 So would it be easier for you, I can just do this over here, in that way, you know. Okay, do you want to do it, do you want, wait a minute. Hey. What? It's amazing. It's amazing what technology will do for you. Get you all excited. Is this working? It is. It is working. So thank you, thank you all for taking the time to be here this evening. This is the second of two community forums on public safety. And for those who weren't at the first committee, first meeting, first community forum, some of this will be new to you for those. I ask that you just bear with me. For those who don't know, I'm Karen Paul. I'm the president of the Burlington City Council and I'm also chair of the Public Safety Committee. I do want to acknowledge the work of two of my council colleagues who serve on the Public Safety Committee, that being Milo Grant and Tim Doherty, their unique perspectives have greatly improved our collective work. So thank you to both of them. As we all know, there are, we have our basic human needs of shelter, of food to sustain us, and of clothing to wear. But there is also another great human impulse and that is the need for safety and security. We all want to keep one another safe. We all want to live in a community that values both compassion and support with accountability to ensure that there is order. And following a global, the global pandemic that we all live through, we saw what has been an uneven and inequitable economic recovery. And that has forced too many to be unsheltered and struggling for basic necessities. And it's no secret that our community's health and safety are being challenged with unprecedented crime, a growing need for mental health supports, and an influx of synthetic drugs, among other challenges. So it was against this backdrop that on October 10th, the Public Safety Committee brought to the Burlington City Council a resolution declaring the unprecedented increase in drug use to be our city's top public health and public safety priority. And the meeting was intended by over 400 people. There were 50 community members that spoke that evening during public forum. And while there certainly was a wave of despair in many of the people that spoke, there also were a lot of rays of hope that were expressed that solutions can be found and that if we can embrace change and we can embrace new solutions, that we can find our way to the other side of this. It's the job of your elected officials and professionals charged with keeping our community safe to take on these challenges and to provide opportunities for our community to express your views to your elected leaders at all levels of government and to work to find solutions so that we can find our way to the community that we all want for one another. This is why one of the items in the October 10th resolution was the creation of these community forums. The point of these forums is twofold. If we're going to solve a problem, we need to be informed. We need to all be informed. We need to educate ourselves and we need to learn from experts. Shortly we will hear from a panel of professionals to learn about substance use disorder and property crimes. At our last community forum we talked about drug trafficking and gun crimes and that is available if you wish to view that on CCTV. The other key point of these forums is to hear from you. For you to ask questions which some people have submitted questions in advance and you're welcome also to speak after the speakers and to ask questions at that time. But it's also an opportunity to offer suggestions, creative and innovative approaches to our safety concerns because we all know that the time for boldness is upon us. We also know that the reason that you are here and the reason for the many city counselors that are here as well as other elected officials we know that the reason that our community is here is because you care. Because you want things to be better and also because you're ready to contribute and you're ready to impact your community. Thank you once again for joining us this evening. I will turn the forum over to Mayor Murrow Weinberger to introduce our panel and we'll get the program underway. Thank you very much. Thank you President Karen Paul for kicking us off tonight and for your leadership on the resolutions that led to these two public forums. We, as Karen said, are going to try to, the presentations at least, you know, the questions can go where they go. The presentations are going to focus on substance use disorder and property crime. We do have with us tonight, I'll go around the table, Nicholas Carrist who is the U.S. Attorney for the District of Vermont and who was supposed to be on last week's panel and will a little bit bridge the topics which is good I think because there are two sides to our efforts to address the drug crisis that we're facing now. We're going to be talking a lot tonight about the treatment side and the supports that we're trying to put in place. We do continue to have robust enforcement efforts at both the federal, the local, the state level and some of the color's remarks are going to focus on that. We have State's Attorney Sarah George here as well who is going to be speaking I think probably on both sides of this but primarily on the property crime. Chief Murrow is here to speak about property crime as well. We are fortunate to have the state's top public health official, Dr. Mark Levine with us because he's here. I'm following CDC guidance and continuing to wear my N95 mask even though I'm in day eight of recovery from COVID last week. We have Jess Kirby who is a leader in an organization called Vermonters for criminal justice reform which is based here in Burlington and is a great example of some of the ways the recent round of innovations that is going on to try to respond to the situation we're facing and then Rachel Jolie who is the head of our community justice center is here as well. I will try to serve as a little bit of a moderator over the course of the night so when we get to the questions I'm also just going to kick things off if we can advance the slides with a short presentation about the city's work on opioids which at this point goes back a number of years. It goes back to 2016 when we started something called Community Stat. The idea with this meeting which started then and has continued to meet more or less monthly since then for seven years now. It is a meeting that consistently has between 30 and 70 different organizations represented the crux of it is to try to free Chittenden County from the grip of the what we first conceived of as the opioid crisis and still to some degree think of that way but it is a crisis I think that has broadened to include non-opioids as well but it's all part of the same overall challenge. For the first I would say three plus years of Community Stats existence there was a great sense of forward momentum and progress. There was a lot of initiatives that at least in some way came out of discussions that happened at this monthly meeting that was led by myself and Chief Brandon Del Pozo. For a few of the major examples the hospital dramatically reduced its opioid prescribing rate after a study published by the Burlington Police Department showing that opioid use prescribing actually increased from 2013 to 2014 which was a shocking outcome after that study and discussion at Community Stat over the next couple years opioid prescribing dropped by 60%. After many years of having a long waiting list to get into treatment at our hub in a period of about six months once this multi-agency group that I should say involves city officials and involves everyone here sitting at the table it involves defense attorneys, it involves officials from the UVM Medical Center really just about every agency, every sector of the community that has some window into the drug problem is represented at that table and after the discussions at that table the weight to get into medically assisted treatment at the Chittenden County hub went to zero in a very short period of time. The new opportunities to get into treatment we found even though there was no waiting list it still took too long for people to actually get all the way through the process of getting into treatment and new we call them nodes were created at our needle exchange called Safe Recovery in the UVM Medical Center emergency room in our, this was a statewide effort but we had been advocates on this, the state started really one of the what is to this day I think the best program in the country for providing medically assisted treatment for people who are in prison all that happened during those years and there was a, there seemed to be the main, a key metric that we've always watched is the number of opioid deaths which peaked, the first peak we experienced here was if you just go back, sorry I'm a in 2017 there were 35 deaths here in Chittenden County that dropped to 17 in 2018 it stayed at that level in 2019. If you now advance to the next slide there was, this is the statewide data, the state too was seeing what, if you look in right at the beginning of 2020 there was something of a downward trend the next slide shows the national trends there too was a little bit of a dip in 19 and there was some hope in that period and then what has happened in the year since 2020 is just been a complete reversal about what looked like there was progress and this slide now is missing 2022 and 2023 and both nationally and I believe in the state maybe Dr. Levine you'll have, if you have a different perspective on this let me know but I believe 2022 was a record breaking year nationally and in the state and I believe 2023 is very likely to be as well so it's just it is heart breaking to see what seemed like a period of progress completely reverse itself and go in the wrong direction if we go to the next slide why have things turned around I think there's some debate over this but maybe not too much from my perspective it the biggest thing that happened is that over the course of 2020 in a short period of time something we had feared for some time took place which is that fentanyl arrived here prior to 2020 here in Chittany County fentanyl had been somewhat rare the main illicit drugs were oxycodone and heroin and other kind of opioids of that generation when fentanyl arrived and it was a game changer to just give a couple examples of why it is so different than prior drugs it is many times more powerful people are much more likely to overdose and die immediately other pernicious effects are that people whereas a heroin or oxycodone user would take drugs two or three times a day, every eight to ten hours fentanyl is very different the effects of fentanyl, the euphoric effects of fentanyl wear off very quickly and people start to go into withdrawal within about two hours so people are taking fentanyl eight to ten times a day it is a much less expensive drug because it's one that is made in labs with compounds that are produced in China and Mexico and brought here by cartels and it is quite ubiquitous the other major change is we are dealing like I mentioned before with more than just opioids xylazine is a drug people will hear about meth has become a fairly dominant drug as well and these are stimulants that are in many cases being mixed in with the opioids and treating them is more complicated this shows, this sort of graphically shows nationally how fentanyl, the gray line is fentanyl how that has become so dominant and if we could advance to the next slide you know, we next two slides are my last two slides one I just want to be clear we have in no way given up on the importance of treatment despite the sort of setbacks and despite the new challenges that fentanyl and these other drugs present we have been realizing really since 2021 that the ground, the kind of landscape had shifted underneath us and we needed to try new things and a number of new things have been tried by the city of Burlington the city of Burlington entering into areas that we never had direct involvement or operational engagement in before example of that is the Elmwood Avenue emergency shelter where the city is bringing what we call a public health approach that 35 person shelter on Elmwood Avenue and there's a high level treatment is directly available to people who are living at that shelter we have used our federal ARPA dollars and the first of our opioid settlement dollars something you might probably come up a number of times tonight one glimmer of hope is there are new resources flowing into this area the city gets some, the state gets a much larger pool of these funds the city has invested some directly into this organization called Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform Jess will tell you more about that in just a bit we have hired new positions within the police department to help us engage and try to get help for people that the police department encounters these social workers, community service liaisons not a capacity we really had we had one person with this kind of background before the pandemic we now have sex and we continue to try to innovate and try new things a great example, another example of something that started at the community staff table and was quickly deployed Chief LeChance our fire chief who participates in those community staff tables and also saw the impact that this drug crisis is having on his department launched a pilot that involves it's voluntary overtime two person teams going out engaging directly with people who are suffering from overdoses or proactively engaging other people around the city if we go to the last slide there's an even longer list of things that in my sense we need additional new things that we need to do here we don't have time to go into each one of them but I will close by saying this is actually a very timely time to be having this discussion because there is something called the Opioid Advisory Settlement Committee which I serve on, Jess serves on Commissioner Levine is really the lead of this committee we are meeting again on Friday to talk about the next investment of state resources the state opioid settlement dollars we've made eight million dollars in recommendations that were accepted by the legislature and made into law in May we are hoping that in the very early part of the year and I see that we have some legislators with us tonight we're hoping there's some additional legislative action to get even more funds out and deployed and having impact on the ground I think I should leave it there and we should move on and we can get into some of the details of these additional initiatives as we get into further conversation and questions so I think next up we have Commissioner Levine welcome we really appreciate with all of your responsibilities you coming to a local event like this which is not unusual people should know the commissioner is a frequent participant at that community stat table despite the fact that sometimes state there's a lot of there's pent up frustration and anger voice towards state officials he comes time and time and is engaged and been a major part in our efforts to grapple at the Chittany County level with what's going on I consider a partner in this work hope I haven't worn on my welcome with him I really appreciate you being here tonight Commissioner Levine thanks much pleasure to be here I won't need the slides for a couple minutes so I've been given seven minutes so I'll try to adhere to that and make some fairly focal comments obviously substance use disorder has always been and will continue to be a very high profile issue chronically it's related of course to the tragic loss of life that we see many days of the year from opioid overdoses but now it's even under more focus and I would submit that's because of this intersection of substance use disorder with mental health, homelessness, poverty public safety issues you name it that are all coexisting at the same time if we actually look at 2021 data from the national survey on drug use and health for months rate of opioid misuse in that year was really very similar to the nation 3.2% now I would posit that the number of individuals is actually not increasing but what has changed is that the problem is intensifying due to the fact that there's more public use of these substances and very importantly because of the toxicity of the drug supply this is why opioid use disorder is in the headlines all the time with increased overdose deaths they almost always involve fentanyl and now universally they're almost always mixed substances especially with cocaine, methamphetamine and xylazine leading the pack please that we'll be talking a lot about opioids keep in mind that a data informed approach tells us that actually alcohol is the most commonly used substance alcohol attributed deaths and years of potential life lost each increased by 36% from 2017 to 21 also, stimulant use is on the rise as you heard just from the mayor and research indicates that stimulants lead to a higher risk of criminal behavior in part because their effects can include aggressiveness, irritability and even lead to psychosis and finally, Vermont is seeing increases in adult use hospitalizations and poisonings from cannabis keep all that in mind and remember that the individual who has substance use disorder is suffering from really a chronic disease of the brain like other chronic diseases, diabetes, heart disease, you name it they all have remissions, they all have relapses it's been very useful to have these viewed as a public health issue it's done a lot to reduce stigma and to reinforce the approach we take which is really this continuum of prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery but I completely understand that the successful framing of substance use disorder in this way and the reduction in stigma are both under significant challenge now in the current circumstances where the public is appropriately concerned about their safety and their children's welfare from what they're seeing now, Vermont is highly advanced in all aspects of the continuum I just mentioned and the data really do indicate high uptake of services our federal partners attest that Vermont is actually nation leading and it's expansive programmatic approaches and it's continually evolving it's systems and programs I won't be exhaustive in what we're doing tonight due to time limitations but I'm confident the panel will touch on what is missing and what might be added in the future now, you heard a little bit about the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee so let's get to what we're most recently doing and where the needs are so we've had this good fortune of being able to receive funds from a variety of opioid settlement litigations and that will continue for many years the committee that the mayor and I are on has legislatively created the first slide here shows the principles under which we operate so some of these are borrowed from Johns Hopkins and adapted to Vermont first of all, unlike what happened to tobacco money in the past spend the money on the crisis and supplement but don't supplant what's already being spent and don't spend it all at once we're going to get settlement money for potentially 18 years not the same huge amounts every year but 18 years use evidence to guide spending everything we do is data informed invest in youth prevention a hallmark of what we should do but not something we've done yet to date focus on equity which generally means racial equity in the way it's framed but I would submit in Vermont what's important is geographic equity because there's a vast difference in what different locations have and don't have and then finally public health leadership guiding a fair and transparent process to decide what's spent which we actually do do and that is done through actively engaging key groups and people with lived experience having told you what we should do all the time and we'll tell you that in the first year we chose to focus because of the increase in opioid overdose deaths and the fact that our social autopsy data which really is looking at everyone who's died of an overdose and understanding as much as we can about all of them told us that a high high percentage of the deaths that have occurred are in people who have never had contact with the treatment system at all and often who died alone our committee decided to direct funds exclusively to harm reduction efforts and to ways to encourage treatment for those who for whatever their reason had chosen not to do so so prevention at the level of those who have a known substance use disorder is called harm reduction which most of you probably know and traditionally we have these what the mayor referred to as needle exchanges called syringe service programs that often have a mobile component and really are there to develop a trusting community and they provide very comprehensive harm reduction services in a years period of time 2022 to 23 they reached 4,000 Vermonters including 1400 who had never utilized the system of care and a settlement dollar offspring to that is listed here the telehealth wound care consultation pilot that's because of xylozine's devastating impact and causing really horrific and often super infected wounds that could be life threatening the goal here again through a program like that is forging a connection with people and providing access to care that might not have been accessed at all but the toxin distribution is thriving through traditional community partner methodologies and pharmacy channels through what we call leave behind packs that EMS will provide someone with when they've responded to an overdose especially for those who have chosen not to take the ride into the emergency room but choose not to do that so they get all the materials they need at the time we just started a mail in program department and in the first week there were like 500 requests so this is a nice stigma free way of getting access to naloxone just asking us to mail it to you as is vending machines which actually I don't see listed out there but they're another major part of the naloxone distribution policy and they will be appearing in early 2024 to a community near you Other uses of settlement money include ways to protect users of illicit substances to gain knowledge about what they purchased so fentanyl and xylazine test strips drug checking services with drug checking machines that again are free of liability to those who do the checking or those who bring the powder to the machine to get checked and finally in the harm reduction arena you'll see contingency management for stimulant use disorder so many of the deaths I believe are in people who thought they were purchasing stimulants and ended up with an extra bang for their buck with fentanyl and they may not have had any tolerance to fentanyl and succumbed to that drug and died contingency management is a very evidence based it's a reinforcing mechanism kind of thing I won't go into great details about it but it's effective in this stimulant use disorder then the last two things are enhancing access to the treatment system just to give you an overview the treatment system involves four residential sites through our so-called preferred provider network the hub system which is where methadone may be delivered by addiction medicine specialists as well as buprenorphine there's eight locations 4,000 patients actively being treated Bennington will soon have its own and through the opioid settlement monies three more located one in the Wyndham County area where there's a geographic access issue one in Addison County and another in Burlington which you'll hear more about to supplement what's already going on in this community there's also going to be one in a correctional facility then we have the spoke system which is over 225 prescribers 8,000 people actively getting buprenorphine through that mechanism the settlement monies will provide money for the four medication dosing units which are these extra hubs that I just described and to a program of outreach workers again using the data we have saying there are people that we're not finding and they're actually dying and they don't seem to be able to access the system maybe it isn't friendly for them maybe they don't know how to do it maybe they just aren't ready in their stages of thinking about what they're going to do about their life and their condition but having outreach workers at our syringe service programs at all of our treatment programs that actually can make forays into the community whether people are on the streets whether in a shelter whether they're referred to them by law enforcement or by social service agencies finding people who might be homeless just to make sure we can make a connection my last comment will just be a little bit playing on the Mayor's last comment about the pace of change which we should appropriately be concerned about you know addressing substance use disorder in its many forms and preventing accidental overdoses are probably among the most complex public health challenges and safety challenges I or anybody else at this table have ever faced effective responses must be data informed and well thought out that takes time implementing many of the strategies that are on the slide actually take rigorous federal regulatory approvals which take many times and hoops to jump through and they take workforce which is very stressed and has been described as for our substance use program unit the single largest threat to the provision of services and I'm sure many in this room can attest to that so as the panel continues to the rest of this time please keep in mind that we're talking about people family members, friends, neighbors, strangers each in a different place regarding their addiction and each arriving to a different place over time so for each of them we have an obligation to do what's in our power to address the challenges to their health and recovery thank you thank you Dr. Levine Jess who is just here a moment ago you know just had to step out for a moment she's not feeling well hopefully she'll be able to return but if we could advance I think the next we're going to shift gears if Jess is able to return we'll come back to the treatment discussion but first I will hand the mic over to Sarah George welcome Sarah thank you Mayor, good evening everybody I'm going to try to get through these quickly because I think we're already behind I put some slides together really just to give some numbers and some facts out there to the community about what our office is and is not doing right now related to substance use disorder but specifically as a for my role of property crime so I'm going to go through some of our current caseloads and then some of the reasons that are I'll go through our backlog our COVID related backlog statewide, Ann and Chittenden County and then some of the ways that it has kind of got to where it is and some of the ways we're going to try to get it under control so I think going go ahead our office as you all know we serve the entire county we are about a third of the state's population we have currently or as of last Tuesday I believe 3049 pending cases so probably slightly more than that a week later we have nine pending homicide cases and first degree and second degree murder cases and then nine attempted murder both first degree and second degree murder cases pending we have 142 aggravated assaults pending 45 assault and robberies although I charged one this morning so more than that burglaries we have 139 pending and then those next two operation without owner's consent and grand larceny those are our equivalent of a car theft we don't actually have a car theft statute in Vermont so we use one or both of those two charges in order to grasp that particular crime depending on the evidence so there might be some grand larcenies that we have pending where somebody stole something else but I didn't go through all 65 of them but for the most part if you see a grand larceny charged it is likely for the theft of a car and we there is certainly an uptick in that and then retail thefts we have 764 retail thefts pending so I put some of these out there because I know that there is a rhetoric in the community that our office is not charging these things that our office is not charging retail thefts or anything and so I just wanted to put some numbers up there so people can see what we are dealing with and I also put a note so Chittenden County has 18 homicide related cases pending that does not include the double homicide that recently occurred that is unsolved these are ones that we have charged and are pending in our office that certainly also doesn't mean that we are working on them working very closely with BPD and other agencies that might have unsolved ones and I put there that as again as of last week there are 80 homicide related cases pending in Vermont so 18 of those in Chittenden County versus the 80 total in Vermont so again of those 3049 cases my office has 14 deputies state's attorneys 10 of us do the criminal docket so including myself so those 3000 cases are distributed amongst 10 of us I have a full case load I have 172 cases some people in my office have over 300 cases and then some of the more specialized dockets like the Chittenden Unit for Special Investigations prosecutor has you know closer to 100 I think she has the smallest case load at 102 or 103 the DSA positions deputies state's attorneys positions are actually decided by the legislator legislature to decide the number of prosecutor positions that are given to the entire state those position numbers are then given to our central office down in Montpelier and our executive committee that's made up of five states attorneys I am not one of them they decide who and what counties get those positions so I don't have any control over how many positions I have and that is a decision that is made in Montpelier and we have just recently started getting these backlog backlog data from central office and from the court which has been helpful for us to sort of know each month what we're looking at for pending cases as well as backlog cases so if you go to the next one specifically the backlog this is November and December and it's all the counties so you can kind of see the sort of difference and comparison amongst counties Chittenden County again has 3049 cases and a thousand of those are considered backlog so how the court determines that is they have special guidelines about when a case should be disposed and if it goes beyond that disposition deadline it's considered a backlog case so you know I just sort of put that up there a third of our pending cases are past disposition guidelines as you can imagine we are adding to the backlog every time we charge a case before really being able to get rid of as many so that goes to the clearance rate which is the next one and this is math is definitely not my strong suit and clearance rates very much confuse me but my understanding is that they you want the higher clearance rate to a certain point but then for some of these counties that are really small like Grand Isle for example I think has about 80 pending cases so when they have a clearance rate of 240% it means that they resolved more than they charged which is a lot easier to do when you have a smaller case load for Chittenden I've been told our clearance rates are actually really good and some of the best in the state compared to our population but it doesn't feel great when you see that a third of your your pending cases are past that guideline go ahead you can go to the next one so part of the reason that our backlog is the way it is when COVID hit in March of 2020 our courts closed they closed on March 15th I believe of 2020 and they reopened fully on September 6th or September 8th of last year 2022 so unlike you know a lot of places that had reopened much quicker than we did our courts did not have trials that entire time at Chittenden County specifically I can't totally speak for other counties but I don't believe anybody did and so before COVID we had a turnaround of cases coming to our office from law enforcement that was about 6 to 8 weeks from the time the incident occurred and we because of COVID we were only allowed to arrange I think 15 cases a week was what the court sort of allotted us for time which you can imagine if that's the case we are not going to pick retail thefts we were prioritizing crimes of violence specifically domestic violence which we were seeing an uptick in and any other felony crimes of violence and we were really asking law enforcement to figure something out using their CJCs and other alternative methods when they could and if they couldn't to cite the person out much farther so that by the time our hope was that by the time that person would come in we'd have a little bit more court time or court access so we had significantly limited time and so those 6 to 8 week turnarounds were becoming 12 to 16 if not sometimes more than that there was an online reporting began in Burlington which there was a significant backlog in that because we're still getting cases now for incidents that were reported online in February, March and April we're just getting that paperwork from law enforcement because of their backlog which we're working with BPD to try to figure out how to streamline that but that I think is one of those issues that it will resolve and we're just in it right now but understandably for a long time people thought that our office wasn't doing anything when I look into it we never got the paperwork so we've been trying to figure out how to get those cases into us sooner because I think we can all imagine that when you're trying to address somebody's behavior 8 months later, 9 months later some of those people have been incarcerated since, some of those people have resolved all of their other cases and are actually doing well since and so it's really not conducive to good public safety to have such a delayed response and then you know overall we are trying to get all law enforcement back on that 6 week turnaround we've gotten used to a bit more time to do their paperwork and what not so I think that they are all attempting to do that as quickly as they can but overall we actually I think the next slide I'll get into this a little bit but overall we are certainly prioritizing crimes of violence and people who are incarcerated in terms of resolving their cases and trying those cases go to the next one so once we've been getting these cases from law enforcement or when we get these cases from law enforcement there's then a significant delay in the litigation of the cases and that is due to a lot of things we we've been down judges for most of the last few years so we haven't had as much court time to actually litigate the cases trial dates as you can imagine are the sort of last opportunity for people to resolve their cases and a lot of people wait until the last minute to do that and so when you don't have a trial date to use as that sort of last minute if you don't do this we're going to go to trial and defense attorneys understand and their clients know that if they just wait the case will just continue to get delayed and that has certainly been happening so we didn't have any trial dates from March 20th through September 22 and now we're given about one to three trial days a month which again to get through a thousand cases at best you're getting three cases you're getting three cases tried a month but if you have a case which are the ones that we're going to prioritize again for trial there are crimes of violence sometimes you need more than that you need to take all three days for one case for example January we're trying a homicide case and so that's going to take up the entire month of January so we're not going to try any other cases when we're trying the homicide case it also takes away a judge for the entire month to try that case so he's not available to any of our other courtrooms typically when we are resolving these cases and the cases are pending we do everything we can to connect people with services while their cases are pending so that we have better outcomes at the end and the services and resources that we typically have are just not as robust in our community as they used to be again through COVID they just have not been what they used to be so we don't have as many options to send people the Department of Corrections also without any input from states attorneys across the state got rid of the one program we used a lot or we attempted to use a lot that resolved a lot of cases and so we lost a really good tool that we had and then I think just litigation barriers when cases are pending as long as they are we lose witnesses either due to frustration understandably or relocation or they get a new phone number they get a new address and we struggle to find them so there's like actual costs to these cases being pending for as long as they are because people understandably get really frustrated and either decide they don't want to be a part of this anymore or they just can't find them and of course probable cause versus beyond a reasonable doubt I would say that we get cases from law enforcement and the burden to charge a case is probable cause which is a pretty low standard it means that the person more often more likely than not committed the crime but in order to actually prove the case we have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt which is a significantly higher portion higher burden so again when cases are pending for six, nine months plus the evidence doesn't get better as those cases go on so we really are trying to streamline cases while they're pending for all of those particular reasons and then finally the next one pre-trial there is a lot of rhetoric I get a lot of emails I get a lot of tagged and a lot of conversations happening about individuals being out on the streets while they have cases pending and so I just want to go in a little bit to talk about the ways that people can be held in jail pre-trial and I will start by saying it is incredibly rare and it is incredibly rare because the laws require that it be incredibly rare so first is cash bail cash bail is go ahead to the next one cash bail is determined by judges it is not determined by prosecutors judges are the only people that can impose cash bail and it is up to them how much is an appropriate amount prosecutors can certainly request bail but the law requires that the judge be the one that make findings and it's up to them whether they can impose bail and for how much if it is being imposed they are required to impose a reasonable amount that is based on the person's income and they cannot impose cash bail on a case where a person is charged with a misdemeanor and appeared for their arraignment when a judge is deciding whether to impose cash bail on somebody it has to be for because that person has a proven risk of flight so the judge doesn't say this is a charge related to public safety and because of the public safety risks I'm going to impose cash bail they can only impose cash bail if the person is a proven risk of flight not if the person is a public safety risk so it doesn't matter whether the person has one charge pending or 30 if they are not a risk of flight the judge cannot impose cash bail and then they can't impose cash bail for more than $200 on any case that is expungement eligible which is most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies and then conditions of release on the next one this is a lot of legal jargon but any person charged with an offense other than someone being held without bail shall at their appearance before a judicial or legal trial and so that is a long slide to say that the conditions are released by law have to be the least restrictive combination of conditions that will reasonably ensure the protection of the public they cannot impose more strict conditions than absolutely necessary and we have judges that get overturned by the Supreme Court pretty regularly for attempting to enforce a law that is like a responsible adult condition when the law does not allow it a responsible adult condition can sometimes hold people in jail while they work to procure a responsible adult that can take custody of them but that has to be on listed offenses so again if you go back to car thefts neither of our statutes regarding car thefts are listed offenses so those are not eligible for a responsible adult condition neither are those grand larcenies, burglaries and trafficking of drugs none of those by statute are considered listed offenses and then the hold without bail is the next one and last one this is the sort of in other jurisdictions it's called remand you might see it on law and order a person that's charged with a violent felony may be held without bail but it is a very high standard for the state we have to show that the evidence of guilt is great and the court has to find after an evidentiary hearing that the person if released would pose a substantial threat of physical violence to any person and that no condition or combination of conditions will prevent that violence so when we ask for this if the court agrees they have to set it for an evidentiary hearing we have to actually put on our entire evidence as if a mini-trial and ask the court to hold a person without bail and unless it is a murder or an attempted murder even if the court agrees with us the statute only allows for us to hold them in jail for 60 days so after the 60 days is up the court by statute shall impose conditions of release and again engage in the same least restrictive conditions analysis that I talked about in the last slide and if the charge is murder or attempted murder then the presumption is actually that they are held indefinitely and the defense has to come up with a plan to show the court that that person should be released I don't believe I've seen that happen yet and so I would just say too that means that witnesses and victims need to be available to testify so going back to that probable cause versus beyond a reasonable doubt you can probably imagine there's a lot of victims a week 10 days after an incident occurred do not want to testify in court some flat out refuse to so there are times where we may make a decision that it is not worth it for that person to testify against the person if we can come up with other conditions that will keep them safe but generally speaking on violent felonies we do ask for it we'll have hearings if the court agrees and then the person is released that 60 days is up so again if you see that somebody was charged with an assault and robbery and then three months later is back in the streets or back in our community that is because that's what the law requires so I think that that is the highlights we are working really closely with law enforcement we work really closely with BCJR and Rachel Jolly and all of our other community justice centers we do we are constantly trying to figure out ways to hold people responsible, hold them accountable and also engage them in the services that they really desperately need and it's an uphill battle right now and I understand everybody's frustration around what they're seeing but we really are doing what we can to address it I think that's it, I do the last slide has oh maybe not, the last slide should have my email Sarah.George at vermont.gov I have had emails from a lot of you in this room, I think most people would say I answer them and I would much prefer if you see something on social media or in the media and you question it, please feel free any time to reach out I will tell you what I can there are some things I obviously cannot share but I will do my best to explain the situation to anybody that reaches out to me so I would much rather that than the continuation of false information, I think it's really harmful in the community and I really want to be available to people thank you, sorry I was over my 10 minutes thank you, I want to share with everyone that these presentations will all be posted on Civic Clerk the city's interface for posting this kind of information we are definitely running a little bit behind so we'll we'll go to Rachel next then we'll come back to you, Jess, okay and take it away Rachel if she can pick up I'll try, less than 5 minutes I will approach that or try to everybody, my name is Rachel Jolly I head up the Community Justice Center which is a division of CEDO, the Community Economic Development Office, we are part of an infrastructure in Vermont that a lot of people don't know about but hopefully we're one of 23 centers that get state funding for using restorative processes or restorative justice in some way so the Burlington Community Justice Center is under our municipality municipality, most of those 23 centers are nonprofits Chittenden County has four community justice centers we are a center that actually serves the whole county with some of our programs mostly post-charge programs so we operate on all stages of the continuum of the criminal legal system so we can get referrals directly from law enforcement those are called pre-charge so those are before they go to Sarah's office when we have an MOU in place with the department to talk about the kinds of crimes that can go generally those are low level misdemeanors first time folks, first time offenders or people who are responsible they would come be referred and then we operate from there on too in terms of post-charge but pre-adjudication also post-adjudication court ordered as well as re-entry we also work with folks after incarceration when they're coming back into the community to help ensure their success that they are have already dealt with the accountability for their crime but we're also trying to support them as they re-establish themselves so the two things that I want to mention is one that we've been hearing a lot tonight about some of the downstream impacts downstream effects of a lot of these needs that have been built up Commissioner Levine mentioned poverty trauma, substance use, mental health homelessness, these are we're seeing kind of the worst of that the perfect storm added with COVID, the pandemic a lot of people might say that the opposite of addiction is connection and connection is something that we really need to be investing in and that's what some of our pilot programs or these innovative responses are talking about and that's some of what the CJC can offer in its downstream programming we have ten different programs most of them are post harm or post crime we have a program that's specifically for victims of crime called parallel justice because so much of this once you're in the criminal legal system is very time consuming it leaves kind of victims out on the sidelines waiting for some kind of response to their needs, parallel justice is an attempt to fill some of the gaps and it's there for folks whether you report your crime or not whether the legal system is involved or not whether the person responsible for the crime is caught or not so that's just a program that I would like everybody to know about if you've unfortunately already been a victim of crime or if you know somebody who has at least you can offer up that service we have a lot of information on our website and the contact information is there I also think there's an opportunity for the community to get more involved in terms of and for the city investing in those proactive responses for community referrals right now we don't really I talked about how we our first stage generally is pre-charge or once it's in the criminal legal system or at law enforcement stage currently we have one part time staff on a program called the conflict assistance program which is about neighborhood conflicts or other stages of conflict that haven't escalated to crime yet but do involve unresolved conflict where somebody might want some coaching through that or some mediation but there's also the potential for when somebody is involved in a crime but doesn't want to go through the criminal legal system for a variety of reasons and we just this past year a number of stakeholders were involved in passing what's called Act 11 to allow to kind of allow in the current prohibition of sending domestic and sexual violence cases interpersonal violence cases to CJC there is a law against that right now but what we've heard from survivors that the majority of survivors don't use the criminal legal system again for a variety of reasons Act 11 will allow at least one more alternative for survivors of these crimes for another kind of process we're still a ways away from actually operationalizing that law allows for that and so that's where I see the greatest potential for innovation and community involvement is starting to think about law enforcement should and Sarah George's office should be and Department of Corrections should be a part of our public safety conversation but there's a lot of other possibilities and they don't all involve punishment and our CJC looks at non punitive methods of creating the conditions for people to hold themselves accountable we're not going to write response for many if somebody's denying they had anything to do with a crime if they're saying I don't take responsibility they're not going to be appropriate referral for the CJC but we certainly are a part of that solution and we just want people to know that the CJC is a willing partner to continue to move upstream upstream from some of these dramatic needs that are causing such more expensive and more impactful and destructive often consequences for not just the individual but the community at large we're really interested in looking at what are some upstream potential solutions so I'm trying to keep it short that I think hopefully that gives you a snapshot of what we do. Great thank you for that Rachel and I think some of the ideas about how municipalities, how local communities use CJC more are are important part of the discussion now and it is notable how much Burlington CJC has expanded services in over the last five years now and I think further expansion could be the right response to the moment we're in as well I want to go, sorry I think we skipped over Chief Mirad in Burnton so Chief I'll go back to you now Thank you sir Hello everybody it's great to have all of you here it's a really full room again which is terrific from the previous night are there slides available? I see maybe so I was confused on the slides as well so I think why don't we see if we can fix that and go to Colo next and come back Thank you Mayor I appreciate the chance to be here tonight I'm the Chief Federal Law Enforcement Officer for the State of Vermont I oversee the United States Attorney's Office which is right up the street on Elmwood Avenue I'd like to thank the Mayor and Councillor Doherty for inviting me to come here I was supposed to be here on Thursday but I'm here tonight instead I'll try to use the time I have to try to give a description of what our office is and what we do I would like to give you an overview of our office the United States Attorney's Office what kinds of cases we do in the United States Attorney's Office who our partners are what the priorities of the United States Attorney's Office are right now and share some statistics and some points or highlights to remember about the U.S. Attorney's Office so we're the sort of I like to think about it as the branch office of the Department of Justice in Vermont we cover the whole state we have about 50 employees 55 employees in our office about 25 of those 25 lawyers and the rest are staff we enforce all criminal law in Vermont criminal federal law in Vermont as well as defend the United States and its agencies when they get sued in federal court of those 25 lawyers approximately 17 of them are federal prosecutors enforcing federal criminal law here in Vermont what kinds of cases we do we do lots of different kinds of cases all across the state we do drug cases we do violent crime cases cases that involve violations of the gun control act we do white collar crime civil rights cases immigration cases and other types of cases you've probably all heard the saying don't make a federal case out of it there's a reason for that phrase federal cases are complicated large-scale matters they don't typically happen in one day they are things that happen over a period of time in terms of who we work with we have many partners all of the federal agencies that you can think of like the FBI ATF IRS all of those we work with and others we also here in Vermont unlike some other US Attorney's offices around the country work a lot with our state and local partners we work a tremendous amount with the Vermont State Police we work a tremendous amount with Chief Murad and the Burlington Police Department and pretty much every other police department and sheriff's office around the state of Vermont we also work with all of our state's attorneys in Vermont we talk with them regularly about whether a case should proceed federally or in the state system so Sarah's office and my office are in contact regularly to talk about violent crime cases or drug crime cases that happen in Chittenden County to determine whether that case is more appropriate for our office or for Sarah's office turning to our priorities right now the Attorney General the United States is Merrick Garland his priorities are my priorities because he's ultimately my boss and I think his priorities are good priorities they are to protect public safety to enforce civil rights to protect the rule of law my office's number one priority right now is to address violent crime in Vermont and we are doing that by taking more violent crime cases than we have historically all the prosecutors in my office are doing those types of cases often those cases overlap with drug crime in Vermont unfortunately it seems like more and more almost every drug case that we see involves some element of violence in terms of the points to highlight here and to remember about what the U.S. Attorney's office does what the federal prosecutors in Vermont do to try to protect public safety number one as I said before we do big complicated cases we can't do all the cases that we would like to do just like Sarah's office and every one that we partner with we have limited resources and in terms of those types of cases that we do I think it's helpful to think about it in terms of moments in time versus putting all those moments in time together into a larger scale case we don't prosecute cases generally that involve one single moment in time we take lots of moments in time and try to put them together to build a larger case and have a greater impact when we do those cases both in terms of drug crime and violent crime and other kinds of crime we are on the side of the victims in our community both victims of drug crime violent crime broad white collar crime all of those kinds of situations we have a victim witness program in our office that works with the victims of all these kinds of crime the second point is that right now we are spending a lot of time on violent crime Sarah mentioned the number of homicide cases being investigated right now in Vermont our office is involved with a lot of those situations largely because a lot of those situations involve drug crime and that drug crime is a federal crime typically if there's a homicide that has no connection to drug crime or some other kind of federal crime we would not be involved with that typically homicide is a state crime if you look around the country and see who's charging those kinds of cases and then lastly in terms of drug trafficking crime our cases that we do try to disrupt large organizations that are bringing drugs to Vermont as everyone has talked about tonight our main problem right now is something that is driving a lot of the issues that were discussed on Thursday night and tonight is fentanyl and our office is doing a tremendous amount of work prosecuting individuals and organizations who are bringing fentanyl to Vermont from out of state that is a is a pattern that we've seen for a number of years as long as I've been in the office in 2010 but it's all the more serious now with fentanyl and fentanyl laced with xylazine coming into the state we recognize that prosecution plays only one part in the solutions that we're trying to bring to bear to address this crisis that we're in and that the country is in frankly not just Vermont it is happening all over Vermont I want to be clear about that we're not just talking about Burlington or Chittenden County I can attest based on what my office does that these issues are in Brattleboro they're in Bennington they're in Rutland they're in the Northeast Kingdom they're pretty much everywhere and they're everywhere around the country we recognize that prosecution isn't the only solution but we do we're in office full of prosecutors we are not policymakers so we tend not to be involved in those decisions we try very hard to prosecute individuals and organizations before they get a foothold in Vermont although we don't always succeed at that and we also recognize that not every crime is a federal crime that exists to try to address these issues that's why we partner with Sarah's office and all the other state's attorneys in Vermont quickly some statistics in 2022 and 2023 our office has opened approximately 57 gun and drug cases in Chittenden County since 2015 we've opened approximately 130 cases with one specific ATF agent as the lead agent this individual works almost exclusively in Burlington and then since 2017 the US Attorney's Office has opened approximately 60 cases with one specific BPD drug detective as the lead agent so that gives you some idea of the volume of cases just in this area that we're doing and remember these are big cases not just one hand to hand deal that you might see happening on the street in Burlington and the last thing I want to mention because tonight's focus is on substance use disorder and solutions in that area our office participates in three specialized courts that focus on treatment and helping individuals re-enter society in a productive way including with places to live and employment we have two drug we call them drug courts one is in Rutland and one is in Burlington those courts are put in place to the participants in those courts are guilty plea pre-sentencing and if they are successful in completing the program that is led by one of our federal district court judges they are eligible to receive a time served sentence and also potentially a reduction of the charge that they would plead guilty to and then the last the other court that we participate in which is led by our federal magistrate judge here in Burlington is what's called a re-entry court that court participants are post sentencing they just like in the drug courts are participating in treatment with counselors from the Howard center social workers there's a representative from the defense bar as well as the judge and someone from our office these individuals are eligible if they successfully complete the program to reduce the amount of time that they are supervised by the federal probation office after their sentence completes those are three excellent programs that we participate in and support and go a long way towards helping some of the defendants that we prosecute re-enter after their sentences are up and turn their lives around thanks Murrow great thank you Colo I think we were able to get your presentation over to you chief we are we'll just remind all of us we are definitely behind schedule sir I'll forego this this will be available these slides will be available in the presentation but more importantly I'll be delivering these at the police commission meeting that will happen in the week after the Christmas holiday we had two police commissioners at the last forum here I was very glad to see them here we have a commissioner here tonight and I'll be able to explain all these slides they'll be incorporated into the chief's report the monthly chief's report but I don't want to take up time when we have I'm sure lots of questions from the audience okay thank you chief no no bunch line and we'll if we can get Jess's presentation back up you don't have slides okay great I'm Jess Kirby client services at VCJR in Burlington which is on Bank Street and we opened a re-entry and recovery center about a year and a half ago in downtown Burlington with the help of the city and other supporters in hopes of providing another place for high-risk people to go especially justice-involved people so it's a recovery center for justice-involved people with substance use disorders where all of our participants have substance use disorder many are untreated and we're trying to help get into treatment we have over 200 clients and over 90% I think are homeless so we're working with some of the people that are really struggling the most in Burlington and who are having a high impact on the community and who are very high risk for overdose death and very high risk for other harms and providing a lot of services and think that we're helping to bridge a gap in our community that as Sarah was saying we are you know people are really struggling like others have said we have a housing crisis we have a COVID-19 crisis we have a drug crisis where the drugs are more dangerous than ever where people are struggling more than ever where the impact on the community is higher than ever and people are really in desperate need of very low barrier services and don't really have the ability to show up to appointments and really need to be able to just walk in come as they are and do various forms of help so that's really what we're trying to do we have peer services we have case management housing stuff, treatment stuff put you in the car and take you to treatment which is really needed and we don't have a lot of hands on that sort of case management in you know Chittin County and probably in the state and really a lot of times that's what's needed people get lost along the way people are defeated and things are really hard and so we need to reduce barriers to treatment even more than they are you know we need expanded methadone access, we have one in all of Chittin County you know I personally work with a lot of people who sometimes take 6 months to a year to try to get to treatment and plan it for a really long time and have high hopes of getting there and it doesn't quite pan out and so we really need more doors for that we need more options, I know the mayor has been working hard on that and the settlement committee and a lot of people are on board with that but you know I think I would just like to bring the message that I think a lot of people you know think that that help is out there and it's easy to get if you really want it and you know I'm a person with lived experience myself sort of and I worked you know over the years I worked at Howard Center I'd say for recovery for a long time and doing harm reduction work for like almost 10 years it's not easy at all it's actually really really hard especially when you have no place to sleep you have no phone to send an alarm for an appointment you know you have to be places by a very specific amount of time for treatment people are struggling with precipitated withdrawal related to buprenorphine and become stabilized on that treatment which is another reason why we really need more access to methadone and you know it is really hard for people to get the help they need places are struggling with staffing like a lot of the services look different now and I think a lot of people in our community are really struggling and I'm really glad that we have partners and people who get that and know that we need to do all weekend to introduce the barriers for people as much as possible and expand services so that's my message and I'm trying to keep it short because I know we have a lot of questions and that's the whole point oh thank you okay thank you to all of our panelists and now yes let's I think how we'll try to do this if people would like to ask a question when you raise your hand I'll recognize like three people at a time and we'll get to as many people as we can so I'm going to start with Romeo here in the front row and then the gentleman in the with the blazer and then Jess will go to you three thank you for all of you for being here so my question is based on personal experience working at the transit center and seeing a lot of folks who are doing a lot of needles to the transit center both used and unused as well so based on my experience what we do again I'm not going to speak on behalf of GMT but based on my experience when we take needles that are used and we have those needle collection thing we take it to Howard center I have seen folks that are being given nearly 200 needles brand new needles as well as the like a tin foil and crack crack pipes and all that stuff and the other thing was if somebody is provided all the stuff they need except the drug itself how are they able to help themselves out to get out of this sort of like recycle situation they're trying to get a treatment but I don't think that is necessarily a treatment if somebody is being provided the 200 free needles clean be it clean or not the crack pipes the tin foil the thing to get your blood going they're like they're more than happy to take that and they're not going to necessarily take everything inside of the Howard center so I'm trying to find out how is that helping per se to those folks who definitely need or are desperate to get help that's one component to my question the second component quickly I will ask to Sarah is that I also see a lot of folks who repetitively steal from stores that show up at a transit center as well or at least on our buses and that are basically gleefully happy to be stealing over and over again and some of them based on as I understand they've just been either released and they go back again and steal again so I'm wondering how is that helping the community per se based on I do understand there's a lot of case loads but we are feeling the impact both at the transit community what do you call it the transit center community as well as just in the community in general so thank you okay thank you Romeo do you two questions but let's try to keep it here as many people as possible let's have one each maybe Jess could you speak to how I think the first question about the role of safe recovery and how yeah I'll start by saying I'm a person with lived experience myself with opioid use disorder okay sorry is it working? I have opioid use disorder myself I actually utilized the syringe service program in Burlington and I will tell you that it was the only place that I went for services it was the only people that I was connected with and yes syringes and those sorts of things are provided but also a connection with treatment providers is provided and that is the place that I ended up accessing treatment when I was ready and they just kept keeping that door open for me and so in what research shows is that people are actually five times more likely to enter treatment if they are engaging with the syringe service program so we know that it actually helps people get into treatment not the opposite through research many years with syringe service programs so and I worked at the syringe program here in Burlington at Safe Recovery and I will say that we helped a lot of people get into treatment a lot of people with housing and all kinds of services that they weren't having access to otherwise and you know you can't force people to get into recovery you have to keep keeping that door open and helping people stay safe and giving them a safe place to ask for help and to help people connect when they are ready so is that helpful good sir so I guess I just will briefly say the same thing I already said that I don't there isn't a legal avenue to just hold people in jail all their cases are pending it is literally against the law and our constitution to do that so if somebody is stealing repetitively from a store I would first say that it's often two months at least until our office knows anything about it and that's if we get the cases from law if the people are if the cases are investigated and solved and then those cases come to us it's often two months at least until our office knows anything about it so in that time people are of course able to continue to engage in that behavior without our office ever knowing it's happening until much later on and then by the time we do we can't just hold people in jail they are entitled to their freedom and they are presumed innocent until we have proven at trial that they are guilty and that is another delay while we are attempting to do that so that's how our system works I'm not saying it's perfect it is certainly flawed we want to be able to have these cases a lot sooner from law enforcement I think law enforcement would say they want to be able to investigate and solve them a lot quicker they're not always that easy to do and then we would love to be able to get into services and hold them accountable much quicker it just isn't generally how our system is designed to work unfortunately did you want to add to that no, okay so first of all I'd like to say thank you for sharing all this data just because I'm in the data business so I'm always fascinated by all of this some of the data that I did on my own shows that the in-person recovery runs at about 80% right is what I've been able to find online I can share the links with you if you want but the outpatient only works about 20% and that's actually 20% of the people that actually go to the outpatient program these are national studies and depending on the one that I looked up it was all for whether it was methadone or the other ones it was inconclusive so you're talking about an 80% success rate for in-person that's all the people that go to in-person and the only thing that we have here is out-person that it's up to them if they want to go and it only works 20% of the time so our Georgia's department because of the laws that are on the books can't prosecute all of the adjacent crimes that happen with this the police department is short staffed so why are we still handing out all the needles Dr. Lumine I think would be this question I think certainly here for many individuals questions about whether I think there was a big shift away from residential services and maybe you could speak to that trend and thinking behind it and whether you I tend to think that we do need more to go back to more reliance on residential treatment maybe you could speak to your perspective on that so I'm not sure what data you're accessing but the reality is it's very challenging to this is a lifelong illness if we call recovery your journey from being actively involved with the drug is the main focus of your life to actually being able to live a life and do a lot of other things that's an important endpoint retention and treatment is notoriously challenging to measure and then to interpret because not everybody needs to be on treatment lifelong and many can be on varying times and as you know there are non-medication forms of treatment often they're sort of poo-pooed and it's like well no you've got to do medication assisted treatment as it's called but the reality is people succeed in a variety of different venues so the whole enterprise is very very challenging but to get to your question which echoes the first question you've done a great job of describing what harm reduction is so everything that's being done is to keep people alive respecting the fact that they have an illness that they're just not at the stage of thinking when they're going to access treatment and try to get into recovery so the only viable candidate for a treatment program is a live candidate can't do anything with a person who's succumbed to their disorder for whatever purpose they had dirty needles and got hepatitis they got dirty needles and got a bloodstream infection and a heart infection and died from that the list goes on and on and on so harm reduction is still a critical critical ingredient because everybody's in a different place with regards to their disease I guess you probably want to I'll just say that I think we do need more options we do need more options for inpatient treatment and it would be I think beneficial for people to have we have two places that people who get Medicaid can go for inpatient treatment for about two weeks and I do think that it would be beneficial for people to be able to stay longer periods of time and maybe have other options than the places like the commissioners that it is lifelong illness it's chronic and relapsing and sometimes people are accessing these places five, ten times even more than that and so I do think that's a component we need that we need more of that but also that especially with opioid use disorder which is probably causing the most harm in our community and taking the most lives I think medication assisted treatment is the standard of care and is the most effective in helping people achieve recovery so and these are very individual decisions that are clinically made so people get medical assessments and other assessments to know what is the best modality of treatment that will help them and the literature unfortunately on residential treatment in terms of duration which is always what the focus has been on is really poor and we don't understand what the appropriate duration is so people with a lot of money go to the Betty Ford Center and may go there for three to six months to say that they might have a better outcome than someone who's on Medicaid in Vermont and went to one of our residential centers and stayed for less than a month is really a tough comparison to make unfortunately thank you this is a question for Dr. Levine or maybe Jess too and it follows nicely on the conversation we've just been having at the last at the candidate forum that was here a few weeks ago one of the candidates advocated for forced treatment for substance use disorder and aside from being legally fraud and logistically fraud is there any evidence and aside from the fact that we don't have enough voluntary treatment is there any evidence to support forced treatment for substance use disorder so this is not an expansive literature it's a fairly sparse literature but the literature that's out there that now has undergone some systematic meta-analysis comes out on the side that we'll call it forced or coercive treatment if you look at the ultimate outcome there's a higher rate of people dying now this is not immediately but this is obviously over time because it's often in populations of people who really aren't ready to embrace treatment they lose their tolerance to the medication while they're getting treated and then end up overdosing when they're out of their coerced treatment regimen so it's actually something that doesn't pan out the way that the best intentioned people might have thought it would be mainly because of this whole it's the same phenomenon that occurs when you put somebody into a professional facility and they go through withdrawal and they can stay there for a week or three years they're going to have very low tolerance to opioids because they haven't been on them steadily unless there's been some funny stuff happening in the prison where they have access to those drugs so when they leave the first two weeks of transition back to the community is the highest risk time in all of substance use disorder land because it's traditional when people who have poor supports haven't had these kind of warm handoffs that Jess is trying to create and sustain and nurture those people will end up going back to the same settings to the same habits and only a smaller amount of what they used to take a lot of can kill them. I'll just add to that I my read of the literature is similar to Dr. Levine's and yet I understand where that question is coming from some of the really significant voices in the country around this issue people like Sam Quinones have started raising the prospect that we do need more compulsory actions and I think it was essentially maybe underlying one of their prior questions as well and it's this is sort of one of the reasons why I'm not quite in the same places as Dr. Levine is on kind of taking I think what you described a sort of very kind of deliberate approach I think we are truly in a crisis right now where what was working just a few years ago and when I showed those overdose numbers death numbers a few years ago it wasn't just overdose deaths that were going down it was also many of the other issues that I since are motivating people in the room to be here property crime was going down we stolen vehicles during that period we're not nearly the issue they are today we've sought very few needles out on the streets when our treatment system was working and working well we had not only were we saving lives the impact on the community was much less than we are experiencing today I think clearly that has changed very dramatically and we need urgent dramatic action in response to it when you know just we were in 2014 then Governor Shumlin devoted his entire state-of-the-state address to this issue and said it should be literally the entire state-of-the-state address said it had to be the top issue that we were losing something like a third of the Romaners every year we lost about 80 people that year we're going to lose more than 240 this year and it is again bigger than just the devastating loss of all of those Romaners that's an enormous number it dwarfs the number of people that we lose traffic accidents that we lose gun violence these other sort of avoidable deaths it is much larger than those other figures and it is growing and that is why I think it is of such concern but it is not just about the deaths it is also because this issue has these broader community impacts and when we are seeing it get further and further out of control it seeps into all these other areas and does cause us to be asking do we need to be locking a lot more people up I think we are a long way from there being I don't see any evidence that that is a solution that works or is available to us I do think it is one of the reasons we do need the criminal justice system working better than it has since the pandemic I think we have gotten a lot of information tonight on how it is broken down and the urgency on being able to hold people accountable for real I think we should focus on holding people accountable for what we all agree are crimes before we are thinking about sort of forcing people into treatment let's try to come over to this side of the room I see this hand here first and then I will go to you next and then we will go to the back unless that is what I call that everybody agrees that we have a huge drug problem here I see this gentleman what he was talking about because I walk that street with my grandson and there is needles everywhere I see people one woman was cleaning up needles on battery street by herself after the encampments were there and the high schoolers are right there they are walking up and down the street and there is all this stuff I can't think of a worse situation for our young people you are talking about harm reduction for people that already have an addiction and that is a whole other problem but we have to keep society safe that is our number one responsibility and we are failing failing terribly you know I am walking up cherry street and there is a woman injecting herself next to the transit thing and then she is tossing her needles my grandson is going what is she doing and so a six year old gets a talk about addiction I said have you ever heard of what addiction is Jack? I mean none of you are succeeding we have got to stop the drugs coming in here that is the number one priority never mind getting everything else stop the drugs none of your housing or in-house things none of that is going to work and you know you need to prosecute for somebody that is trafficking drugs put them away and lock away the key because they are causing all of this harm in making money on it I can't think of a more heinous thing to do because their victims are often people that need help and I could go on but drugs anyone want to respond I think the honest answer too is that none of our current systems are effective working there is no easy solution to stopping the drugs coming in when there is such a huge demand so I don't think we are ever going to find this one magic solution or the answers don't all lie in law enforcement I think it really is an unprecedented time for the community at large to come up with some new solutions I'm not sure that's going to solve the problem we had this next gentleman next hi thank you panelists I think it's obvious that each facet of our of our community trying to address this problem is overwhelmed so I have a number of questions I'll keep it to one if we want to do what is empathetic and humane I'm also concerned that we don't want to become a magnet to bring other people to our community with problems with more crime so I'm curious I have heard second hand that a number of the people who are who are houseless in our downtown have come here have been encouraged to come here because of the programs that we have so how do we prevent ourselves from continuously being overwhelmed thank you this is a question I get a lot it's a concern your concern is when I hear a lot from the public here it's also one if you look across the country this this this is frequently it's a fear in other cities as well one kind of empirical look we've had at that recently the biggest study on homelessness ever was done in California this last summer and what one of the striking findings of that report was that and you know I understand you're asking about needles but people fear the same thing about if you provide a high level of homelessness services will that attract people there and what they found was that over 90% of the people who were homeless in California had their last known last time they had been housed had also been a California address and when you sort of start to unpack it you think about it if you become homeless in our crisis it's a challenging time to pick up and move to a whole other community whole number of place and I will say when we've tried to get a handle around similar stats here in Burlington we've had similar results not that there is nothing to the idea you will certainly I've seen it on the news accounts someone will tell a television reporter they came here from South Carolina or something that is those are outliers in terms of the data that we see when we talk to people at the community resource center when we talk to people at the shelters these are people that have local backgrounds to by and large so to me I don't see a lot of evidence that is happening and even if it were we can't let people freeze on our streets we just open a winter warming shelter down the street that is that's what I think this community is committed to doing is helping people in great need keeping people alive and to your larger point are services overwhelmed right now? they absolutely are and that is part of the challenge we are in at this moment can I respond quickly? I just wanted to say that I don't know what would be so attractive I think there's this idea that we have this cushy system and people are really suffering and struggling and I don't think we have anything cushy like all states have access to food stamps things like that and our housing system is completely overwhelmed we do not have enough shelter the city has stood up something to try to help but there are not shelters that people can go to for enough people that there are we have minimal certain service programs we do have robust access to medication assisted treatment but all states have that the places that don't have certain service programs is no evidence that they do better when it comes to substance use at all and so I think we are really struggling here our services are overwhelmed and I don't know what would be so attractive what the cushy idea is but I do know that people have that idea and I work with a lot of people who are houseless and they are like 95% or more from on or I've known around here for many many years so I just don't know if it's really happening or if it's like a fear that we have but so yeah I'll just say that I think you want yes but they are absolutely coming from other places than Burlington to this city and the increase that we have had in houselessness is driven by people who are not always in Burlington that is a significant portion of those folks and many people are indeed struggling but I think our community is struggling too and I don't think we think often enough to address our struggling sometimes because of what's going on with this very small subpopulation for which we don't have any good ideas or good solutions and part of that is the fact that our laws do not give us the tools that we need we are at a place where there is a legal reckoning to be had at the Montpelier level around what tools are available to us to address these incredibly incredibly intransigent and trenchant problems do you like to speak to several of the legislative changes that you and I have been talking about and we'll be advocating again for this year? Sir the ones that you and I have certainly advocated for have to do primarily with violence but with regard to other issues I think there are many of the things that the states attorney talked about with regard to how we absolutely as a state do not prioritize the need from it as much as possible are other things that need to be addressed and those aren't things that you and I have specifically spoken about sir those are mostly been what you and I have spoken about has mostly been around for example the need for a felony statute for reckless endangerment in order to address gun violence but we also we probably need to address the threshold including the states attorney have talked about the need for and you alluded to it sir in your presentation the stolen vehicle which is a property crime that is having a huge impact on this community we do not have a stolen vehicle you can't actually charge someone for a stolen vehicle could you you cannot have a GTA Vermont there can be no video game GTA Vermont because the charge doesn't exist in the state so something along those lines yes do you want to add anything to that sir another thing that we advocated for last year we'll be advocating for it again I have some hope the legislature is going to take it up this year is retail theft we do not have a system as I understand it and I'm not the lawyer at the table but again if you want to I understand the issue is each individual retail crime is treated as its own incident of Vermont law that is not the case everywhere including in neighbors such as New York where prosecutors and the courts can look to a pattern of crimes and come to different conclusions about recidivist individuals my hope is that the law will change with respect to that this coming year all right I hear by popular demand that people want to be able to come up to the mic and maybe that's a little fair so people in an orderly way could form a line behind ed here and great we should have time for the four of you and we'll try to close right around 8 o'clock though so go ahead and which means you know it only gives us about 5 minutes left and go a little beyond that thank you well first of all in general I just want to commend the panel you know I want to recognize your years sometimes lifetimes of dedication to this and other you know public safety and health issues I really mean that from the bottom of my heart I want to say that you've done an excellent job in explaining the law enforcement ramifications and some of the treatment and harm reduction ramifications some of the statistics about death that we see in Vermont today and but what you've really done an excellent job of is describing and explaining the overwhelming catastrophic public health emergency that we are facing in Vermont today it may not be declared formally but that doesn't make it any less real we saw it wasn't 240 people in 2022 it was 263 people in 2022 and it'll probably surpass that in 2023 okay these are Vermonters, fellow Vermonters that are dying on the street these are people that need to be protected you know we talk and believe me I sympathize with the audience completely the level of grief in this room the level of desire to do something for fellow Vermonters in this room is overwhelming we have some tools along with the tools that have been described today that we're not using and I'm just going to describe it briefly it's the second bullet on Mayor Weinberger's bullet list the first bullet was the expansion of methadone treatment the second bullet was overdose prevention centers overdose prevention centers have been used globally for decades there's a system of overdose prevention centers in Canada there are two overdose prevention centers in New York two schedules open in Rhode Island Minnesota is moving toward it the Department of Health in Massachusetts just came out with a study supporting overdose prevention centers being opened in Massachusetts these are hubs some people call them comprehensive user engagement centers they're places where people who have severe substance use of order people with mental health challenges grownups who have children had multiple adverse childhood experiences people who have over decades been beaten half to death by the war on drugs don't trust the system the number that Dr. Levine referred to 70% of people who die in Vermont don't have any access or have never had any contact with helping systems the number is 76% 76% these people are dying every day in Vermont overdose prevention centers because they offer what Jessica and Dr. Levine and Mayor Weinberger have alluded to as harm reduction overdose prevention centers work they say is you don't have to abstain from drugs to be welcome here we're not going to place that demand on you because we know you can achieve that demand do you have a question for the panel or I'm going to finish Mayor overdose prevention centers to finish up are a win-win primarily they save lives they reverse overdoses they also significantly decrease in public drug use significantly decrease in discarded drug paraphernalia significantly refer people on to further health promoting services in fact in New York on point they've hired 25 or 30 people who began as participants are now staff members Dr. Levine heads up a committee the opioid abatement settlement advisory committee that is in charge of polling the committee and making recommendations and we are about to take an historical step we are about to vote on overdose prevention centers and I think we will vote successfully and then this money will be freed up and we can establish one in Burlington first it has the highest number of deaths per year and in other places too so I'm going to end now okay thank you go ahead Todd I don't think there was a question there never is we're going to take Todd and then two more we're not going to have time to get to everybody so you're the last person this summer I called 9-1-1 because I was getting threatened by a drug dealer downtown and the police showed up and they let the drug dealer go away and they prosecuted me for calling 9-1-1 now here we are living in a country where the FBI themselves say that in the last 70 years almost all crime in this country has been committed by undercovers like whitey bulger is an example so and we're also living in a country where our police officers were trained to do torture in the military and we're also living in a country Todd we're also living in a country where the politicians like to say we don't have a right to ask these questions okay how come how come I'm getting prosecuted and yet you literally allowed these people to run around this town trying to scare everybody you lost a little funding to give you back your funding so my question really comes down to who's protecting us from you guys because you know what most every single gun in this country was sold by a person with a badge or who served in the military there are more gun dealers in this country okay then there are McDonald's and fast food fast food companies and Starbucks combined and they were all badges and they were all servicing in the military mostly and what's up with the Sackler family still walking around giving you guys money so that you cannot lock up the real drug dealers who created the problem while you chased around all the poor people blaming the poor people for the problems you guys are getting paid off to ignore who's protecting us from you nobody okay thank you Don hi my name is Dan Toll and first of all I want to thank all of you for coming out on this pre-holiday night to speak to us and answer questions and in particular I'd like to commend you for including Jess who's a community leader who has lived experience I too I'm a peer with lived experience including mental health and housing insecurity I also had a consulting firm right here in Vermont focused on ending homelessness and improving the lives of people who are dealing with mental health conditions and substance use disorder so my question to well first to you Jess thank you for being here and thank you for telling your story how do you feel what is this doing when it comes to incorporating the voice of us peers in policy making and decision making as well as funding the use of peers on the front lines when I say peers I mean people with lived experience on the front lines to address these issues I'm also interested in hearing what our municipal leader has to say as well as our law enforcement leader peers both substance use peers mental health peers people have lived experience on the front lines but as importantly as part of the decision making process as part of policy making when it comes to dealing with these issues so Jess if you don't mind thank you guys gosh I'm sorry I agree with what I think you're saying that the lived experience voice of people that have experience with mental health and substance use issues is extremely important and should be involved in decision making and policy making and in direct service and in all of these things I think that we there is some effort for that to happen I know like on the opiate settlement committee there were positions that needed to be for people with lived experience I know that legislators try to hear testimony from people with lived experience I think there's an effort to do that I would like to see a lot more people like me that have really lived through very challenging times have opportunities to be in direct service that and I think that for a lot of reasons poverty included and barriers and all of those things it is hard for people to get to that point but I think I would like there to be more effort in those ways and that it's really important and I think there's some effort and that we need to do better thank you I would say it's a major part of the way that the city approaches this I debrief with Jess after every one of these community staff meetings that we talk about the city has an employee who works on these issues in the individual lived experience at this 60-70 person table there are numerous people there that have lost children or parents or in some other way have been in recovery themselves and we certainly have tried particularly around the opioid use disorder tried to incorporate those lessons into the way that we set up these systems so it's I certainly would hope Jess you think that people have had a large voice at that table and it's been a major way that we've approached it there were nearly 1200 mental health issue calls for service last year and while this year is not quite as high it's higher than it's been in any of the previous 6 or 7 years there are going to be 450 or so overdose calls for service this year that is higher than it's ever been it's up actually by 265% over the previous 5 year average I think every single police officer every single employee of the Burlington Police Department every single employee of the Burlington Fire Department increasingly every single member of our community has lived experience with these issues because of that and I think that we need to prioritize some of that experience as well and lived experience we do have team 2 and CIT training so which is mental health training for law enforcement and first responders by the way thank you all great and we'll take a final question hi guys you may not want to hear from me but my name is David Foss I live at Deckard Towers which is the epicenter of all that's going on we have a number of folks that have been evicted they're still living in the building we have a number of folks that are dealing with drugs still in merchandise we have a ton of homeless that are living in the stairwells and the floors we try to lock all the community rooms they're still in there countless damage we live in a BHA property where my house as well as a lot of others don't have proper hot water hot water doesn't work consistently we have a number of it's filthy, dirty we can't get it clean we do need to advocate for there's a lot of us in our building that are scared to death because of the countless number of the traffic it's definitely mental issues the drug issues we got to find out the root of all this stuff everyone does have to work together somehow but what can we do now I'd like to see some legislative changes in city council and state maybe providing for quicker evictions emergency evictions threatening people with death we have that constantly in our building how can we fight COVID if we can't take hot showers reasonably keep the germs we need help from everybody we're trying we got 160 residents and then there's another 40 people living in our building that aren't residents people and the resources in that building is completely overrun we have Narcan which works but we have a lot of calls to Dekker Towers for emergency services medical services Jess, I want to get involved with you more and more because a lot of people in our building don't even know about you I was going to say I would love to connect with you after and talk about exchange info can we somehow get together all these things that are happening are great for the future but what can we do now the number of people that are scared we got people afraid to come out of their apartments because they're afraid they're going to get mugged there's countless number of needles and everything else everywhere thank you for coming out tonight and updating the list it's been a situation of real concern for some time but it's still very bad so thank you we'll try to get your information before you leave too so we can follow up with you okay thank you all for being here tonight I any final thoughts from any of the panelists I don't want to say anything further I think we'll call it there thank you all for being here I appreciate you being part of this conversation