By Kolby LaMarche

Crime in the Queen City neither surged nor receded in 2025, instead settling into what appears to be a fragile plateau after more than a decade of rising incident volume and several years of acute disruption, according to a comprehensive annual report delivered to the Burlington Police Commission on yesterday. 

The data, spanning incidents, offenses, and arrests from 2012 through the end of 2025, shows total incidents last year ticking up again comparative to other years, nearly matching 2016’s record. 

Incident data shows that while overall volume has steadied, the composition of police work has changed markedly. 

Discretionary activities such as traffic stops, foot patrols, and directed patrols—once a substantial share of police-initiated incidents—remain far below their pre-2020 levels. 

Discretionary incidents show a clear contraction beginning in 2020, with no meaningful rebound through 2025. However, officer-initiated contacts have been increasingly replaced by calls for service and service coordination responses, reflecting both staffing constraints and evolving enforcement priorities.

Service Coordination incidents, tracked since their introduction in 2022, increased again in 2025 and now represent a significant share of department activity. 

While exact totals were not disclosed, year-over-year comparisons show growth well above the 2022–2024 average, placing service coordination among the incident types with the greatest rate of change. 

Violent crime incidents, including simple assault, aggravated assault, robbery, reckless endangerment, and homicide, remained elevated compared to pre-pandemic baselines but showed no dramatic spike in 2025. 

Data charting violent incidents from 2020 through 2025 show year-to-year fluctuation, nonetheless high, rather than a clear upward or downward trend. Assault—simple and aggravated combined—continues to account for the majority of violent incidents, while homicide remains comparatively rare, though highly visible.

Data from 2020 to 2025 shows domestic assault remaining consistently high, with domestic violence–related incidents—defined more broadly to include cases where a domestic violence indicator was checked—outnumbering domestic assault alone. 

Commissioners were cautioned that these figures likely reflect both sustained social stressors and improved reporting practices rather than enforcement changes alone.

Property crime continues to massively dominate the city’s incident profile. Burglary and larceny incidents remained among the most frequent calls for service in 2025, with larceny from motor vehicles again ranking as the single most common category, followed by burglary, larceny from buildings, retail theft, and stolen vehicles. 

Maps included in the report illustrated persistent geographic concentration, with violent incidents clustering in and around the downtown core across all six years reviewed, with each year centralizing more. 

Offense data for 2025 shows a similar pattern of redistribution rather than expansion. Certain offense categories experienced notable declines compared to the prior four-year average, while others increased, but the overall offense count remained within the recent post-pandemic range. 

Arrests slightly increased, after a long-term decline. Data tracking arrests from 2012 through 2025 show last year BPD arrested 1,855 people, most for warrants or court orders. 

Drug arrests, which once comprised a substantial share of enforcement activity, have fallen sharply over the past decade. Data shows that by 2025, arrests involving drug charges—counted regardless of whether drugs were the most serious charge—represent a fraction of their 2012–2015 levels, though slowly increasing. 

When arrests did occur, they were increasingly concentrated among a narrower set of serious charges. Data comparing top arrest charges in 2025 to the 2021–2024 average show fewer arrests overall, but less dispersion across low-level offenses, reinforcing the department’s shift away from broad discretionary enforcement.

As of late January, the Burlington Police Department has 61 sworn officers, with only 51 available for duty. Ten officers are on long-term leave—five injured, two on family medical leave, two pending use-of-force review, and one on military orders. 

All ten are assigned to Uniformed Services, the bureau most directly responsible for patrol and first response, compounding operational strain.

Two new officer candidates joined the department on January 20 and are slated to attend the 121st session of the Vermont Police Academy beginning in February. 

Recruitment has improved modestly, with applications increasing by 32 percent from 2024 to 2025, though the department did not meet its target of four candidates for the January hiring cycle.

Department leadership also reported multiple internal transitions, including changes in recruitment, detective staffing, and leadership within the Community Assistance and Intervention Program. 

Despite these challenges, officials pointed to a series of policy revisions and program launches in 2025, including updates to body-worn camera rules, online incident reporting, public access to departmental directives, and the establishment of a Community Service Officer program.

The full report can be viewed here.