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VTDigger condensed more than two hours of bodycam footage from various Burlington police officers into this 9-minute compilation of the incident on June 17, 2017.

BURLINGTON — The man whose request to view police body camera footage in 2017 reached the Vermont Supreme Court this year has finally seen the videos in question, and says he’s still dissatisfied with how officers handled a series of arrests in a city park.



About two weeks after the high court ruled in his favor, Reed Doyle viewed the body camera footage he had requested more than two years earlier, when he witnessed Burlington officers using what he considered excessive force on a group of black teenagers in Roosevelt Park.



The Burlington Police Department had initially denied Doyle’s request to inspect the footage from the June 17, 2017, incident, then said it would charge him hundreds of dollars to redact the video before showing it to him.



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Doyle then sued the department under Vermont’s Public Records Act. The court ruled in September that members of the public could not be charged fees for inspecting public records, a landmark ruling that has already fallen under scrutiny in its implementation.



After seeing the footage for the first time last month, Doyle said he still believed the police response was out of proportion.



“It was just a basketball court scuffle,” Doyle said. “It just seemed a little bit heavy handed to me.”



VTDigger obtained more than two hours of body camera footage of the incident. The recordings show officers threatening to pepper spray a group of black teenagers and arresting three young men.



While some viewers agree with Doyle that the footage reveals law enforcement overreach, others say the arrests appear to be justified.



Vermont ACLU attorney Jay Diaz, who represented Doyle in his lawsuit, says the officers’ behavior in the video reflects why there are a disproportionate number of young black men in the criminal justice system.



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“What we see in the video is, unfortunately, something that happens far too often in Vermont and around the country,” Diaz said. “Black children are being criminalized without good cause, because officers escalate and arrest as the first resort instead of the last.”



Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo said he believed the officers handled the situation as best they could, and said the department has taken steps to improve its responses to similar situations.



“We prefer to defuse it calmly,” he said, “but those kids were really arguing with each other, and there’s a lot of them, and they were at least as interested in antagonizing each other as they were confronting the police.”



Del Pozo said the department now sends its school resource officers to the park when they get a call about school-aged youth. The resource officers often have personal relationships with the kids and are able to use that knowledge to defuse situations, del Pozo said.



The department ultimately wants to avoid situations where officers put their hands on youth and threaten pepper spray, del Pozo said.



“We also recognize seven, eight or nine kids in a park confronting each other and the police can be volatile,” del Pozo said.



‘I suggest you guys leave’



Officer Cory Campbell’s body camera captured two kids fighting over a phone when he arrived at the park.

The body camera footage shows Officer Cory Campbell arriving at Roosevelt Park in the Old North End on June 17, 2017, and engaging with a group of African-American teenagers. The video is redacted to conceal the identity of the teenagers.



When Campbell arrives, several teenagers are arguing over a phone. The officer attempts to break up the fight. Campbell tells the young men that the phone is not worth fighting over.



“I suggest you guys leave,” Campbell says, as the teenagers continue to debate the situation.



After one teenager appears to throw a punch at another, Campbell grabs him and pulls him away. As the teenager starts to walk back toward the person he was fighting with, Campbell tells him to back up.



“Back up, you’re going to get sprayed,” Campbell says.



Diaz said the threat of pepper spray was an unnecessary escalation by the officers.



“What officers need to be trained on is de-escalation, and preventing their implicit biases from leading them to escalate situations in particular with young black men and boys,” Diaz said.



Del Pozo said that Campbell was “taking pains” to ensure that the argument between the two teenagers did not escalate into physical violence, and did a good job doing so.



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“We want officers to resolve these situations without using force, and I’d say the threat of force is better than a use of force if it gets the job done,” he said.



Sgt. Thomas Nash arrives on scene, and Campbell explains that the two teenagers have been fighting. Nash asks Campbell if there is enough to charge them, and Campbell says he believes there is enough for disorderly conduct charges. The officers then arrest both of the teenagers involved in the altercation.



ACLU Vermont staff attorney Jay Diaz represented Reed Doyle in his Supreme Court case. Photo by Mike Dougherty/VTDigger

Whether or not the behavior has been bad enough to bring charges should never be an officers’ first question after arriving on the scene, Diaz said.



“That should never be the first question in a situation where it didn’t appear that there was any crime occurring,” Diaz said. “There’s just no need. We’re talking about kids here doing a lot of what looked like to me to be typical childhood behavior.”



Del Pozo said Nash hadn’t witnessed the initial dispute between the teens and was trying to gather information.



The footage also shows Officer Oren Byrne approaching a teen, telling him to put his hands behind his back and saying he will “spray the shit out of him” if he doesn’t comply. Byrne is then informed that he had approached the wrong teen and apologizes.



A crowd forms near the police car that one of the teenagers is being put into, and Officer Meaghan O’Leary says that she will “spray” the teens unless they walk away.



O’Leary is later seen shaking her pepper spray canister in the direction of the teenagers, who then disperse.



No officers used their pepper spray.



Nash tells another officer that the police need to “send a message” every time they respond to a fight in the park.



“It’s just going to be DC [disorderly conduct], but we need to send a message,” Nash said. “Every time we come here and there’s a fight, people are leaving in handcuffs.”



Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo discusses the department’s use of force policy before the City Council in Burlington on Monday, May 13, 2019. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Del Pozo said a small group of teenagers had been creating dangerous situations in the park in 2017, but that police have been responding to fewer calls at the park in recent years as those teens have grown up or moved on.



“We’ve had parents of children say that their children are afraid to play in that park because there ended up being fights, robberies and disputes,” del Pozo said.



Diaz said that the incident was one of a handful around that time in which young black boys and men were targeted for arrest based primarily on their speech.



The ACLU sent the Burlington Police a letter in 2017 listing examples of black men and boys in Burlington who were arrested for disorderly conduct after using “crude or offensive language toward police” despite not using “violence, force or clear threats.”



Del Pozo said that the department partnered with the Chittenden County State’s Attorney’s Office for a presentation to officers on the current case law on disorderly conduct and stressed people have the right to express themselves.



“The emphasis is not just on the case law, it’s to, especially when it comes to youth, resolve situations without charging and arrest whenever possible, and to privilege speech whenever possible,” he said.



Del Pozo said overall arrests have gone down in recent years but data on disorderly conduct arrests was not immediately easily accessible.



The footage also shows a third teenager apparently arguing with Byrne near where the first two arrests are taking place. Byrne pushes the teenager twice. The teen starts to walk away, then Byrne follows him and arrests him. Byrne’s body camera audio is not turned on.



Sgt. Thomas Nash speaks to one of the kids in the park, in the bodycam footage of Officer Padric Hartnett.

“You can not be acting like this,” Nash tells the teen in a recording from Officer Padric Hartnett, who approaches while the arrest is taking place.



In her cruiser, O’Leary explains to one of the teenagers why she arrested him.



“When you’re causing a scene like that, trying to play big and tough, thinking you are untouchable and screaming in the park where there are little kids around, it’s going to get you arrested every time,” she said.



Doyle, who was walking his dog near the park, is visible at the end of the video speaking to Sgt. Nash. Doyle appears to suggest that the youths were being treated disrespectfully because they were disadvantaged.



“That’s not my problem,” Nash replies.



“As a peace officer, I think it is also your problem,” Doyle says on the recording.



Doyle told VTDigger that he viewed the footage at the Burlington Police Department on Sept. 30, about two weeks after the Supreme Court decision.



After watching the footage, Doyle said he still thought the police response was excessive.



“You see the kid obviously get pushed, and that’s assault,” Doyle said. “I don’t care how you cut it. The kid was not obstructing justice, he got pushed, and it’s going to affect him for the rest of his life.”



Doyle said he was also concerned that some of the officers’ body camera audio was not turned on for portions of the footage.



“It just seemed a little bit overhanded, it was just a basketball court scuffle,” Doyle said.



‘Better than the laying on of hands’



Del Pozo said the department’s strategy of having school resource officers respond to the park has been successful in de-escalating situations.



“They know most of the kids and they have a good rapport and they are able to use the knowledge of individual kids to resolve situations as smoothly as possible,” he said.



Burlington-based civil rights attorney Robert Appel said that he didn’t see much use of force from officers. Since punches were being thrown and threats were being exchanged, Appel said he believed the officers did have probable cause to arrest the teens for disorderly conduct.



Attorney Robert Appel. File photo by Cory Dawson/VTDigger

“I can’t really fault the cops for taking the kids into custody,” he said.



Appel said that the officers gave the teens plenty of opportunity to de-escalate the situation, and the threat of pepper spray was better than alternatives.



“It’s better than the laying on of hands,” Appel said.



Appel said he was more concerned that some officers did not have the audio on their body cameras on than the officers’ behavior in this case.



Campbell is still on administrative duty after he punched Douglas Kilburn, a Burlington man who died days later, during an altercation with police in March.



The chief medical examiner ruled Kilburn’s death a homicide, and Attorney General T.J. Donovan is currently reviewing the Vermont State Police’s investigation of the incident.



Campbell was also named in a lawsuit filed by three African-American brothers alleging police brutality.



Diaz said the escalation in the Roosevelt Park incident lines up with these other cases of excessive force. A special committee appointed by the city council is currently reviewing police policies.



Since those involved in the Roosevelt Park incident were under 18, their records would be sealed in state juvenile court. All three teenagers went through the court diversion process and will not have a criminal record associated with the incident, del Pozo said.



“The goal is to get kids through adolescence with no criminal record with no criminal history and also make sure they can feel safe,” he said. “Vermont is cognizant of it, you have a lot of leeway when you’re an adolescent and you’re brought in front of the court, and I think that’s appropriate.”



While officers said the charge was “just” a disorderly conduct charge, Diaz said the arrests would have a lingering impact on the teens, and officers need better de-escalation training.



“The data tells us that if you get involved in the juvenile justice system, you’re much more likely to end up in a criminal system as an adult, end up dropping out of school, end up not going to college,” Diaz said. “There’s just all these negative impacts that are bad for the person but also bad for society at large.”

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