Sad news from the People's Republic of Bernie
/
Burlington is a liberal-leaning city that rallied to defund the police in 2020 following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that year.
"Enough performing," one person who joined a city council meeting in July 2020 said as debate on whether to defund hit a fever pitch. "Defund the Burlington Police Department."
The council ultimately passed a resolution directing the department to slash the number of officers through attrition from 105 to 74.
The resolution also ended the school resource officer program and called for the money from that program to be directed to racial justice initiatives, NBC News reported last year. Additionally, it called for the creation of a committee that would review "how to build a healthy and safe community and what institutions we need to reach that goal."
"Reducing the number of rank and file officers on the street without first reducing the demand for police services will needlessly risk the lives of the most vulnerable in our community and of the police officers whose job it is to protect them," the Burlington Police Officers Association warned after the vote.
What followed was police officers leaving the force, similar to police departments across the country since 2020 reporting cops leaving the force in droves in response to anti-police sentiment and budget cuts.
"The exit interviews have been pretty clear that it was about a lack of support in a political sense," Murad said last year of officers leaving. "And a sense of saying, ‘This is not how I want to serve anymore. I don’t feel valued.’"
In 2021, the city backpedaled on defunding — one city councilor who proposed the resolution to defund the police acquiesced, unhappy with the consequences of the decision.
"We’re in a situation that I think nobody wanted us to get to," city council member Zoraya Hightower told NBC News last year.
The city council voted to allocate additional funds to the police department last year, allowing for the department to hire up to 87 officers compared to the maximum of 74 officers allowed under the 2020 resolution. Murad said at the time that it will take years to rebuild the department.
As of Monday, the department is operating with 62 officers.
"In June 2020, our staffing was authorized at 105. But after the murder of George Floyd, and in the midst of a national movement around policing, our city council voted to reduce headcount through attrition to 74 — an arbitrary 30% reduction. Although there were no layoffs, officers felt unsupported and staffing quickly plummeted. Last autumn, as headcount continued to fall and crime increased, the council raised the cap to 87. But that did not stop the departures. Our current staffing is 62, 54 of whom are 'effective,'" Murad told Fox News Digital on Monday. Effective staff members on the force are ones who can be immediately deployed, according to Murad.
