The Welcome Center in St. Johnsbury on August 9, 2022. File photo by K. Fiegenbaum/VTDigger The St. Johnsbury community has been working overtime to quell a months-long surge in “bad behavior” by a limited number of people in its downtown area. The situation’s epicenter is a park adjacent to the town’s Welcome Center, a three-story former train station that also houses the town offices. “We’re struggling,” said Town Clerk Stacy Jewell during the town’s July 27 selectboard meeting. “It’s very, very difficult to come to work every day and deal with that. I’m at the point where I’m just going to put paper up over our windows. … What we’re seeing is very inappropriate.” Behaviors in the park include open alcohol consumption, violence, overdoses and a can being thrown through a window of the Welcome Center building, Town Manager Chad Whitehead wrote in a plea for help sent to state officials, human services agencies and local leaders in early August. At that time, just 18 people were the cause of 131 of the calls to the police department in the two weeks prior, according to Whitehead. Many of those were arrested, charged with a misdemeanor, potentially held overnight and then released back into the community where they went on to be arrested again, the town manager said. “I am equally frustrated when repeat offenders are not held accountable,” Whitehead wrote in a post on the town’s Facebook page. “I believe we need to work closely with our State’s Attorneys’ offices and the Judicial Bureau to understand why this is happening and what changes they need from the Legislature to correct it.” Indeed, the challenges are not unique to St. Johnsbury: Whitehead said numerous other Vermont communities’ police logs look just like his town’s. In Burlington, city councilors approved a resolution in late August asking Gov. Phil Scott to direct state resources to help combat persistent struggles with homelessness and drug use downtown. In St. Johnsbury, others who work in criminal justice and mental health echoed the town manager’s frustrations with what they feel are limited tools for changing unwanted behavior.  ‘Be compassionate, but there also needs to be accountability’ Whitehead, who has been the town manager for over a decade, said the spike in “bad behavior” and lack of accountability is the worst he’s ever seen. The surge corresponds with cutbacks to the state’s motel voucher program, which has served as an overflow system for the typically full traditional homeless shelters, as well as the cleanup of several local homeless encampments on nearby private property. The town manager is quick to note that not all unhoused people in town are acting poorly. “There are homeless folks in town that are absolutely pleasant,” he said in mid-August, adding that a now-homeless man he went to high school with raked the entire park of his own accord that very morning. Some, though, have committed more than a handful of misdemeanors and continue to violate conditions of release — such as staying away from the Welcome Center park. The park outside the St. Johnsbury Welcome Center, seen here on August 20, 2026, is one of the epicenters of “bad behavior” occurring in town. Photo by K. Fiegenbaum/VTDigger Whitehead does say that some of the “bad actors” have had a “rough go of things.” However, he said, “there’s a fine line between — you can be compassionate, but there also needs to be accountability.” As a result of Whitehead’s plea for help, the Vermont State Police has increased patrols downtown, the town manager said, and he has been working with the public safety commissioner and other state agencies to explore solutions. In addition, the selectboard authorized $25,000 to fund foot patrols in the community, which town police officers are voluntarily working outside of their regular shifts. The town typically has just two police officers on duty, Whitehead said, and they are often tied up with calls and not able to patrol proactively. Whitehead said he has spent much of his time over the past two months working on public safety issues, especially responding to the multitudes of unhappy residents who want the town to do more and explaining how officials’ hands are tied. ‘A huge strain on judicial resources’ According to Caledonia County State’s Attorney Claire Burns, the courts have little to work with in terms of holding people on bail or imposing restrictions on repeat offenders. “Low-level misdemeanors are the ones that we see the most frequently with this population that is really wreaking havoc on businesses and citizens,” she said Thursday. “We can ask for $200 cash bail, and only in terms of risk of flight.” For suspects who are already on conditions of release, such as not going near the Welcome Center park, Burns said the court can ask for higher bail — but there is often pushback on doing so considering this population’s limited financial resources. It’s hard to put a meaningful bail situation in place to deter repeat offenses, Burns said. “They just keep doing it, and we’ve seen it time and time again,” she said. “It’s a huge strain on judicial resources, my office and law enforcement in particular.” Chris Dennehy, crisis outreach coordinator with Northeast Kingdom Human Services, has worked for a year as an embedded mental health clinician within the St. Johnsbury Police Department. He accompanies officers on calls where mental health is a component, providing support and working to connect people with the resources they need. “A disproportionate number of people down there (at the Welcome Center park) are disabled or elderly,” he said Tuesday. “They’re working on fixed incomes, folks who have brain injuries or cognitive disorders. They have some extraordinary barriers to maneuvering the system, preventing them from connecting with resources on their own.” As for the location, Dennehy said that staying near the Welcome Center, where the area is lit and visible, can provide a sense of safety, especially for single women. The building also has Wi-Fi and access to bathrooms and water. Dennehy said that many of the people in question don’t have phones or an address, which makes it even more difficult to connect them with the resources that are “going to help them get unstuck.” A ‘human services desert’ Burns said, however, that available resources can also be lacking. “We are a human services desert in the Northeast Kingdom,” she said. “The wait lists are a year long, and we don’t have any true rehabilitative addiction treatment facilities.” When the governor was asked about the situation in St. Johnsbury on Thursday during his weekly press conference, he pointed to the “accountability court” model, piloted this year in Chittenden and Windham counties, as a potential solution. The court fast-tracks defendants with numerous legal cases, hires social workers to connect them with services, and has made significant progress with Chittenden County’s backlog. However, Burns said that Caledonia County doesn’t have the same backlog of cases as in the rest of the state. In addition, she said places like Burlington have more resources with which to connect defendants. Downtown St. Johnsbury adjacent to the Welcome Center on August 20, 2026. Photo by K. Fiegenbaum/VTDigger. “We don’t have mental health resources. We don’t have beds. We have nothing to do with these people,” Burns said. “We say, ‘We want to give you treatment,’ and I mean, that’s my No. 1 priority: I want people to be rehabilitated and treated. But that’s just unrealistic. We can’t. We don’t have the resources.” Burns also said available resources are worth little unless a person really wants them and is motivated to engage — which can be a tall order. “That is the core tenet of any therapeutic program, any addiction recovery program, is that it has to come from the individual,” she said. “Sometimes we can force a structure on them — i.e., jail — and that might be enough to kickstart the process, because when you’re in the throes of addiction you want to hit your substance, your whatever it is.” “It’s incredibly hard to overcome,” Burns added. ‘Quite a bit of improvement’ On Thursday, Whitehead said there had been “quite a bit of improvement” over the past two weeks. Twice a month, he sits down with the police department and local service agencies for a public safety task force meeting where they review the list of people having frequent interactions with police and brainstorm solutions. There were only 20 individuals reviewed during the most recent meeting, he said, in contrast to 44 at the previous meeting. The town manager attributes the positive changes to Dennehy’s work as well as other community agencies proactively making contact with people and offering them services, in addition to foot patrols keeping a closer eye on things. Whitehead, the fire chief and police chief also held a stakeholder meeting with interested town and business leaders Aug. 26, where eight goals were identified, from cleaning up trash and weeds downtown to updating the town’s vague and outdated loitering ordinance. They plan to meet again Sept. 9. In pursuit of those goals, Whitehead said, a local business owner coordinated a group of homeless people who spent the better part of a Monday cleaning up a public parking lot downtown. “I take heart in the response that I saw with people cleaning up yesterday,” Dennehy said of the event. “I think the people involved were really happy to be involved and it seems like there was a very positive response from the community.” Read the story on VTDigger here: St. Johnsbury community works to combat surge in ‘bad behavior’ downtown. ...read more read less