Burlington's police department used force against Black residents a record 99 times in 2025, the highest number since the city began tracking this data in 2012. Black residents make up less than five percent of Burlington's population but were involved in over a quarter of all use-of-force incidents that year, a rate roughly six times their share of the population, according to a VTDigger analysis of city data.

In one case, Burlington's own Police Commission ruled that officers violated department policy when they restrained a Black child with emotional and intellectual disabilities and had paramedics inject him with ketamine, after a call that began over a report of stealing. The police chief at the time overruled the commission and called the force appropriate. His mother sued the city and settled this year for $150,000.

In another case, an officer punched a man with serious mental illness who was later found dead. That officer received only a written reprimand, for swearing, and is now named in a separate pending lawsuit accusing him of excessive force again.

Burlington taxpayers have paid almost $1.5 million to settle five use-of-force lawsuits since 2019, plus another $747,500 in legal fees defending the department in court, according to public records. Officers keep facing little to no consequence, even when the city's own oversight board finds they were wrong.

Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak has called the disparities "a serious equity concern" that "requires us to examine how policing practices, policies, and broader community conditions contribute to these outcomes," in a statement to VTDigger. It is time to back that statement with action. The Burlington City Council can give the Police Commission real, binding power to enforce discipline when it finds a violation, instead of leaving the final word to the police chief.

Sign the petition to give Burlington's Police Commission binding authority over police discipline, before another family pays the price for a system with no real accountability.