Soon after taking over as South Burlington’s police chief last fall, Bill Breault began looking for ways to improve his new department. Almost immediately, he heard from residents who were concerned about speeding and other dangerous behaviors on the road. Tens of thousands of cars pass throu gh South Burlington, a main commuter thoroughfare, each day. He’s noticed the reckless road habits himself when driving the interstate in his personal time. “My wife and I joke that no matter how fast you’re going on 89, there’s always somebody going faster than you,” he said. In Vermont, as in much of the rest of the country, “everybody’s in a rush to get to the next red light.” And yet South Burlington would go on to make fewer than 800 traffic stops in all of 2025. Breault, who spent 26 years as a cop in Dover, N.H., including the past seven as the city’s chief, believed the number should be much higher. He came up with a back-of-the-napkin annual figure he thought would be doable: 4,000 to 5,000, the equivalent of 10 to 14 stops each day. “That’s a reasonable expectation the community should have of us, so that’s the expectation I put on our officers,” Breault said in an interview last week. So far in 2026, South Burlington has pulled over about 3,300 drivers and is on pace to reach 5,000 by year’s end. The reasons for the stops have run the gamut, Breault said, from equipment-related violations — think busted taillights or overdue inspections — to failing to follow the rules of the road: excessive speeding, running a red light, passing a stopped school bus, texting while driving. Once considered a pillar of policing, traffic stops have been declining nationally as departments have faced staffing shortages and demands for criminal justice reform in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. But South Burlington is bucking that trend, hoping that more aggressive traffic enforcement will lead to safer roads — a plausible belief despite mixed data. The city appears to be an outlier in Chittenden County, where most other large departments are pulling over far fewer cars. Essex stopped about 1,400 motorists last year, compared with more than 5,000 in 2019. Over that same time frame, traffic stops in Williston declined from 4,200 to 1,700; in Milton, 3,850 to 1,123; and in Burlington from 5,500 to about 1,000. The only department close to South Burlington’s level of activity is Colchester, where police are on pace to pull over about 3,200 drivers, which would be the most since 2018. In South Burlington, Breault stressed that he did not implement a quota, per se. Instead, he’s made clear that he expects every officer, not just those assigned to traffic details, to enforce the rules of the road. “We’re paying officers to be out there for 12 hours a shift. They should be working for 12 hours, right?” Breault said. “It’s not just driving around and waiting to respond to calls for service. We have to be proactive.” Cops in Vermont have historically pulled over drivers at rates far higher than the national average. After hovering around 170,000 in the years leading up to the pandemic, the number of traffic stops conducted by Vermont law enforcement plummeted in 2020 amid COVID-19 lockdowns, according to data collected by University of Vermont researcher Stephanie Seguino and two coauthors. But while the flow of traffic has returned to normal, the rate of stops hasn’t. State law enforcement agencies pulled over about 100,000 drivers in 2024. One factor in Chittenden County, according to local police, was State’s Attorney Sarah George’s decision in 2022 to stop prosecuting most charges stemming from traffic stops for minor matters, such as a busted headlight, because people of color are disproportionately affected. These so-called pretextual stops now make up far fewer of the overall stops in Chittenden County compared to before George’s decision, according to the data. Local agencies also say they’re responding to an increasing number of 911 calls, particularly those related to low-level crimes and homelessness, leaving less time for traffic stops. As enforcement has waned, local officials say complaints about poor driving have increased. Burlington City Council President Ben Traverse (D-Ward 5) said he’s already hearing about speeding, reckless driving and excessive engine noise on the Champlain Parkway, the city’s newest road. And two recent high-profile crashes — a Pine Street collision that killed a 16-year-old cyclist and another in the Old North End involving a bus and a young woman on a scooter — have reanimated the public discussion about road safety. Traverse moved to Burlington 14 years ago and, during his evening commute, would often spot a city police cruiser in the parking lot of Champlain Elementary School on Pine Street. “And you knew that if you weren’t watching your speed and got going a little bit too fast, you were potentially going to get into trouble,” he said. Those days are over. Without the threat of consequences, Traverse said, the social contract among drivers begins to erode. Burlington’s interim police chief, Shawn Burke, said his department began pulling back on traffic enforcement about a decade ago to focus on foot patrols. The department’s ongoing staffing crisis — with just 55 sworn officers, down from 92 in June 2020 — has further reduced its ability to police the roads, he said. What little discretionary time officers have is now spent downtown, where there’s been a rise in crime and disorder connected to the city’s unhoused population, Burke said. Vermont State Police did patrol downtown for a few weeks this summer, but city leaders want more help. Last month, Traverse helped introduce a resolution calling for the patrols to continue. The resolution also asked the Department of Motor Vehicles’ enforcement division to patrol the city’s main corridors. The DMV did send officers to Route 127 — the city’s Beltline — for about 100 hours between late July and mid-August. They pulled over 141 drivers in total, many for speeding, according to Capt. Matthew Nesto, chief of safety with the Vermont Highway Patrol. Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak has advocated for legislation that would allow the city to use license plate reader technology for traffic enforcement. “As we look at the city of Burlington, about the best, most effective use of our limited police officer head count, it’s not actually doing low-level traffic stops like when people run stoplights or stop signs,” she told NBC5 last December. “But it’s still dangerous, and it’s still important that there be some level of accountability.” Enforcement is only one piece of road safety, according to experts. The city has installed traffic-calming infrastructure, such as speed bumps and curb bump-outs, and recently lowered the downtown speed limit to 20 miles per hour. It has also invested heavily in bike lanes. Officials say that’s one likely explanation for the decline in serious crashes in Burlington over time, despite the drop in traffic stops. The city recorded 150 crashes involving injuries in 2012 — the same year police pulled over 5,800 drivers. Compare that to last year, when the city recorded 108 crashes with injuries and just 950 traffic stops. Fatalities, meanwhile, remain rare, with seven road deaths reported since the start of 2016. Burke said he would be cautious about increasing traffic enforcement simply because some residents are calling for it. “A legitimate traffic enforcement strategy has to be evidence-based,” he said. Otherwise, residents may feel like they’re being “overpoliced for no apparent reason.” In South Burlington, Chief Breault said his officers have discretion over how to handle each individual stop. So far this year, they’ve issued tickets at 8 percent of traffic stops compared to 10 percent last year. The point is not to be too punitive, Breault said, but to show that officers are watching. Every driver that passes by and sees that car stopped, they’re going to slow down.SOuth Burlington Police Chief Bill Breault “Every driver that passes by and sees that car stopped, they’re going to slow down,” he said. The increased enforcement has nevertheless raised a familiar question: Who is getting pulled over? Researchers have found racial disparities in traffic stops around the country. In South Burlington, the most recent analysis by UVM’s Seguino found that between 2022 and 2024, Black drivers were pulled over at a rate 1.84 times higher than would be expected based on their share of the driving population. Breault plans to analyze his department’s stops at the end of the year to look for racial disparities. That review will include assessing individual officers for any worrisome patterns. Breault said he performs a similar review for use-of-force incidents. Breault will also assess the data to see whether the stops are making the city’s roads safer. Early results offer a mixed picture. The city has actually recorded more car crashes during this year’s blitz: 596 through mid-August, compared to 580 in the same period last year. But only 5.5 percent of this year’s crashes have involved injuries, compared to about 9 percent last year. “Could be complete coincidence, but we will watch that over time,” Breault said. Yet the chief says the data are only one piece of the puzzle. If he gets enough complaints from residents about speeding, he will often send an officer to patrol their neighborhood. “I truly believe my role as police chief is to not only make sure we are actually safe from crime, but that people feel safe,” Breault said. “Because if they don’t feel it, then it doesn’t matter if they’re safe or not, right?” ➆ The original print version of this article was headlined “Safety in Numbers? | As police make fewer traffic stops nationwide, South Burlington is bucking the trend” The post South Burlington Police Make an Effort to Stop More Cars appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less