By Michael Bielawski,
The Queen City’s mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak has taken to the radio to respond to accusations that her administration has overstepped its powers by overseeing the Burlington Police Department’s press releases.
“This is an outgrowth of compromise within the community of Burlington,” she told the Morning Drive radio show on Friday. “It is an extension of our hard work and conversation that have been very tricky since 2020 around how we express and know the values of the community, around the kind of police that we need in our community.”
It’s a “temporary executive order” until it is more formally updated. She pledged that her office is only doing “recommendations not edits” and she reiterated that her office intends to fully comply with a recent Freedom of Information Act request by journalist Michael Donoghue to release the original police copies.
“This is my first executive order and I plan to always use them judiciously, my style is one of working internally and collaboratively with department heads before taking that step,” she said.
She said this is about “clarifying the disciplinary process in the rare circumstance of when there is a disagreement between the police and the police commission.”
One of the co-hosts, former state legislator and city councilor Kurt Wright, noted that other media have covered that Mulvaney-Stanak had allegedly been reached out to by Chittenden County State Attorney Sarah George concerning the content of their press releases.
“One [press release] a little while back talked about Michael Reynold’s latest arrest along with the facts of the case, he sort of also laid out some thoughts that he had of this individual, the Chittenden County State’s attorney Sarah George has been reported then contacted you and sorta said in the news that she was calling you to ask you to reign in the chief,” Wight said.
Reynolds has had 1,850 contacts with the BPD in recent years, Donoghue noted in a story for VDC last week.
Wright asked if there might be any instances where her office might wish to exclude information for example about how many times a person has been arrested or in court.
She said, “I think it’s important to provide a context that is helpful for the community’s knowledge about public safety, but there is a difference in the data being reported.” She said a person’s prior arrests are “relevant information and should be included if it's helpful for context, especially for repeat offenders.”
She said that “police encounters” including small-time fender-benders were getting reports submitted into the system that should not have been.
“We had been working for months to try and address this press release policy within the Burlington Police Department, it was last updated when Chief [Michael] Schirling was chief about 15 years ago so I think even Chief Murad agrees we need to do some work updating press release policies, it’s best practise,” Mulvaney-Stanak said,
She said that the existing policy already prohibits giving any opinion regarding the guilt or innocence of an arrestee.
Mulvaney-Stanak also was adamant to acknowledge the recent shooting of a border patrol officer last week.
“It can’t not have a chilling effect on law enforcement and so my heart goes out to not only the family of that individual but all of their colleagues,” she said.
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle
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