Burlington leaders pledge to fight drugs

Long before Tyson Williams was wounded in a drive-by shooting on North Street, before two brothers fatally overdosed on opiates in a Ward Street home, before Kevin DeOliveira was gunned down in the foyer of his Greene Street apartment, Bill Bissonette worried about drug trafficking in Burlington’s Old North End.

Bissonette, a lifelong neighborhood resident and one of the city’s most prominent landlords, witnesses the daily routine of the drug trade from his North Street office.

“Open transactions, people handing people dope and getting money in return,” he said.

Bissonette said some of his tenants are afraid to leave their homes and has considered hiring a private security officer to patrol his properties. Men Bissonette has never seen have come into his office and offered to pay six months’ rent in cash for an apartment, he said. He refuses to rent to people he suspects are involved in drug trafficking.

The drug trade in the city is cyclical, Bissonette said. Dealers are too business-savvy to stand on a street corner during a Vermont winter, he reasoned, but said their return is inevitable as the weather warms. This summer and fall, Bissonette has seen more drug activity than ever.

“This year it’s out of control,” Bissonette said. “This has been the height of what I’ve seen in my life on North Street.”

Drugs destroy families and discourage investment in the Old North End, Bissonette said. He had hoped a laundromat in one of his North Street properties would become a hub for the neighborhood, where many residents need access to laundry. A 2012 stabbing and drug activity there scared residents away, Bissonette said, and the laundromat closed earlier this year.

City leaders this month have promised to renew efforts to combat drug trafficking, spurred by two unsolved shootings police believe to be drug-related and a statewide push to combat opiate abuse.

The new Burlington police chief has promised a stronger police presence in the Old North End. City Councilors pledged to evaluate the police department funding and look for ways to shut down known drug houses. Mayor Miro Weinberger approves of both plans.

Bissonette is pleased city leaders have turned their focus to drug trafficking and offered police free office space to use as a North Street sub-station. He said he has seen more officers in the Old North End in recent weeks. But meaningful change in his neighborhood, he cautions, will take consistent, dedicated policing.

City Council steps in

Tyson Williams was shot the evening of July 28 as he stood in front of JR’s Corner Store on North Street, seven blocks from the Charles Street home of Jane Knodell. The City Council president said she was troubled by the shooting, which she said was out of character with the neighborhood.

“An innocent bystander could have been hurt, and I strongly suspected it was a dispute connected to the drug trade,” Knodell said.

Chief Brandon del Pozo confirmed to the Free Press on Thursday that police believe the Williams shooting was drug-related. Prosecutors have yet to bring charges in that case.

Drug trafficking, Knodell believed, was on the rise in the Old North End. She said her neighbors and a Burlington police lieutenant have witnessed drug dealing in Pomeroy Park and Russell Street.

“Things had escalated to the point where the city needed to act,” Knodell said.

Knodell and her close council confidant Kurt Wright, R-Ward 4, began work on a resolution that would examine the city’s efforts at combating drug trafficking.

Wright, who lives in the largely suburban New North End, said constituents told him they’d noticed an increase in drug activity there.

“I heard about people witnessing firsthand drugs being sold in parks near where they lived, near schools and playgrounds,” Wright said.

Fellow New North End Councilor Dave Hartnett, I-North District, said he is shocked by the brazen practices of drug dealers who constituents have told him operate along North Avenue.

“It’s open season — the people who are peddling these drugs sense no fear of being caught,” Harnett said. “There was a sense between myself and Councilor Wright and Councilor Knodell ... that it might be time for a full-court press on this issue.”

After making minor tweaks suggested by Mayor Miro Weinberger, councilors on Sept. 8 unanimously passed the resolution.

The resolution contains three action items: directs the council’s Board of Finance to evaluate the police department’s funding to determine if more resources are needed, asks the Weinberger administration to examine if existing statutes can be used to seize known drug houses in the city and asks the council’s public safety committee to explore the idea of a police substation on North Street.

The council will evaluate progress on those action items in October. Also this fall, Chief del Pozo plans to complete a report on his strategy for addressing drug trafficking.

Councilor Wright said he looks forward to the evaluation of police department funding and del Pozo’s report. He hopes councilors have made clear they will equip the administration and city police with the tools they need.

“We cannot tolerate any area of the city falling prey to this sort of thing,” Wright said. “If we need to allocate more resources to tackle this, we will.”

The mayor said he supports the council resolution, and said he picked del Pozo as his chief nominee in part because of del Pozo’s approach to policing drug trafficking.

“We have not been able to fully push this challenge back to the degree we had hoped to by now, and that’s causing us to reevaluate our entire response,” Weinberger said. “That’s why I have made this Chief del Pozo’s top priority since Day 1.”

Weinberger lives in the Hill Section but his daughter attends school in the Old North End.

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A historic home for new residents

The Old North End has long been home to immigrants and new residents. St. Joseph Cemetery on Archibald Street bears the 19th-century headstones of the Irish and French Canadian families who created the neighborhood. Later came Jews, Italians and Eastern Europeans.

Now, in part due to the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, the Old North End houses a new wave of immigrants from East Africa and Southeast Asia.

Many of these immigrants, as well as longtime residents of the neighborhood, are low-income.

Mary Alice McKenzie, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club on Oak Street, said she believes the opportunity to earn money lures some children into the drug trade. When drug dealers operate in areas like Roosevelt Park, across the street from the club, McKenzie said kids notice.

“If somebody has decided a certain piece of territory is where they’re going to do their selling, any child in that geography is going to come into contact with it,” McKenzie said. “If someone decides they’re going to offer someone $20 to carry a backpack of their product, there’s a young person who has been pulled in.”

McKenzie said the Boys & Girls Club has adopted a zero-tolerance policy to drug use. Staff ask teens to leave and contact their parents if they believe teens are under the influence of alcohol or drugs, she said. When teens are sober, they may return. The club also offers to connect teens with substance abuse treatment programs.

McKenzie, a former county prosecutor, stressed that only a fraction of the 1,200 who pass through the club’s doors each year use drugs. A smaller subset of that group is involved in drug distribution, she estimated.

Low-income kids, McKenzie cautioned, are far from the only ones falling prey to drugs. Nor is the Old North End the only neighborhood in the city where drug trafficking occurs, police have said.

“I think people who don’t live in the Old North End, who have greater resources, should be very concerned for their teenager,” McKenzie said. “You can find drugs anywhere you want to find them.”

In her neighborhood, McKenzie has focused on creating programming in Roosevelt Park. The Boys and Girls Club sponsors basketball, tennis and soccer leagues and other events.

McKenzie has noticed an inverse relationship between the number of programs the club sponsors and the amount of drug dealers in the park. Combined with increased policing, McKenzie believes Old North End residents can make their neighborhood unattractive to drug traffickers.

“They don’t want to be seen,” McKenzie said of local dealers. “The more they’re seen and the more they’re picked up off the street, the higher their cost of business is. It becomes too much of a hassle.”

Walking the beat

Burlington police Cpl. Brent Navari chatted with neighbors and shopkeepers as he strolled along North Street Thursday afternoon. He said officers walk the warren of Old North End streets most days now.

The street is quiet. Haggard men sit along a thin line of shade outside the Lawrence Barnes elementary school, looking with curiosity at a news photographer, while an unseen radio blasts the Rolling Stones.

But as night falls, Navari said, the street corners bustle with activity — including loitering, public drinking and drug dealing.

Navari, a Burlington native and 12-year veteran of the force, said simply having an officer on the street deters crime. He likes walking a beat because he can develop a relationship with residents and business owners. They worry about drugs in their neighborhood, he said.

“People are sick of it,” Navari said. “They have friends who have overdosed and family members who have died from it.”

Navari stepped out of the record-setting September heat into the Shopping Bag, a popular store and burger place on the corner of North and Lafountain streets. He joked with co-owner Josh Clayton, who asked if the corporal would order “the Navari,” a patty-between-two-doughnuts burger Clayton named in his honor.

Kidding aside, Clayton said he’s pleased to see officers come by. People often loiter in front of his store, and he worries about how that impacts his business.

“They’ve been around quite a bit more in the last few weeks,” Clayton said. “There doesn’t appear to be as much going on out front.”

Back on North Street, a resident stopped Navari to thank him for walking the neighborhood.

“This is the worst block right here, from JR’s to the the Shopping Bag,” the man said before moving on.

Navari said he agreed, and said officers focus much of their efforts on the section of North Street near Rose, Lafountain and Murray streets.

The increase in cops on the beat can’t be solely attributed to unseasonably warm weather. Chief del Pozo, who assumed command Sept. 1, said he has listened to residents who want more uniforms in their neighborhoods.

“I believe that some of the best police work is done on the street by officers interacting with the community,” del Pozo said. “What you’re seeing is part of that.”

Del Pozo said he intends to focus foot patrols in the Old North End, where officers can disrupt patterns of drug distribution. The chief said anecdotal and statistical evidence points to an increase in opiate use citywide.

“If there’s an increase in heroin use, it stands to reason there’s an increase in heroin dealing,” he said.

Del Pozo champions community-based policing, where officers are deeply embedded in the neighborhoods they patrol. He plans to use a variety of enforcement tactics, from low-level dealing arrests to high-level conspiracy cases, to connecting addicts with treatment.

Del Pozo said he won’t hesitate to seek assistance from federal law enforcement agencies and U.S. Attorney Eric Miller, whose office has prosecuted major drug cases in Vermont in recent years.

Judging whether his department is under-funded would be premature, del Pozo said, but added he will ask the City Council for more resources should he reach that conclusion.

“Community policing requires greater staffing levels and officer hours than 911-based policing,” Del Pozo said.

The multi-pronged drug trafficking resolution, he said, shows councilors are prepared to support their new police chief.

“It recognizes there is a full range of solutions, and one of them is good policework,” del Pozo said. “It lets my cops know city government cares about them being able to do their job.”

Turning the corner

Bissonette and McKenzie, whose families have been fixtures of the Old North End for generations, like what they’ve seen in recent weeks. Cops are on the streets, talking to residents, telling loiterers to move along.

“The police are interacting with the people in the neighborhood,” Bissonette said. “People like to see that type of policing.”

Bissonette said he was delighted to see a lieutenant among the officers on foot patrol – long a rite of passage for rookie cops.

The longtime residents said they have been impressed with their interactions with del Pozo. They also see no need to wait for his report on the department’s funding levels. They want to see a larger police force now.

“I’m already there,” McKenzie said. “I believe Burlington police have not been properly resourced for some time.”

Devoting more resources may require some sacrifice from city taxpayers such as herself, McKenzie said, but added she can think of no greater priority for tax dollars.

“We can talk about community policing all we want, but if we don’t have the manpower, what are we talking about?” McKenzie said.

Mayor Weinberger, councilors, city cops and their chief say they are under no illusion combating drug trafficking in the Old North End and other neighborhoods will be an easy task. Del Pozo inherited two unsolved shootings and a department some believe is understaffed and underequipped.

At a Sept. 16 news conference in which police announced they’d arrested 12 suspected drug traffickers statewide and seized $200,000 worth of heroin, U.S. Attorney Eric Miller warned much work was left to be done.

Del Pozo, only in his third week on the job, said he believes his roughly 100 officers and detectives are capable of delivering results. He said he is pleased the City Council has advocated a variety of enforcement methods, from prevention and recovery programs to aggressive criminal prosecution.

“What I like about Burlington is that it doesn’t have its head in the sand at this point about heroin trafficking and how it can affect crime and quality of life,” del Pozo said.

Bissonette said he has already seen signs of progress.

“I have been for five years pleading with the police department for more of a presence to help us take back the neighborhood,” Bissonette said. “I think this new chief gets it.”

This story was first published Sept. 20, 2015.

Contact Zach Despart at 651-4826 or zdespart@burlingtonfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ZachDespart.