BRATTLEBORO — Police Chief Michael Fitzgerald emphasizes his department's coordination with the Southern Vermont Drug Task Force, an interjurisdictional agency whose focus is on identifying drug networks and trying to cut off distribution at the wholesale level.
Fitzgerald talked about the challenges of addressing low-level drug deals as they take place on the street and the difficulties of developing evidence that can support a search warrant.
A drug house can be shut down when housing violations turn up in safety inspections, said Fitzgerald, referencing the measure that will come before the Representative Town Meeting intending to increase both the regular cycle of inspections (from every 10 years to every four years) and the engagement of landlords.
“Do we have an active landlord or an absentee landlord?” asked Fitzgerald. “If you have an active landlord, we can call the landlord and basically say, 'We have been to your residence this many times in the last six months.' An active landlord would go to their tenant and say, 'What is going on?'”
“We can't enforce leases. I mean, they're civil,” said Fitzgerald. “We can do criminal activity. The good, involved, active landlords are just as frustrated as everybody else.”
A matter of priorities
How does the Police Department set priorities when it comes to various issues facing Brattleboro, including panhandling, crime, and drugs?
“My priority is, number one, if there's any criminal activity, it will be addressed by the police department,” said Fitzgerald. “Now the next thing that we look at is, obviously, the safety of our residents.”
For Fitzgerald, the challenge of panhandling in Brattleboro is separate from the problem of crime. He acknowledged that the active presence of people asking for money on the downtown streets creates a perception of risk to public safety on the part of many residents.
He said that that while people might not be in actual danger, they have the perception of danger, and they are afraid.
“Truly you were uncomfortable because this individual is standing there. I get it,” said Fitzgerald, who noted that would be “irresponsible” to presume everyone will have the same comfort level as he - a 20-year Marine Corps veteran and longtime law-enforcement officer - would. “I judge situations a lot different than other people do,” he said.
“Where I struggle is that people ask me to address those perceptions,” said Fitzgerald.
He cannot do so, the chief said, “because everyone is fearful of something different.”
“Some people are even fearful of the police, so how can I address that with the police?” Fitzgerald said. “What we try to do is have a visible presence and basically talk to the individuals.”
Panhandling, perceptions, and talking to everybody
Fitzgerald made clear that the police department has a role in addressing perceptions of public safety as they relate to panhandling. This part of the department's work has more to do with community policing, which sometimes requires officers to take on roles more typical for social workers.
“The way you are going to fix that situation, panhandling, certainly isn't by law enforcement,” said Fitzgerald.
The police will address criminal activity - and, also, sometimes, to “bring comfort to individuals that feel uncomfortable.”
“We do this by talking to these individuals, and I mean by that everybody,” said Fitzgerald. “We're just not targeting one certain group. We are talking to the citizens that are fearful and talking to the individuals asking for money.”
“We will ask the individual who is looking for money, 'Why are you here?'” he said. “'What can we do for you? Are you hungry? If you're hungry, these are the places where you can get some meals. If it's after hours, do you need a place to stay?'”
“In a nutshell, we would try to address these individuals' needs and connect them with resources because that's how you're going to help everybody involved,” the chief said.
Fitzgerald was asked about the perception that some panhandlers are part of a larger operation. “I've heard that,” he said, “but it is not evidence-based.” He flatly debunked a longstanding rumor that those involved “hand over their sign and cell phone and go have a drink in the shade and wait for their shift.”
“The panhandling issue here is very complex,” he said, adding that “there are a lot of moving parts or contributing factors.”
“You have individuals, for example, who need a job, need housing, or they're still suffering from various forms of mental-health illness. They may have some kind of substance-abuse issue in terms of addiction or use,” he said.
“I can tell you right now not everybody is doing it because they're hungry,” Fitzgerald said, adding that to believe so would be “naïve.”
“There is just a lot, and you can't address one singular component and think it is automatically going to fix everything,” Fitzgerald said, talking about the need for a system-wide response of which the police are just one part. “We can address the criminal aspect of it, but that individual is still unemployed, doesn't have a place to live, is still hungry, is still addicted to whatever substance, or still suffering from mental-health issues.”
The connection between policing and social work
“What the most difficult thing is, is trying to help the people that truly need the help,” Fitzgerald said. “You can still be compassionate and you can still help people in need by buying them clothes, purchasing food, giving them shelter, helping them with their oil bill or utility bill by going through organizations that perform this service.”
“We have a police social worker,” Fitzgerald said. “We try to get her immersed really deep into some of our habitual offenders using a non-traditional approach. We use this non-traditional approach before we have to get involved, and that's key.”
The police social worker, Kristen Neuf - an employee of Health Care & Rehabilitation Services, a behavioral health nonprofit agency - works full-time, but the job also requires many more hours than that. Fitzgerald described it as a labor of love that sometimes requires taking calls at 2 a.m. or working through the weekend.
“We have the police social worker go down there and say - and, once again, this is nonconfrontational - 'Hey, how you doing?” Fitzgerald said, “What are you up to? Have you been going to the clinic? Have you been taking your meds? How's this job search going?'”
“The social worker basically has a real personal touch with the individual, and she's connected with all the resources that are needed,” he noted.
Resources and innovation
Fitzgerald emphasized the need for innovative, non-traditional approaches as being more important than resources. Law enforcement is the central work of the BPD, but the factors that underlie issues like panhandling, homelessness, addiction, property crime, and violence can be dealt with only through coordinated, innovative, town-wide efforts, the chief said.
“We are really going at this in a lot of different ways,” Fitzgerald said. “We always have the traditional law-enforcement focus, and our primary focus is always public safety and addressing criminal activity.”
“However, it can be easily proven that taken solely, a traditional law-enforcement approach is not effective,” the chief added. “History has proven that.”
“What we're doing is taking more of a nontraditional law-enforcement approach. We will bring in these different organizations to explore how we can help this individual now. Because me giving him a citation because he broke into your car for your change and [he goes] in front of a judge and gets whatever sentence - [that] sentence does not address why they went in the car to get your change. They're going to do it again.”
“Until we get to the cause and address what is going on at the core, we're spinning our wheels, we're wasting a lot of money, a lot of resources,” Fitzgerald said.
“We're a very progressive and compassionate department,” said. “We're avid readers, we're avid researchers. And if something is working in Seattle, we may not have it at the same scale that they do, but we look at that and say, 'Okay, what can Brattleboro do?' We say, 'That is a good concept. Let's tailor it to our budget, our resources, and our needs and take it from there.'”
“So, now we have a police social worker go out with officers. I'm just tactically redeploying my resources. They're on shift, and I'm addressing a need for the community just like I would if I had to address a traffic-safety issue.”
“I'd be negligent if I didn't deploy my officers to meet that need,” Fitzgerald said, saying that the department is simply “addressing more of a social issue than a criminal issue in a nontraditional way.”
Beyond 'us-against-them'
“A lot of calls we get are not criminal in nature, but they are still important,” Fitzgerald said. “Those calls are related to social ills or social issues within our community.”
“And that's not to say we don't have crime - we most certainly do,” he said. “However, we truly look at it like this, and this is also in our mission statement: We recognize the conduct of individuals that need our help, who made a poor decision, or those who choose to victimize others. We address each one of those accordingly.”
When responding to a call, town police officers analyze the situation with some questions, the chief said: “Is this a person who needs our help? Is this a person who made a poor decision? Or is this a person who chose to victimize others? And then we will conduct ourselves accordingly.”
“I have found that this approach has helped us to break down the 'us-against-them' - that idea that it's law enforcement against the community,” Fitzgerald said. “I would be downright foolish not to recognize the way law enforcement has been used throughout not only our history, but history in general.”
“I think people are starting to wake up and say, 'Wait a minute here,'” said Fitzgerald. “You can be held accountable for your actions and that accountability can be done in a very positive, progressive way so you don't repeat that behavior.”
“I'm not saying to be soft on crime,” he said. “I am saying there are different ways - there's restorative justice, alternative justice, things of that nature.”
“With that being said, what you're finding today, not just here in Brattleboro, but across the nation, is a lot of law-enforcement agencies are saying we are partners within the community,” said Fitzgerald.
“We need to be a part of the solution,” the chief said.