Burlington spent hours this week arguing over "Burlington Forward," a Democratic-backed public-safety resolution aimed at open drug use, homelessness, threatening behavior, theft, encampments and disorder in public spaces. Democratic councilors moved it to committee over the objections of the mayor and Progressive councilors.

The proposal is not simply a call for more police. Its nine action items pair stronger enforcement with expanded emergency shelter and sanctioned camping, faster encampment response, a sustainable framework for behavioral health and substance use, zoning changes for public health services, and shared regional responsibility for homelessness.

The resolution rejects what it calls the false choice between compassion and public safety, states that compassion without accountability is not compassion, and requires monthly public reporting on encampment response and shelter outcomes.

The zoning language is where much of the fight is. The resolution opposes overdose prevention centers and syringe service programs in the downtown core, finding neither is a permitted principal use under the city's development ordinance. Opponents read that as using zoning to push harm-reduction services away from the people who use them.

At the City Council meeting, one opponent, Ashley Smith, offered a different prescription.

"Tax the rich. Fund social programs. Fund job programs. Fund education. Fund services directly targeting homeless people. Fund affordable housing. That's what we should do."

Supporters argued that downtown residents and businesses have been asked to tolerate too much disorder for too long, and that compassion cannot mean ignoring dangerous drug use or behavior that makes public spaces frightening for others.

That argument did not stay inside City Hall for long.

The Debate Walks Onto Church Street

Shortly after 10 p.m. at 16 Church Street, a shirtless man was recorded in an escalating confrontation with someone inside a business after apparently being denied access to a restroom. Asked his name at the outset, the man answers, "Jason Breault," and says he is diabetic and had no choice.

The person inside repeatedly called police, reporting that the man had urinated on the front patio, was slamming the door and was becoming aggressive.

The man then said, "I'm going to break your fucking window." The caller relayed that to dispatch. Seconds later the man walked it back: "If I wanted that fucking window, bro, it would be broke."

The man may need treatment or intervention. The person inside also has a right not to be threatened. That is the policy failure Burlington has not resolved, and the council had just spent hours debating it.

A Strange Echo From 2017

Nearly nine years earlier, a Jason Breault sat at the center of a similar dispute involving police, courts and mental-health capacity, covered by WCAX and, at greater length, by Seven Days.

FYIVT has not independently confirmed that the man in the current video is the same person. Seven Days gave Breault's age then as 41, which would make him about 50 today.

Police said Breault, who was homeless, was reported waving a knife near Church and Main streets before dawn on Sept. 30, 2017. Officers said he dropped it, ran when told to lie down, was tackled in City Hall Park, and cut an officer's hand with a small knife during the struggle. Seven Days reported that the item that drew the original call was later determined to be a gardening tool.

The department's news release emphasized that Breault had been charged with 29 crimes since December 2016 — a record Seven Days characterized as largely low-level, many for violating conditions of release. A judge set bail at $750, which Breault did not post.

Police union president David Clements said the public should be outraged that a known offender with more than 20 active cases was free to walk the streets armed, and then-Mayor Miro Weinberger called it unacceptable. Then-Chief Brandon del Pozo argued that some defendants need treatment and others need incarceration.

Chief Superior Judge Brian Grearson answered that what police were asking for — preventive detention — is not something Vermont's bail statute provides.

George Was Not a Bystander

Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George agreed with the officers' frustration in 2017 but said the judiciary was not the right target. She said Breault probably did not belong in prison and should be hospitalized based on his mental illness, but that hospitalization was getting harder because of bed space.

That explanation placed the constraint on the courts and the mental-health system. George had become state's attorney earlier that year.

In September 2020, she instructed her deputies to stop requesting cash bail, calling the practice discriminatory and counterproductive. She was the second prosecutor in the country to do so, after San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who advised her on the policy.

Asked when the effort began, George said her office had been limiting the cases in which it asked for bail "really since I've been state's attorney."

That is the same period in which she was explaining that bail outcomes were not the prosecution's to control.

George has said her office would still seek to detain defendants charged with violent felonies who pose a public safety threat, and no study has examined how the policy has played out in Chittenden County. She faces a primary challenge next week from Bram Kranichfeld, who argues her approach has made the county less safe.

George recently praised the accountability docket created after Gov. Phil Scott's public-safety initiative, saying it resolved 702 of the 972 dockets it started with over roughly three months.

That is an administrative accomplishment, not necessarily a public-safety outcome. Clearing a docket does not tell residents whether repeat offending declined, whether open drug use decreased, or whether downtown businesses experienced fewer threatening incidents.

The Mayor Says the Status Quo Is Unacceptable

Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak has defended her administration's strategy, pointing to police reinvestment, social workers, "hot spot" efforts, City Circle and the Situation Table. She has also called the status quo "absolutely unacceptable."

She opposed Burlington Forward, criticizing it for containing "dozens and dozens of different ideas" without enough prioritization — an objection difficult to square with her own insistence that Burlington's problems require a broad response spanning housing, policing, courts, treatment and regional cooperation.

The resolution also demands measurable outcomes from City Circle and the Situation Table, including participation, compliance, and enforcement after noncompliance.

Nearly Nine Years Later

Burlington officials were describing the same revolving loop in 2017: crisis, police intervention, court limitations, inadequate treatment capacity, release, repeat behavior, another police response.

In late August 2017, the City Council instructed two committees to draft an ordinance targeting repeat offenders and to review the city's social safety net. Seven Days reported that October that the work was ongoing.

This week, the council sent Burlington Forward to committee.

The intervening years produced a record. George took office in 2017 and has held it since. Her office stopped requesting cash bail in 2020. Del Pozo resigned in December 2019. Weinberger left office in April 2024 after 12 years. Burlington added the Situation Table, City Circle, a hot-spot working group, an accountability docket and, most recently, state police patrols on Church Street.

The corner has not changed. Church Street remains where the shelter beds, the service providers, the drug market and the foot traffic converge, which is why the same blocks generate the same calls.

Whether the man recorded at 16 Church Street this week is the same Jason Breault police arrested at Church and Main in 2017 is unconfirmed. The name is the same. The age fits. The street is the same.

The question is no longer whether city leaders understand the problem.

They do.