Leftist-Run City in Vermont Having 2nd Thoughts After It Defunded Police: ‘A Mistake’

A city that followed the national anti-police mania of 2020 is learning the hard way just how big a mistake that was.

Burlington, Vermont — which gave socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders his start in elected office four decades ago — made a conscious decision four years ago to cut its police force amid the riots that plagued the country after the death of accused counterfeiter George Floyd.

Now, overrun by crime, drug addiction and homelessness, the city has attempted to change course, but progress hasn’t been easy, Fox News reported Friday. In fact, when it comes to police numbers, it’s pretty well non-existent.

And the results have been utterly predictable.

“I think we’ve seen increased drug trafficking and drug use,” City Council President Ben Traverse, a Democrat, told Fox News Digital.

Traverse won a second two-year term in March, as reported by the VTDigger, an online newspaper in the Green Mountain State. He was not on the city council when the council voted to cut its police force through attrition, but he’s well aware of what’s followed.

“You’ve seen increased circumstances of retail theft as well, and a lot of crimes that revolve around that — increased gun-related crimes and other violence that comes with an increase in drug trafficking. Those are the kinds of issues that we’ve been dealing with here.”

Ernie Pomerleau, president and CEO of a local real estate company, agreed.

He told Fox Digital that drug addiction, crime and homelessness have all risen since the decision to reduce policing.

He said he disagreed with reducing police four years ago, but the leftists running the city had their way.

“And so, they allowed attrition to take down the police force – that was a mistake,” Pomerleau told Fox News Digital.

“We need to support the police.”

In 2020, the city council voted to cut its police force by 30 percent, from 105 to 74, according to Fox.

It has since attempted to backpedal on that, raising the department’s approved staffing level to 87 in 2022 and again this year, but there aren’t enough takers. The department currently has a staff of 68 officers, according to Fox.

And now? According to Fox, “violent crime is up significantly in Burlington, with crime data showing that aggravated assault has increased 40 percent and gunfire has gone up nearly 300 percent. Some local residents told Fox they find it ‘dangerous’ to be out in public at night.”

Burlington isn’t alone in seeing the consequences of “defund the police” hysteria.

Cities like Portland, Oregon, Oakland, California, and Minneapolis — where the George Floyd craze began — have all seen crippling quality-of-life issues from their hostility to law enforcement.

If Burlington residents are truly making the connection between leftist policies and the results that follow, it isn’t showing up in the election results. In the March election that returned Traverse to office, VTDigger reported, the city elected a candidate from the Progressive Party as mayor and gave Progressives a fifth seat on the 12-member city council.

Democrats hold six seats and an independent holds one.

So a city that was run by a Democratic mayor and council in 2020 is now run by a Progressive mayor and Democratic/Progressive council.

That means leftist policies and politics are probably easier to find than police officers — and it’s likely to remain that way.

In a letter posted to its page on Wednesday, the Burlington Police Officers Association — the union that represents the city’s officers — charged city leaders with failing to support its officers, which the union said was reflected in the fact that Vermont Police Academy cadets showed no interest in working in the city.

In an interview with WCAX-TV in Burlington, Democratic City Councilwoman Joan Shannon described the situation in realistic terms.

“We’re losing more officers than we’re gaining and that is obviously not sustainable,” she told the station.

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