MIDDLEBURY, Vt. (WCAX) – The relationship between Addison County’s prosecutor and law enforcement has gone from bad to worse in the course of two weeks. It began with DUI-refusal charges against Eva Vekos last Thursday after police said she got behind the wheel after drinking. Now, a disparaging email chain between Vekos and law enforcement is calling into question the state’s attorney’s relationship with local police.

Addison County Sheriff Michael Elmore has called Eva Vekos’ conduct unprofessional and says bridges have been burned. “To talk to us in that way was shocking to say the least,” he said.

It started as an email by Vekos Tuesday to county law enforcement regarding the policies for filing paperwork with her office. Vermont State Police Lt. Thomas Mozzer then recommended the group discuss this at their chiefs’ meeting. Vekos replied, “Because I no longer feel safe around law enforcement, I will join the next chiefs’ meeting by video.” Citing a grammatical error in the email from Mozzer, Vekos added, “It’s too bad, I would have loved to teach grammar skills to bring police up to the elementary school level at least.”

“Following her arrest last week, it just seems with this email–combined with that–our relationship has definitely tanked, and it needs to be fixed somehow,” Elmore said.

It’s unclear what Vekos meant by her response. She did apologize at the end of the e-mail thread. We called her office to get more information but did not hear back. Her attorney, David Sleigh, also did not respond immediately.

Jared Carter, a professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, says with a pending criminal case against Vekos, there could be significant implications of her ability to do the job. “They have to live up to a higher standard, maybe not legally but certainly from a moral and ethical perspective than other people in that county. I think it has a dramatic impact on the ability of a state’s attorney to continue to prosecute crimes in that county,” he said.

The DUI case is being prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office and Vekos will remain in her role as prosecutor, but Carter says this adds fuel to ongoing conversations at the Statehouse about how to deal with state’s attorney misconduct. “I can’t imagine it doesn’t impact the appetite in Montpelier to amend the Vermont Constitution to make it easier to remove state’s attorneys in light of what’s happening across the state. I would anticipate we’ll see additional momentum to make changes to prevent this sort of thing in the future,” he said.

Under the Vermont Constitution, an elected official like a state’s attorney or sheriff can only be removed by impeachment or by voters. It’s unclear what the Legislature will do in response to this situation.

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