2025 VTGOP Convention: Policy Panel on Public Safety

Hi, good morning. My name is Representative Eric McGuire from Rutland City. Great opportunity, great honor to be here. Thank you so much. I'm just going to give a quick, brief overview, a little bit of the current landscape to public safety at this time, and then I'm going to turn it on over to Jeff to share some of the thoughts of what he's seeing at the ground level in regards to, as a business owner, what he's seeing in Burlington. And again, thanks for being here, and hopefully we won't have the opportunity to take any questions, because I will not be able to answer them. Comedy is good. You know, currently at this time, the overall landscape, Vermont still remains among the nation's lowest crime states, but violent offenses are rising. From 2012 to 2022, violent crime has gone up 56 percent, aggravated assault up 65 percent, homicide up 166 percent, incarceration rates have increased steadily from 2021, roughly about 1,200 individuals incarcerated, to right around the mid-2025, we're up to about 1575, nearing pre-pandemic levels. Pre-trial detention is up 60 percent for men, 148 percent for women since 2021. This is really signaling a strain on court capacity and jail space. Correctional outcomes. Vermont's DOC risk intervention service participants showed a 23 percent recidivism versus 42 percent statewide average. Let me just retract just quickly. These numbers in regards to what's called the risk intervention services, which is re-entry programming, as well as programming designated to what the offense is, correctional re-entry philosophy. From my understanding, risk intervention services ceased during the COVID period, and I do not believe these services are in place. These numbers were presented through a report, but those numbers ended with outcomes in 2019. So, I do not know what the update is. I have reached out to DOC on numerous occasions asking for, you know, what the number of participants are in risk intervention services. What are the outcomes currently at this time? Are they effective? Is it still working? And I have gotten no response, and it's been three years. Moving on. Some of the root causes we know is substance use, housing instability, and behavioral health crisis continue to drive arrest and repeat offenses. Some of the key challenges right now is the limited workforce capacity in law enforcement, courts, and the Vermont Department of Corrections. Rising violent crime categories despite overall low totals, over-reliance on pre-trial detention, and hotel-based temporary housing. Keep that point in the back of your head. Fragmented data is another issue and a challenge that we are having within the state, and limited inter-agency coordination. Persistent link between substance use, homelessness, and public disorder. Some of the policy and intervention and collaboration opportunities that can be presented, and they are seen, and which I'm going to get to in a second, in regards to the Governor's 2025 Army Bus Public Safety Bill, which is currently at this time still in our judiciary. Correct, Tom? Where are you? Am I correct on that? Yeah. And I do want to highlight that bill as it is right now, as well as hopefully some of these other initiatives, because what that bill does have is it is going to start to data-driven public safety. It does expand the statewide crime heat map dashboard to real-time data. It does improve data sharing between law enforcement, corrections, and our social services. There are mechanisms within that bill that will streamline cases, processing to reduce the detention backlogs. We're able to strengthen early intervention with some of the youth programs, and of course, the more bipartisan collaboration. So really, the bottom line right now is, I believe, the ultimate challenge is we're challenged to sustain our reputation as one of the safest states while adapting to the rising violent crime trends, workforce shortages, and social services gaps. Evidence-based initiative, transparent data, and cross-sector collaboration can drive both safer communities and a more effective justice system. So just, I want to touch briefly in regards to the Omnibus Bill. As we're aware, it provided, you know, amended bail release rules to reduce what has been described as the catch-and-release cycle of repeat offenders, repealing the final stage of the Raise the Age, increasing penalties and defining clearer accountability for repeat offenders and those violating their release conditions. It's linking public safety policy and substance use behavioral health issues, recognizing that addiction and public health interests within the public safety network. It reforms and upgrades the structure of state public safety agencies, for example, turning the public safety department into a full state agency. This can be a very, very effective if passed proposal. There is one concern that I have highlighted within this is that we don't necessarily have the infrastructure or continuum of care to support this initiative fully. And what I mean by that is that we do lack mental health residential treatment beds. We lack residential longer-term substance abuse treatment modalities. We lack the monitored detox beds that start from continuum of care to start to finish. We have significant gaps in the system and it's going to be very difficult to expedite individuals into that system of care if we don't have the infrastructure to do so. And I'm looking at like what is currently occurring in Burlington with the initiative that was put into place to drive individuals that are coming back into the court system or address that backlog by expediting them or mandatorily require participation in relevant treatment services. Great idea. It works effectively if you have the infrastructure in place to support it, which we don't necessarily have at this time, which then overturn will cause a significant backlog into individuals getting into treatment, getting into rehab because the people coming out and being asked to mandatorily apply by the court system will continue to leapfrog that. So we need to make the quality investments into these programs, which in turn also makes quality investments into our public safety mechanisms. The bail reform is huge, massive within that we need to get that bail reform across the line. And I do want to address the raise the age thing that does need to be repealed. To send adults into a juvenile system that once again is also inadequate is going to produce nothing more than more offenses. That's what those things produce. Just quickly, last point, I think as lawmakers this session we need to pass several of those pieces within the omnibus or pass it completely. We need to give judges more options to hold people on bail. I believe that sealing instead of expunging, which we put into place, very good, very good. That was a good component with it. We've got to reboot our detox programs that we originally used to have that have been removed. There used to be Act 1. We've removed more detox beds. We've removed more substance use beds. Maple Leaf Farm closing down and never replaced that. We still haven't fully gotten up to par when we lost the Waterbury Hospital. Losing these beds and not replacing them or consistently removing these options and these tools that we once have has become counterproductive and has resulted in significant unintended consequences. That's my spiel. I'd like to turn it over to Jeff to share what he's seeing going on on the ground level. Thank you. That was an excellent review of what needs to happen. I can tell you everything you just talked about has to happen. The biggest problem is none of the progressives in Burlington believe anything you just said. That is the problem. The progressive politics in Burlington have run into the brick wall of reality. It is an absolute mess out here in Burlington. I've been in the commercial real estate industry for 40 years. I do business in Brattleboro, Rutland, Bennington. I've been to everybody's town. I can tell you that Burlington used to be the beautiful go-to place. Everyone wanted to be here. Church Street was full. The decline that I've seen in the last five years is absolutely shocking. There's no consequences we just talked about to catch and release. It is a mess out here. Burlington obviously, and I know, is anybody here from Burlington? Thank you. So Burlington made a critical error, the biggest mistake they've made in 100 years, and defunded the police three or four years ago. The progressives convinced three other Democrats that that was the way to go, and here we are. The vacuum has been filled by criminal behavior at the highest level. The drug dealers are out in force. We know of at least three vehicles that make the rounds in Burlington. I know what the vehicles are. I know the license plate numbers, and they distribute the drugs. It is crazy what's happening here. And again, there's no accountability. We don't have the police force that we need, and thank God, I'll talk a little bit about this later, but thank God the governor has stepped up to help us here. But you look around Burlington, graffiti is absolutely out of control. Retail theft through the roof. I'm a landlord on Church Street as well. CVS Pharmacies, our tenant, they get robbed 20 to 30 times a day, and that's with a security guard standing there. Lululemon loses thousands of dollars of merchandise a week. So we've lost now, we have the biggest vacancy rate in probably the history of Church Street. There's 10 vacancies right now. Quality retailers like Fall Raven and Helly Hansen have left. Helly Hansen, as you probably have their merchandise, quality retailer worldwide, the problem in Burlington reached their boardroom level. They sat around the table and said, what happened to Burlington? We love Burlington. Up until about 18 months ago, when sales fell apart, retail theft was killing them, and they cannot hire staff to be in their stores. Their staff doesn't want to work in downtown Burlington. So we're losing quality retailers. We're backfilling those spaces with lower quality retailers right now. Candy stores and other things that are coming in. A vape store now wants to come to Church Street. It's not good. We've got drug needles everywhere. If you probably saw the report on CAX reported that the Howard Center, one block from Church Street, they hand out the needles. They had handed out over a million needles last year. Only half of them came back. The rest of them are littered all over Burlington. The storefronts are filled with people sleeping in the doorways in the morning in Burlington. You walk up Church Street, it's shocking. And we allow it to happen. What's that? The needles themselves, yeah. Oh, there's some of those reports. Yeah, yeah. And then of course, with all this mayhem out there, the level of business, 20 to 30 percent down in restaurants and retail sales. We used to have, our biggest problem used to be parking. We don't have a parking problem anymore. We have plenty of parking because nobody's coming downtown anymore. The biggest, the only thing that's really saving Burlington right now are the number of new hotel rooms that have opened up. That is the one thing, if it wasn't for those new hotel rooms, we'd be in real trouble. So what you talked about earlier, I hope there's an effort to convince the more liberal legislators that you have to make these reforms because there's no accountability anywhere in the system right now. What the business community has done to help everybody, we have an app on our phone now. There's 150 people that share real-time data on retail theft, drug abuse, drug dealing, and we have an ambassador. A number of private property owners have gotten together. We've hired an ambassador and his job is to go around and try to stop retail theft in his tracks. He's very engaged with the police. He's reporting what's going on in real time. He's making a real difference, but it's fallen on the business community to figure out how do we fill the gaps here because we're all suffering. And again, this goes back to accountability. Luckily, the governor has stepped up and we're hoping that law enforcement on the street is really visible and helpful with the state police down here now. I know it's about a couple of months for that service, I think. And of course, the court backlog with the new judge and prosecutor is going to help tremendously as well because now at least people that chatter on the street is there's going to be some accountability. I'm sorry, go ahead. I've heard similar things about that as well. I know the drugs come from Springfield Mass. And this is the other thing Burlington doesn't like to talk about. There's gang activity out here and there's sex trafficking out here. And nobody wants to talk about the gang word. For some reason, the progressives don't like to talk about it, but it's real. And these groups of guys come in and they hang out for a couple of days and then they leave. And then what they do is they have these Airbnbs and they take an Airbnb and so they move their drug trafficking around from different houses. So it's hard to figure out where they're going. But they're always in constant movement around here. Question? It's a great question because you're right. Fentanyl is a lethal substance. Fentanyl is death. There should be stricter laws in regards to fentanyl trafficking. It needs to be categorized as a lethal substance, not a controlled substance. I don't see where death is controlled. That's one step that we can take. But the other pieces, those are the laws that we currently have on the books. And until these laws change, we're going to continue to see an influx of narcotics moved into our state. Do I believe that it's an open door? I think our drug laws are very lax, which does allow opportunity for younger individuals. That's why I am so against raising the age. There are numbers out there and there is data out there that it is a younger group under the age of 18 that are trafficking into this state. They know they can get away with it because of how lax the laws are. And if we continue on this pace, yes, more are going to pass on for our inability to address it. Safe injection site isn't going to work. They're in delusional land in regards to that. That's just going to bring more influx. I don't mean to word salad your response. I don't have the answer until the laws change. We've got to get tougher on these. And I don't believe going to the punitive end is going to result. But there are times in those mechanisms, you've got to go punitive in those. You are bringing death. Therefore, we are going to punitively respond to that. I'm sorry that if you're going to be spending your life incarcerated behind bars, these are the choices you made. And these are the consequences that are going to be dropped upon you. This empathy response is not working. I think that's a wonderful question for our Attorney General Charity Clark. But that's really the question to our Attorney General Charity Clark. Where are you? How are you supporting the residents? How are you keeping us safe? I agree. I agree. They like to use where you're going with. They talk about harm reduction. Trust me. I do business in Burlington. As you know, it's la-la land here. Really? Yeah. Absolutely right. Go ahead. Yeah, you're right. One other thing in Burlington, I get the police bottle reports. The police put out the report on what happened. They used to put in all of the prior infractions were listed. And 14 missed court appearances, you know, 20 of these no trespass violations, and it was all listed. From what we can figure out, the mayor got together with Sarah George and went to the police chief and said no more. And so now you don't see all of the prior infractions. Exactly. But they're trying to hide the truth from us. I don't know who was next, but go ahead. They say if you see something, say something. They go in the house with a suitcase, and then they leave without it. Then they have guys come to the house between 11 and 3 every night. They check their wallet on the way in the door, and they're gone in five or ten minutes. And the state police tell me there's nothing illegal. It's disgusting. I called them just recently when scumbag tenants moved out, and the place was littered with needles, half-loaded syringes, all the tools and toys they used to shoot up. I tried to get the state police to come and just look at it. He told me we don't clean the apartment. Is that how you guys operate, really? And I called the tenants house, and I heard some things going on right next door, and I called protective services, and they just blew it right off. I don't know what they did, but... There's a question over there. She heard somebody talk on the phone saying a woman is certifiably crazy. She said she's mostly quiet. Four or five times a day, she'd have mental breakdowns. How would you like to live next to somebody saying, I want to kill you? We do need to figure out a way to be tougher on these drug dealers, because they're just, they end up killing people with their fentanyl. Anyway, you got a question? My personal thought on it is to continue doing what the administration is doing and enforce the immigration and strengthen that border with their officers to enforce it. I think they're doing the best that they can. Personally speaking, I'm not personally speaking, that's the law. You want to enter into this country illegally, that's pretty much a telltale sign of what the character is of that individual. I'm thankful for, we have a great immigrant population within this state that did it right, and I want to support them to the best that I can. But I do not support individuals coming into this nation already right off the bat breaking the law. I believe he's doing the best that he can, the federal administration, to manage it and get more interaction on up there to keep people from entering into this country illegally. We've hit the noon time. Thank you so much. Thanks everybody, appreciate it. And please do shop on Church Street before you leave town. Thank you.