SAFE Policing Update

At the selectboard meeting Tuesday (August 31, 2021) the town manager praised our consultant Graeme Donald of Police Scotland effusively. He said that the town would not proceed assertively with any action on the Safe Policing plan, but that he enjoyed many conversations with him and looked forward to more. He also praised himself for being candid. Kurt Daims asserted that this inaction on SAFE did not honor the recommendations of the Community Safety Review Team and was contrary to the town manager’s own Implementation Table, which required consultation with people with “lived experience”, which Officer Graeme had certainly provided. (Nor does this refusal not match the manager’s promise to act on the recommendations as a single proposal.) Daims mentioned that Brattleboro is a much safer place than cities in Scotland where police generally patrol without guns. He recommended the SAFE proposals for the Pilot Plan and SAFE official meetings would be a very modest start that the town could make and said BCS would continue to advocate for them. He also said that Brattleboro should benefit from the status of starting the Safe Policing Plan, which will be “transformative” for policing in the US, but that BCS would promote it outside Brattleboro.