Burlington, Vermont, once a peaceful college haven, now grapples with chaos after slashing its police force.
The city defunded its police department in 2020, cutting over 30 officers from a 90-member force and shifting resources to social workers, only to face rampant homelessness, drug issues, and mental health crises while struggling to rehire cops who refuse to return, as NewsNation reports.
In 2020, Burlington leaders chose to invest heavily in social service providers embedded within the police department. This progressive agenda prompted a mass exodus of officers, leaving the force severely understaffed. “The city made a decision to invest more in social service providers that are based in the police department, and less in police officers over time,” said Shawn Burke, interim police chief for the Burlington police department.
Burke’s own words reveal how the signal to prioritize social workers over sworn officers drove departures in droves -- hardly the utopian outcome some envisioned. Five years later, the city desperately tries to reverse course by recruiting officers again.
Yet many former cops flatly refuse to come back, citing burnout and broken trust. One anonymous officer who left the Burlington police department summed it up: “Everything changed.” That terse admission captures the seismic shift from proactive policing to reactive triage.
“Maybe only having two or three officers on a shift when you should have seven or eight,” the anonymous officer who left the Burlington police department added.
Such skeletal staffing means no bandwidth for community engagement or preventive work -- only racing from one emergency to the next. “It becomes is someone dead or dying? You go from there first, and then if you have any spare time to catch up on paperwork, that kind of stuff, there is no time,” the anonymous officer who left the Burlington police department explained.
He called the experience “a borderline nightmare,” a polite understatement for the daily grind that chased veterans away. NewsNation reporters walking downtown Burlington witnessed the fallout firsthand: graffiti scarring buildings, homeless individuals camped in parks and alleys.
Drug addiction and mental health breakdowns now play out in plain sight, eroding the quaint charm that once defined the town. Business owner Mark Bouchette offered a measured take on the idealistic push behind defunding.
“I’m hard-pressed to impugn their motives. I think there is a strain of folks who truly believe in a perfect world that police are not necessary,” Bouchette said. His charitable nod to good intentions quickly pivots to reality: perfection remains elusive, and Burlington pays the price.
Interim Chief Burke framed the city as a real-time case study in progressive policy. “This is being a defund city, this is a live experiment as well,” Burke said. Calling it an experiment sounds clinical, but the human toll -- overworked officers, unsafe streets -- feels anything but academic.
The original 90-officer department now limps along with barely 60, forcing remaining cops into impossible choices. Prioritizing life-or-death calls leaves petty crime, quality-of-life issues, and community trust to fester unchecked. Attempts to lure officers back highlight the irony: the same council that slashed the budget now begs for reinforcements.
Refusals from seasoned pros underscore a deeper lesson -- once you break morale and public safety, rebuilding takes more than a hiring poster. Downtown decline serves as a visible scorecard of the defund gamble.
What was once a vibrant college hub now battles open drug use and unchecked vagrancy, symptoms of a system that bet on social workers alone. Burlington’s story warns other cities flirting with similar cuts: ideology untethered from street-level reality breeds disorder, not justice.
Residents and businesses deserve better than serving as guinea pigs for unproven theories. As the city scrambles to restore its police ranks, the nightmare label from that departed officer lingers -- a reminder that common-sense policing, not wishful thinking, keeps communities whole.
