BRATTLEBORO-Amid a crescendo of complaints about drug dealing and related illegal acts, local leaders are seeking to add more police staff and space to fight a community-wide rise in crime.
The Brattleboro Selectboard, facing a standing-room-only crowd, voted unanimously on Aug. 20 to explore cost estimates for boosting its budgeted count of police officers from 27 to 30 and open a satellite station at downtown's problem-plagued Transportation Center parking garage.
"We want to be empathetic," Police Chief Norma Hardy said of people seen overdosing on park benches and bathing and urinating in public fountains, "but you have to be realistic that at some point you have to start thinking about everyone else who lives here."
Brattleboro has experienced a 16% rise in police calls, from 5,049 in the first six months of last year to 5,879 in the same period this year, municipal records show. Reports of the most serious crimes, such as assault and burglary, are up by the same percentage, from a weekly average of 8.6 calls in 2023 to 10.1 calls currently.
Of the latter offenses, one in three involve drugs or alcohol, according to the statistics.
"Compared to communities your size, you are consistently higher," Jim Baker, former commander of the Vermont State Police and one-time Rutland City police chief, recently told local leaders about the call figures.
Baker, working as a consultant for a state public safety enhancement initiative, noted Brattleboro is just one of many communities in the state and nation facing such problems. But its 10.1 weekly average number of calls about serious crimes exceeds those in such similarly populated places as Barre, at 6.7, and Bennington, at 8.0, he said.
Burlington, the state's largest city and four times as big as Brattleboro, has what Baker labels an "outlier" weekly average of 35.7.
As the closest Vermont community to the New England drug-route hubs of Holyoke, Mass., and Hartford, Conn., Brattleboro has started issuing 30-day no-trespass notices for people using illegal substances in municipally owned parks and parking lots.
"The town is saying, 'Enough is enough,'" Hardy told the Selectboard on Aug. 20.
Upon the police chief's request, the board approved the addition of three downtown surveillance cameras and the replacement of two contracted private security guards with two uniformed, unarmed municipal patrols who will be part of a new Brattleboro Resource Assistance Team (BRAT).
Local leaders will also seek cost estimates for not only more police officers and a satellite station downtown but also two additional BRAT staffers (one to be a peer-support specialist) and an emergency services data analyst.
"For at least 30 years, staffing has never accounted for providing a consistent, constant presence in our downtown area," Hardy wrote in a supplemental memorandum. "Clearly, this needs to change."
The board could receive the cost estimates as soon as next month, at which time the public will be able to offer its opinions and leaders will decide whether and when to proceed.
Such seemingly fast action would come five years after local leaders first received a rash of public complaints about the problems. In 2019, employees of some 20 downtown businesses wrote a letter to the editor about the then-budding issue, sparking a debate between residents demanding a crackdown and others calling for compassion.
Dick DeGray, a former Selectboard member and longtime volunteer green thumb, and staff from the Boys & Girls Club pushed for more security measures at a dozen meetings between May 2022 and June 2023, when local leaders voted to hire private guards in a test to help police.
But complaints have only escalated, with police and public works employees daily removing needles, syringes, and other drug paraphernalia from town-owned properties.
Businesses that survived the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic have expressed frustration that the situation is scaring away shoppers just as signs of new commercial and cultural life are springing up.
"The perception of safety - or lack of safety - feels at an all-time high," Kate Trzaskos, executive director of the Downtown Brattleboro Alliance, said at a recent Selectboard meeting. "That's what we're really wrestling with on a day-to-day basis."
Baker noted a string of local headlines dating back to last year's murder of a Brattleboro shelter coordinator.
"I have not worked in a community where I sense the depth of the trauma that I sense in Brattleboro," the former chief turned consultant said.
Even so, Baker found something positive in the rise in police calls.
"That means people are calling the police department because they trust the police department," he said.
Residents who've crowded into the Selectboard's most recent meetings see it differently.
"I think it shows," DeGray said, "that we have a lot of activity in our town that people are just fed up with."
This News item by Kevin O'Connor originally appeared in VTDigger and was republished in The Commons with permission.