Criminal‑justice council urges edits to bill that would fine officers or strip certification

Christopher Burkell, executive director of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council and Police Academy, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that bill S‑208 raises certification and enforcement issues that the council cannot implement.

Burkell pointed to line items in the bill’s penalty section and said a statutory provision that would permit “loss of the officer’s professional licensure or certification” would be “problematic for us simply because … the council is the body that provides … certifications to all law enforcement officers that grants them their authority. We do not regulate, or certify federal law enforcement officers, so that's the first problematic piece, and we also have no authority to sanction them.”

He told senators that converting the proposed penalty to a civil fine (he cited "not more than 1000 dollars") would not trigger the council’s misconduct investigations, because those processes are tied to criminal category‑a offenses or to a statewide policy that could be enforced under category‑b processes. Burkell said an alternative would be to ask the Law Enforcement Advisory Board (LEAB) to draft statewide policy; he estimated that drafting and internal review could take roughly six to seven months.

Committee members debated whether a statutory approach or a LEAB‑driven policy would be preferable, how exceptions should be written (for example, search‑and‑rescue or cold‑weather scenarios), and whether the law should apply to all officers operating in Vermont. Some senators said they preferred a statutory rule for speed and public clarity, while others favored letting LEAB produce finer‑tuned guidance to avoid enforcement problems.

The committee scheduled markup next week and signaled it expects edits addressing certification, enforcement mechanism and exceptions before that session.