WCAX Exclusive: Inside the program changing Vermont’s approach to policing – Pt. 2

WILLISTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Former President Barack Obama helped coin the phrase “21st-century policing.” It’s an effort to identify best policing practices by building public trust and finding alternatives to use-of-force. In Vermont, it has included a million-dollar effort to embed mental health workers with police. In part 2 of her special report, Christina Guessferd looks at whether the renewed focus on mental health support is actually saving lives.

“It’s inherent in a police officer’s nature that we want to keep people safe. We want to protect people — even sometimes from themselves — but we’re bound by policy and law on how we act and react,” said Vermont State Police Sgt. Todd Wilkins.

“When you start talking about people’s mental health, their personal rights, and the safety of the world around them, it’s a complex conversation,” said Bill Elwell, a crisis specialist stationed at the Shaftsbury barracks.

That complex conversation in Vermont started several years ago but got much louder in 2020. That January, the Department of Public Safety under former Commissioner Mike Schirling’s leadership, submitted suggestions for modernizing policing methods.

Then in May, the murder of George Floyd triggered community outrage and a push to defund local police departments. By September, Governor Phil Scott issued an executive order accelerating a series of policing reforms. The following May, the Legislature enacted Act 27, amending the standards for law enforcement use of force. And from that executive order and law, a new statewide police use of force policy was born in October 2021, a seismic paradigm shift for Vermont law enforcement.

“‘Do no harm’ has become really everybody’s goal,” said Vt. Public Safety Commissioner Jennifer Morrison. “The ability to resolve situations humanely, compassionately, and without force becomes as important as how well you put bullets on the target down range or how many cases you close or tickets you write.”

Morrison acknowledges the volume of violence between law enforcement and mentally impaired people is under a microscope across the country. “The underlying issue was a mental health crisis, but it resulted in a use of force or injury or death to people involved in it — frequently the person experiencing the mental health crisis. And we didn’t want to see that happen in Vermont. We know it has happened in the past, but we were recognizing the frequency of the incidents and needed to better equip our officers to handle those situations, inevitable situations,” she said.

A public data dashboard on the Vermont State Police website tracks these inevitable situations. Over a five-year period from 2018 to 2022, the number of mental health-related use of force incidents dipped from 90 to 59. The greatest decline — in 2022 — was down 15% from the year before. That’s when embedded crisis specialists worked in all but one barracks.

“It is just a fact that responding with force when somebody is approaching with force is always going to be a reality of police work,” Morrison said. “Police officers were being asked to be social workers, mental health crisis clinicians, and peacekeepers, and we needed to give them more tools, it became clear.”

Tools explicitly described in the statewide use of force policy — “crisis teams or embedded social workers.” A subsection specifically dictates troopers are required to prioritize de-escalation strategies and avoid the use of force during interactions with mentally impaired persons.

“Time can almost always work in your favor,” Morrison said. “It’s the transactional nature that has changed. As opposed to valuing our time and an expedient, quick resolution to a sticky situation, we are now valuing the outcome, not the process by which we got there.”

“Slow down and create space.” During a role-playing scenario, Sgt. Wilkins and Bill Elwell demonstrate that mantra. The idea is, if the scene is safe, the clinician takes over while the trooper steps back. Meanwhile, by pairing them together, the trooper is constantly exposed to de-escalation tactics in practice.

“It’s not only just a partnership, but it’s an educational partnership,” said Mourning Fox, who took over as DPS’ first-ever mental health programs director in 2021. He says it’s a philosophy now woven into every lesson for all recruits at the Vermont Police Academy, showing them how to identify when a person’s behavior is driven by mental impairment.

Fox, who teaches that course, stresses that those symptoms don’t necessarily mean someone has a mental illness. “Almost any interaction with law enforcement is, at minimum, anxiety-provoking,” he said. The cornerstone of the concept is effective communication to foster calm cooperation and a productive discussion. “When the mind is extremely elevated, our ability to be rational is opposite. I think of it like the scales of justice. When our emotions are up here, our ability to be rational is down here.”

Reporter Christina Guessferd: Do you think now, de-escalation is considered as essential a skill as weapons training?

Mourning Fox: I think it’s getting closer… How we use our minds, our mouths, our ears, it’s a perishable skill just like it is how we use our sidearm or the OC spray or handcuffs.

Morrison says what had been a three-hour lesson is now core to the entire academy’s curriculum. “It needs to be front of mind that this is a skillset and they can master it,” she said. “That’s where I want to see this go in the next five years, is to just become a thread that runs throughout everything, from the time our officers are in the academy until they are out on the road performing their duties.”

And the troopers and crisis specialists — like Wilkins and Elwell — who are witnessing the changes, say it’s just the beginning.

“Being in this job for such a long time, I’ve seen the system fail a lot. And now, I’m seeing the system not fail,” Sgt Wilkins said.

“These aren’t just problems to be solved or cases to be closed. We’re dealing with human beings in the midst of life,” Elwell said.

“This shows that we care about them as individuals, that we’re not just there to arrest them, we’re not just there to remove them from situations. We’re there to try to provide them with resources, things that can truly help them get better,” added Wilkins.

Fox says anecdotal community feedback about the program has been completely positive and that a growing number of local police departments are exploring now ways to adopt the same approach. He says he’s confident data he’ll receive and evaluate by the end of summer will solidify evidence of the program’s success.

For the first full year of the program, every county’s designated mental health agency has been tracking the number of people in crisis who visit the emergency room. If fewer are filling ER beds waiting for psychiatric care, Fox says he can conclude more incidents are being resolved peacefully in the field.

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