Ellen Pratt and Joyce Marcel
Brattleboro police chief finds stories in the numbers
The statistics for the department’s activities in 2023 show a snapshot of a community and a still-understaffed police department looking to take fresh approaches to problems
BRATTLEBORO-Norma Hardy looks at the town as "a very, very busy hive," with the police chief noting that the Brattleboro Police Department (BPD) responded to 11,277 calls for services in 2023.
That's up almost 8% since last year, according to the BPD's 2023 Annual Report. But embedded in the numbers are difficult stories of a community, and Hardy took The Commons through the numbers in a recent interview, offering some context about a still-understaffed police force adapting to providing public safety to residents of a fast-changing town that has barely emerged from a global pandemic with a range of problems.