to have that kind of cooperation. And that's even before we get to the level of people being good witnesses or being good participants in this shared responsibility of public safety. Thank you, Chief. Okay, I think those are our prepared remarks. You'll be happy to answer some questions. Are you wondering where the city council members are today? Did you invite any of them here? Obviously, they're a big part of why we're facing this situation in the city of Brooklyn. Channel 5, you and I had a report. I think only three responded. And one who did said, well, it's up to the mayor and the police chief to get us out of this problem. When in fact, they're the ones that put the city into this thing. Where are they today? Did you invite them? Thanks, we're gonna have to, there's certainly where this event's happening here. Could you invite them? We notified them that this was happening, yes. And what did they say? I didn't speak to each of them. Well, who did? We sent them written notifications. And did you get any response? I think you have questions about their actions. No, I didn't get a response from them. I'm not gonna speak to the interactions. So if I have a question that requires you to give us a short answer, you'll delay it 10 days instead of answering that. I don't understand what you're driving at, Mike. We let the council know, we let the council know this was happening. I thought we were the focus of the event is on sharing what the chief, what I, and the state's attorney are doing. And I'm sure, I certainly hope that counselors, you saw in my remarks, we need the council's support on this, I think the most significant way the council can support this immediately is in the next couple of weeks is to support this budget, which has significant resources in it for us to move forward with this challenge and our other public safety challenges. Would you all say what they said? Yeah, I think I've answered this several times. Courtney. What you're submitting to the council, what is it that the building can, what are those concerns that you're talking about? Yeah, I mean, we've, I mean, you've been at these presentations. We've had a couple of presentations on them. We've been taking questions and refining the exact numbers. And the final, we have a final meeting with the council on Monday before submitting the budget and there will be a even more detail about what's in the rebuilding plan, but to summarize it quickly, for those that haven't been there, as Courtney has, we have, we need significant investments in this contract that we're negotiating right now. We are negotiating contracts with all of our public, all four of our public employees unions right now and this, they were making investments across the city, responding to what is going on with respect to inflation, but the police, the BPOA contract isn't gonna need to have its own specific investments in it to respond to the fact that we stand with staffing right now and respond to how the profession is being impacted right now and we need to be competitive. So there will be significant dollars in there to ensure that we can have a competitive, attractive contract. We are gonna do innovative things as well. We are certainly gonna offer, continue to offer incentives for people who, new recruits, whether those are laterals or people entering the system. We also, for officers where housing supports or childcare supports, or perhaps educational benefits, might enhance the appeal of the position. We're gonna have new resources for that and we're gonna work with the Queen City Foundation to help generate some of those. We also do anticipate we are proposing and certainly hope it is gonna be approved having a relationship going forward with a recruitment firm that specializes in this kind of work and help us with the marketing, the promotion and the specific recruitment. Those are all sort of kind of one-time investments or, and I say one time, but I think they will be invested over, we're proposing basically a three-year budget there for that. In addition to that, we think we do need some additional permanent team members on the BPD staff to help Chief Mirad help the team with the recruitment. We're proposing a recruitment, a civilian recruitment coordinator or a non-sworn recruitment coordinator. We think it is time for this strong recommendation from the CNA report that the BPD needs a public information officer to be created and the Police Commission has now joined in that call and we've tailored the job description to make sure that to be a position we're in agreement on we'll have significant community engagement responsibilities. I think those are the main elements. I forget, I think, Chief. No, I don't believe so, I think that's about it. I mean, what the mayor has proposed is a really strong plan for us to be able to get back to where we were, where we're currently authorized by the city council and the city council did participate in some of these plans with regard to acknowledging that we needed to be at a higher number than they had initially thought. I have presented, I had a meeting that I mentioned in the Old North End with the city councilors who represent the Old North End. I had a meeting last night with NPA members and the city councilors who represent the Hill section. So that is city councilors McGee and Freeman and Bergman and also city councilors House Hansen and Hightower. Is there all H's? That's funny. But I had meetings with all of those and talked about these issues, both this concept of rebuilding where we are with regard to staffing and where we are with regard to gunfire incidents and other kinds of uptick crime. The idea that we do need them to be a component of this. As I said, public safety is a shared responsibility and we want as many people to be involved in this as possible. We need what we need right now from members of our public as an acknowledgement that it takes longer to rebuild things than it does to break them. And we need a police department that can be rebuilt and rebuilt in the ways we want. We are working hard on that part. We have created our community support liaison, something that other departments in the state and even the region do not have that we invented here and I'm incredibly proud of having worked on that. Our community support liaisons are CSLs. We are advancing and increasing our capacity for community service officers or CSOs. I'm proud of that effort as well. But ultimately what we need for crimes like these, as well as many of the crimes that are most important to members of our community are police officers, well-trained, well-resourced police officers. And we need to work on that together as a community and agree that that's what we need as we move forward. Any lieutenant positions to the department? Is that how we work in terms of recruitment? Can you recruit someone to be a detective right off the bat or do they have to go through the officer-trained process like any other officer would? So those are two separate questions I think, Jack. One is a lieutenant. We did advertise externally for a lieutenant. We did not find applicants for that that we've accepted but we're still working on hiring potentially an external lieutenant. Detectives. No, the skill sets that detectives have are skill sets that are built on patrol and they are built on the recognition of this is how the system works, this is how crimes work, this is how our partnership with our prosecutorial partners work. Detective is something to which officers aspire and move up a chain to get towards. I have not diminished our detective bureau. I have lost some detectives to other kinds of assignments, other kinds of employment, but I have chosen very specifically not to reassign detectives from our detective bureau to our patrol. Our patrol by percentage is down more than our detective bureau by percentage and our airport can't be changed based on contract. So road, our patrol resources are suffering but they're suffering because we need detectives to do this kind of work. Can I bring someone in externally as a detective? No, I can hire a lateral officer who has detective experience and depending on what we work out in the upcoming contract, that will determine the speed at which I could move, not I could move, but the speed at which a lateral officer could put in for detectives. Currently there is a time frame, you have to have been an officer for X amount of time in order to be able to move to detectives. The contract is working on some of that language as well so it may be different within, I hope, a few months and then we'll be able to say, okay, a lateral comes in with extreme detective experience in some other municipality. They still have to do a certain amount of time here. They have to go through a field training program. They have to learn the laws of Vermont and the ways that Vermont works in Chittenden County particularly but then can they move to that detective bureau? Yes, we'll figure out the time frame in which that could happen based on the contract. Is that out of the state? No, lateral could be in state and so yes, it could be that we get an officer from, I've lost officers to other agencies in Chittenden County, I would love to get those officers back and if we get a strong contract, we may but an officer like that would have to come back and also would have to still do a refresher field training program and we'll have to see what the contract says about a person like that being able to move into a specialized position. Chief, when you're talking about a recurring group of people being responsible for a lot of the shootings, are we talking about drug games here and so is it reflecting the statewide trend of criminals from out of state moving into Vermont? So thanks for that question and it's a complicated question. The, what we don't see, we do see, we definitely see people from out of state who come into our community and establish narcotics entrepreneurial organizations. That is not what's currently driving most of these interactions. These are interactions of people who live here who are, who have been Burlingtonians for many years. They are predominantly young and they are, although narcotics is often involved in some of their criminal histories or their police encounters, it's not the structure under which they operate. These are not hierarchical drug gangs with an entrepreneurial bent. These are different. Well, I think, you know, they have sometimes called themselves gangs, members of these have sometimes called themselves things. Other cities call them crews. Historically there has been a term used called affinity group which is a more loaded term now but it's definitely got a long history including back to days of the weather underground to the movements in the black blocks around the time of the WTO and Seattle including Occupy, including other criminal enterprises and not other criminal. Those were not necessarily criminal but criminal enterprises have used this term affinity group but I don't actually have a necessary term for them. They are, as I said, some of them are self identified based on their own sort of associations but we don't see, for example, affiliation with specific large scale outside gangs like the ones that are historically known across the country in Los Angeles or Chicago, Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, MS-13, those are not things that we see in Burlington. You were told a year ago that the BPD had been told the officers had told us that they were told not to use term gang but that was unacceptable. I don't know if it's in there, the police commission, where that came from. Is that still the protocol not to call them gangs even if they're whatever, reoccurring partners? You know, I think the issue is that this definition is sort of, it's a semantic one but are they gangs in the sense of Los Angeles or New York or Chicago? No. A lot of the cases around here, I mean, that's a gang. Certainly, that's a name that participants have used amongst themselves. The 18 who have been arrested for gun incidents have they been generally cited or they've been arrested and jailed? What's happened to them after that? The majority have been arrested and jailed and that's certainly a question that we can, we work closely with the prosecutor's office. We present cases. She has got, the office of the state's attorney has gotten hold without on most of those cases. When we have somebody in custody for having pulled a trigger in the city, that is the default. And I can't give you the exact number of those 18 that ended up in that way right now. I certainly can at a later point. I'll go back and get that for you. But the majority of those have resulted in hold without and ongoing prosecutions. In terms of the reasoning, you talked about the reasoning behind these shootings and gunfire incidents downtown. When they start with this sort of an altercation of some sort, I mean, why are we seeing individuals immediately go for the gun and start shooting? I mean, is that just a culture shift? I mean, what are we seeing in the city? That's the million dollar question. That's the million dollar question. And it is being seen across the country. There is something that changed in the past two years and the state's attorney mentioned many factors. There was a global pandemic. There are increased gun sales. But these things, frankly, have affected all of us. And we are talking about 38 instances that involve 38 people who are pulling triggers. A little more than that because some of these were two-way gunfights or multiple-person gunfights. But these are a small number of people. So all these things that affect all of us don't drive us to pick up firearms and point them at other human beings and pull a trigger at another human being. That is a behavior and it's an individual behavior. And it is ultimately the result of that individual and not the other things that are possible factors. And working on those factors is gonna be of limited efficacy in dealing with those individuals and the behavior they've chosen. And it's happening around the country. We have people who we have a murder rate that has gone from in the 16,000s to 23,000s in 2020, I believe, I'm not 100% sure I've seen data yet for full year on 2021. But the trend shows no sign of abatement. This is something that's happening. What is it? I don't know. It is a Brownian movement of molecules bumping up against each other and getting each other hot and the next thing you know, they go for a gun. Why? We need to make it unacceptable in this community for that to be an answer. And we also need to make certain that it is not only unacceptable, but it is accountable. And that when people are arrested for it, they are held accountable. We are working hard with the state's attorney to make sure that that's the case. The mayor talked about making that a case. We want to expand these partnerships to make sure that it's the case. We want to make certain that these are cases that don't go to family court if there's a gun involved, that they don't get expunged if there is a gun involved, that we are able to get felony convictions, and then ultimately sometimes, if appropriate, take people to federal court as well on these cases. We want vigorous prosecutions on these. There are plenty of places where other kinds of justice are absolutely essential. But when somebody takes a gun and points it in another human being in our city, that's unacceptable. It takes us when they're arrested and I don't know if it would be considered evidence or just feel abusive here a lot about the rest where weapons were seen. It varies case to case. So in some of these instances, when we make an arrest, we are able to recover a firearm as well. In some instances, we make an arrest after the fact and cannot fire the firearm. And that can be a that can be a chit against us as the state's attorney will say in court if we don't have that firearm. In other cases, we recover firearms off people at the scene of something, but we can't prove that that was the firearm that was used. And if they are in lawful possession of that firearm, if they are not a prohibited individual from having a firearm, we may have to give that firearm back. So it varies on a case to case basis. It's not evidence if it wasn't associated with that incident. If it's merely in your possession, then, and I can't say that that's the gun that was discharged, then no, ultimately if you are able to lawfully possess that firearm, I will give it back to you. I have two questions for Sarah. I don't know if I just have something on there. When the chief was talking in terms of what the department wants to see when these individuals are taking part in these incidents, I mean, is that something that you're committed to as well? Is making sure that these individuals are accounted for and in charge properly? And in the case of a youthful offender, for example, is that something that you're going to push for to move into adult court rather than a family court situation? Yeah, thank you. So I absolutely agree that all of these should be, every single one of them should be taken extremely seriously and when we have the evidence that we need. I do think it's important to make sure that we remember that every one of these cases is different and the evidence in every one of these cases is different and we have a very high burden in criminal court as to what we can do with criminal charges. But when we have that evidence, we have been asking for these folks to be held without bail. I do think that there's a little miscommunication or misinformation in the community about our office's stance on some of these youthful offender cases. When the youthful offender statute first got expanded, we were seeing cases get fully litigated in our court, depositions, motion hearings, filings, witnesses having to come in, and then a year down the road, defense was filing for a youthful offender petition and sometimes getting accepted or denied after over a year of litigating a case. So part of our litigation strategy in some of these cases, if the person is eligible for a youthful offender referral is to do it first, even when we likely will object to that referral once it's down in family court, making sure that that referral is happening soon so that we know one way or the other whether the court's gonna accept it before we litigate a case for a year and a half to find out then that after we've pulled victims and witnesses in and through the system that the court is gonna accept it in family court. So just because a referral might happen immediately doesn't mean our office is actually okay with that. There are many of those instances where we have objected to it and gone back to criminal court and then continued the litigation knowing at that point that this case is not gonna go to youthful offender. Are there some cases that are going to come through our system where it might make sense? I don't know, every case is different and I'm certainly not gonna say that I will never be okay with a particular outcome for a particular person and in that case a particular young person, but that hasn't been the case so far. We have again asked for these folks in the majority of the cases to be held without bail and even if we have done a referral to family court we have objected to it actually going through the youthful offender process and it's been returned or accepted by the court over our objection. Repeat offenders, you know, people have been taken into custody, arraigned and released. So how is that contributing to the overall problem? Even though you push for bail as much as possible but people who are released, any of the ones that are perpetuating these incidents? We haven't sat down and gone through the exact people involved. Again, my office doesn't have all of these cases. I haven't read these affidavits. I haven't read the investigation so I really can't make any comments about the people involved because I only know of a couple of them. Some of them certainly have been through our system before. I certainly recognize some of the names but again, how each case has played out. You know, the chief talked about the struggles with getting solid investigations into these cases and that's to find probable cause which is a very low standard really and then we get that case at a probable cause level and we still struggle with witnesses being on cooperative, victims being on cooperative. So our burden as a beyond the reasonable doubt it's gonna become harder. Those cases don't get stronger as they go, you know, as our courts are backed up. Years are passing while these cases are pending. They're not getting stronger during that time. So some of it is just our obligations as prosecutors to make sure that we always have what we need to go forward with a case or if we don't, if a witness doesn't show up, if a victim has been subpoenaed six times and continues to not show up, that person is going to be released back into the community. That is how our system works. So I think it's hard to make a blanket statement when every single case is different but again, when we can and we have the evidence, we are going forward with them. And from Chief Mirad, how you think we can build trust up for police and law enforcement as well as there was the tone of original trust in courts and law enforcement but how do we actually fix that? Yeah, I think very simply and sort of first and foremost again, it's a complicated issue but our courts need to open back up. Right now, victims are being denied access to justice daily because our courts are not open. Obviously, they are technically open but we have a considerable backlog. We have nonviolent misdemeanor cases that are not even being scheduled for court cases. We have changes of plea that we will submit the paperwork to the court and it's taking weeks, if not months to have it set for a change of plea. That erode, every time that we do that, every time we extend the judicial emergency, that erodes the trust between my office and all of the folks that we're serving, including and most importantly, the victims and witnesses involved in some of these cases and they become less and less likely to want to engage in that process when a case is taking nine months to a year plus for it to get scheduled for a court date and then they're getting dragged into court for a deposition or a motion hearing or a hold without bail hearing and then not really hearing anything else from the court for quite some time. So I think that is the first and foremost issue. We have got to figure out how to get our court reopened again and working quickly and get that backlog of cases addressed and make sure that victims are getting their day in court quickly. And I think beyond that, some of that will just naturally progress into the community, but we also need to make sure that we are working really closely with our organizations and our community, organizations like Mercy Connection and WJFI and Turning Point Center to make sure that and COTS, to make sure that all of these other issues in our community are being addressed and people's basic needs are being met in ways that hopefully will prevent some of this stuff from happening. Did you, I know he's been, he's raised his hand multiple times. Yeah. Well, I think she wants your response. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. I agree with everything the state's attorney said. I agree with the notion that we need to get our system working again in a way that allows us to build that trust. We can't develop the trust that we need with the community unless we can deliver on the promises that we make to them with regard to fairness, with regard to safety. Our goal is to keep this city safe and fair everywhere for everyone. And right now that's difficult to do with a system that is still in an emergency footing despite the fact that our governor and our mayor said that that emergency footing ended a year ago. Sir, you emphasized the cost before the end. That's not what's changed in 2012 today. So how do you justify this? So, I mean, it's a fair question. I don't think that the change in those laws is driving it. You did just hear the state's attorney point out on record you've had the two biggest gun purchase years on record that introduced a lot more guns into the community. So I think it's absolutely fair to point out that if we had gun laws that were more in line with the gun laws of virtually other kind of comparable country in the world, we'd have a lot of less of this going on. It's certainly not the only thing that's driving it, but I think it's absolutely an important thing. Would there be a city initiative regarding gun control or gun laws? So we've tried that and it hasn't gotten anywhere. And I've led that. We had very strong charter change votes for stricter gun laws here in Burlington as many as, I think one of the charter changes secured well over 70% of the vote and the lawmakers in Montpelier never, one year they gave a hearing, but that was it, it was never went anywhere. I, you know, I, instead of repeating that, we have since 2018 seen that Governor Scott and the legislature is now a different posture than it was before pre-2018 when it was just no to any kind of new regulation. And I think it's time, you know, I appreciate what I was very brave what Governor Scott did in signing those 2018 laws. It has been four years now and I think it's time to look again, the states that have brought down, you know, and Vermont does have a lower gun violence rate than the national average, but we still are way above some of these other states that have been more aggressive in terms of their regulation of firearms. And I think it's time to take another look as to whether there are more layers of protection for our residents that could be lawfully put in place, put in place consistent with demonstrations of having strong hunting traditions. And clearly gun ownership is an important part of the Vermont culture. There's a way to do that and keep residents safe. The rest of the, you know, many other countries in the world do this, have high levels of gun ownership and have much greater safety. That's what we need here. Chief, opposed to that, we're arrested or charged. How many were already prohibited persons from possessing our firearms? That's a terrific question, but one for which I don't have an actual numerical answer for you. So I can find that for you. We have had individuals like that, people who are Brady prohibited or have other things that allow us to take those cases federal. I don't know the exact number, but I can try to find it for you. Sir, we're recovered. Have you been able to trace where they came from, whether they were obtained legally or illegally? And can you talk about that? Sure, it's a mixed bag. There have been some that have been determined to have been stolen in other locations. There are some that have been defaced when they are recovered. And there are some that are purchased lawfully and owned by the person. In one instance, we actually, the person sold the gun right after the crime. We recovered it from the store to which it had been sold. And then we're able to identify him in part through that. There are times, I think that when we talk about access to guns, the issue here is what people do with firearms and what people are potentially going to do with a firearm when they make explicit threats or explicit statements about either self-harm or about other kinds of harm. And we need stronger ways of preventing a person like that from being in possession of a firearm. There have been times where people have voluntarily turned firearms into this agency because they themselves know that they are having certain kinds of thoughts or certain kinds of, they're concerned. But when they ask for it back, we have to return it to them. And there's no mechanism for us to say, is this a person who should have this? Are there tools that we can use not to deny a person their constitutional right to a firearm forever, but to have reasonable methods of ascertaining whether or not any individual who's attempting to get one or attempting to take one back or that we're about to return it is in fact prepared to have that constitutionally protected tool in a safe and lawful way. The last dozen gunfire incidents this year is that why. And I know you mentioned that, still trying to figure that out, we have some sort of an implication of why these things are happening. But to kind of echo what Mayor Weinberger said and what I've heard folks in the community say is, when you look at Burlington's numbers, yeah, it's a safe place. It's something that happens and it's an anomaly so it sticks out more. But why has it changed and what specifically has changed? To make people hold the trigger, I just- You asked the question before and as I said it is the million dollar question. I don't have an answer for it. When it comes down to it, the decision to point a firearm at someone else is not a rational logical decision unless it's preceded by a certain set of circumstances. But doing it just because you're angry at someone, doing it because this is how I'm gonna settle a score or a beef or I feel disrespected, that's not a normal logical response. That's why we are talking about a small number of incidents and a small number of people willing to do it. That's a good thing. It's a good thing that we have a small number of people in our community who are willing to do this. We need to make certain that we hold those individuals accountable and we make this a smaller number than it currently is. But why? I don't know that you're gonna find satisfaction on that one. Beyond hiring more officers, what's in your plan to address these incidents? I know you're partnering with the state's attorney, but all I've really heard concrete in this hour we've been here is that you wanna make sure we hire more officers, which is certainly something to do, but that's also not gonna happen very quickly. So are you planning to do anything else? Yeah, yes, we absolutely are. So one thing that we have talked about before in meetings with the police commission and public sessions is a process that has been called in some places ceasefire, in other places they've been called Collins. This is something that has been done in other communities to great effect. A challenge that we have in implementing a plan like that is that thankfully of those 38 incidents, as the mayor said, relatively few of them involve a person being struck. And the fact is that the legal ability of the state's attorney to actually put leverage on people really is predicated more on currently a person being struck and having a felony and aggravated assault or a homicide, God forbid, that has happened. That is something that allows leverage. A reckless endangerment charge is currently a misdemeanor. I would think that this state should have a felony reckless endangerment charge for gun violence and for gun discharges. But that is a legislative change that will take some time as well. So that's not the answer to your question either. The fact is that if we want to do these kinds of call-ins in the past, the way they've functioned, there's a terrific book by David Kennedy called Don't Shoot. There have been programs in High Point, North Carolina and in other cities, Boston implemented it. We implemented it in the NYPD when I was there of doing these call-ins with the people known to be either associated with these incidents or associated with those people, family members, clergy, if applicable, people who are respected in the respective communities and saying, hey, this has to stop. And we will offer other opportunities in order to encourage that stop. But if you don't stop, you will be subject to the full force of the law. Now that is one method that we're going to be exploring and seeing if that's something that we can apply here in Burlington. Sorry, one second, before I move on, I just want to make sure in response to Liam's question. Part of what we're doing here today is making sure that you and the public is clear on the substantial amount of effort and work that is already happening in response to these incidents. We have not, I don't believe, over the last two and a half years ever laid out quite as comprehensively the way in which the police are responding into these incidents, investigating them, finding in the great majority of cases leads, bringing in shooters, attempting to hold the shooters accountable. We are meeting, you are hearing some challenges in that accountability. We are laying out to you and the public and all the other players in this that play a role in this system, the importance of holding accountable, the small number of individuals who are involved in this. We need the public's help in finding these individuals. So I think there's a lot of concrete work that happens out of this building and happens with our partners. And when the wheels of justice and accountability roll forward, we should be in a better place than we are right now. We need this to continue and we need the public and we need the people who are doing this to fully understand the weight of the effort that is coming after them if this conduct continues. So I think that's a very concrete thing we're saying we're doing here today. 38 cases since the last two years, how many are actually eligible or have gone to juvenile court or family court? Well, we wanted to be able to give you a clear answer to that question, Mike. And I think this is part of the problem, frankly, that there is very little transparency on that system. So little transparency that even with days of preparation, people up here have not been able to, are not able to definitively at a level that we're confident saying to all of you takes place. And it's pretty stunning, right? When you look at the level of accountability, when you look at the level of accountability, well, it's not clear everything that happens within the system. There's a lot of opacity around it. And when you look at the accountability that the police are held to, the kind of real-time information that is put out about this, I think having more information about how some of these other systems work would be very helpful. But the cases have gone any more. So... I thought you were asking for some specific questions about juveniles, I thought. We do, for the people that have been arrested in a criminal court, we can say some of that. That's what I'm asking. Okay. Yes, I don't have off the top of my head a certain number. I know of at least two of these where criminal court, or excuse me, a referral to the family court has been affected for people accused and maybe slightly more than that. But the issue also is previous referrals to the family court for individuals who are now associated or continuing to be associated with crime. And those previous referrals result in zeros on that individual's criminal record. And those previous referrals make it more difficult to go forward with subsequent crimes. And that's a conundrum for us. Because the first instance was probably a logical choice. This is something that we as a society have decided to put effort on to say that we're not going to go a criminal process with this youth. Subsequent, the next choice, the next choice, the next choice, when you finally get to the point where you have somebody who is a recidivist, but isn't a recidivist, that is a challenge for us. All right. I'll give you the last question. Sorry here, Christopher. You mentioned earlier that you reached out to Burlington Six Progressive Counselors from the East and Central District regarding the city, the administration's plan and your plan to rebuild the police department and to try and combat the shooter situations in Burlington. What type of reception did you meet from these progressive counselors? Do you feel that, was it a warm reception where they're willing to work together with you? Or do you think that there's more vigorous debate on horizon? So let me clarify that. I didn't say, I hope I didn't say that I reached out to them. I said that I was at meetings with them. I had a meeting in the Old North End that included the three counselors from the Old North End, counselor McGee, counselor Freeman and counselor Bergman. And I did talk about these shooting conditions. I did talk about our rebuilding plan. And I think they were receptive. And I actually thought that was a very productive meeting with members of the community and with them. That was not just with them. These were community group meetings. And again, what I took away, the biggest part I took away is my frustration in not being able to serve those members of the community as well as I want to, as well as the men and women inside this agency want to, and as well as our neighbors deserve. The second meeting was an NPA meeting that occurred last night at the Fletcher Free Library. That was the meeting that had the three counselors that I realized now have H's in their last name. And that too, I didn't reach out to them for that. They were in attendance because it's an NPA. They were in attendance virtually, however. I was in the room in person with a number of people. They were not. They were attending all three via Zoom. So I can't tell you what sort of reaction they did or didn't have to what I said. All right, we'll give you the last one. The plan included raising the officer cap. Are we talking about measures that would allow you to literally rebuild the range to the cap that exists? Just to clarify that. The latter. Yeah, the latter. We're not debating the officer cap right now. We, the report that came out when it was finalized and when we got past the draft came in at a level that there's consensus over between us and the council. But if this is the rebuilding plan that we are proposing funding for, we need a very different trajectory in terms of hiring officers to get back to anything like that, even from the historical pre-2020 levels. What the chief and I have put together is something that would essentially increase by 50% our success at securing recruits. I think it would more than double the amount of laterals. Are we seeing triple the lateral? 100% increase, double the number of laterals. Double the number of laterals that we secure and reduce. We've had, looking back over the last decade, we've lost many, we've lost a lot of officers. We have a lot of, we've had a lot of departures. If we reduce that percentage modestly, I think by 50%, if we do those three things over the next three years, we'll be back up where we need to be. And that's what the rebuilding plan is. Those aren't small goals, but they're achievable. One question, I'm sorry, for no one's picked on that. Asked any questions on a safe journey here. So I do have a question now. You mentioned that the increased number of gun purchases being part of the problem. Won't you say to people who say the reason those numbers have gone up is because of the funding of the police, the increase in crime. And especially a lot of those purchases are women who are just looking to think, hey, maybe the police can't protect me anymore and we should protect myself. What do you say to that? I don't know what the reasons are. I think everybody has different reasons for increasing the reason that they buy a gun. It doesn't change the outcome. It doesn't change the fact that people are now using guns in more dangerous ways and that our communities are less safe with more guns in the community. I wouldn't, I'm not gonna discount anybody's particular reason for buying a gun legally, but I don't think it's solving the problem. It's adding to it. All right, thank you very much. Thank you.