By WILSON RING
Associated Press
MONTPELIER, Vt. — Vermont police have fired their weapons at suspects in five instances this year, the most in one year and double the average since the attorney general’s office began investigating all officer-involved shootings 17 years ago.
The most recent was Thursday, when a state trooper in Bristol shot and wounded a woman who was waving a gun and refused officers’ order to put it down.
“I wish I could tie a thread together and say this is the common thread, but each of these cases or instances has their own set of circumstances that led up to it,” Col. Thomas L’Esperance, the head of the Vermont State Police, said Monday.
Some of the cases involve drugs or alcohol, some arise from domestics disturbances or mental health crises, said L’Esperance, who noted there have been 19 officer-involved shootings since he became head of the state police in 2009.
“It’s not a number we’re proud of, but it’s a number that speaks to the decisions that are being made by people across Vermont that in years past we just didn’t see,” L’Esperance said.
He said he didn’t know why “people are resorting to violence that much quicker” or are unafraid “to point a weapon or attack a police officer with a deadly weapon.”
There have been 41 officer-involved shootings in Vermont since 1997, according to attorney general’s office records requested by The Associated Press. Of those, 15 were fatal, 13 resulted in injuries and in 10 cases there were no injuries. In two cases, police fired but the fatal shot was determined to be self-inflicted. In one case, it is unknown if there were injuries.
The investigations of two cases are pending.
Two cases were referred for prosecution of the officer involved.
On Monday, John Treadwell, head of the attorney general’s criminal division, did not offer an interpretation of what the records show.
“There are years when there are more and there are years when there are none. The absolute numbers are still low,” Treadwell said. “We review each case when it comes in.”
Allen Gilbert, executive director of the Vermont Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he hoped the numbers could be used to find ways to reduce future shootings.
“The recent uptick is really disturbing,” Gilbert said. “The problem with the shootings is that even when there’s a ruling that the shooting was legal, they’re still awful.”
In one of the cases referred for prosecution, an Essex County sheriff’s deputy was charged with reckless endangerment in a 1998 shooting in which he fired warning shots in an attempt to stop a fleeing motorcyclist. No one was injured. He was acquitted at trial.
A 2013 case against a Winooski police officer who wounded a suspect during a struggle is pending.
A number of others were referred to grand juries for prosecution, but those panels refused to indict. By law, those cases remain secret, Treadwell said.
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