Updated at 9:03 p.m.
In a stunning turn Monday, Mayor Miro Weinberger announced that the woman he had just named acting chief of the Burlington Police Department has been replaced — for operating a social media account under a fake name.
Deputy Chief Jan Wright informed the mayor that she had occasionally used a Facebook account under the name “Lori Spicer” and discussed the police department on the page.
The mayor’s office announced Wright was out as acting chief just hours after she was named to replace chief Brandon del Pozo, who himself resigned Monday after admitting he briefly using an anonymous Twitter account to troll a critic.
“While Deputy Chief Wright’s situation may be very different than Chief del Pozo’s, given the circumstances the department is facing, I found the failure to raise this issue with me in the lead-up to today to constitute a lapse in judgement,” Weinberger said in a statement.
The mayor said he named Deputy Chief Jon Murad to serve as the interim chief.
“Murad has confirmed explicitly to the City Attorney Eileen Blackwood and HR Director Deanna Paluba that he has never engaged in anonymous social media posting,” the mayor wrote in his statement.
He also said he’s asked Blackwood and Paluba to review the posts on the “Lori Spicer” account and report to him by week’s end if discipline could be needed.
“Deputy Chief Wright’s disclosure raises the possibility that problematic social media use is far more widespread within the department than previously understood,” Weinberger wrote.
The mayor said he’ll bring in an outside investigator and vowed that the department will adopt a social media policy.
The mayor’s office announced the news about Wright just before 7 p.m., as protesters had gathered outside of city hall and the city council prepared to meet. Among the agenda items up for discussion was del Pozo’s resignation, announced at noon Monday.
Social media posts show that “Spicer” engaged online with Charles Winkleman. He’s the same man who del Pozo trolled with his now infamous WinkleWatchers Twitter account.
In one thread, “Spicer” went after Winkleman for being “obsessed with Chief del Pozo.
“You can’t get enough of him,” she wrote. “He definitely lives rent free in your head. Seek help”
“Lol okay bro,” Winkleman responded.
During public comment at Monday’s city council meeting, Winkleman mentioned that specific post and pointed to the city’s argument that del Pozo’s bad behavior should be excused because it was related to an underlying medical condition.
“Does that sound like a deputy that cares about mental health?” he said. “I spent the last five months wondering if the police are following me, whether I am being monitored.”
Among the people “Spicer” followed on Facebook were Weinberger, Councilor Ali Dieng (D/P-Ward 7), Rep. Selene Colburn (P-Burlington) and Adam Silverman, the former Burlington Free Press reporter who is now a spokesperson for the Vermont State Police.
In April, “Spicer” wrote a recommendation for the Burlington Police Department on Facebook.
“The Chief seems to be a lot more transparent than other Chief’s in the area,” she wrote. “Seems as though the public holds the Burlington police to a much higher standard. I think that says a lot.”
Courtney Lamdin contributed reporting.
Correction, December 16, 2019: A previous version of this story misidentified the people “Spicer” follows on Facebook as her friends on the platform. And a prior version contained a misspelling of Councilor Dieng’s name.
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It seems to me that maybe the best response is for the police department to abandon social media altogether. And maybe ditto for our City and school system. What I have seen in each of these cases is:
1. Public officials try and use social media as a public relations and information dissemination tool.
2. These forums get taken over by extremist activists (on the right or left), pushing out all civil discourse and reasoned opinion.
3. The forums then no longer serve their original purpose – informing the public – but instead become private masturbation rooms for people whose egos far outsize their abilities, with Charles Winkleman being the textbook example of this.
4. The end result is that no public good is served by social media, and good people are chased away from ever serving in public roles. I’m fearful for the public search for both police chief and school superintendent look like in the coming months.. Will Burlington be able to attract quality candidates, or will they be chased away by BTV’s “activist” community?
She let herself be named acting Chief and then she told the truth. I think our police department needs a good investigation into what’s happening there.
As long the mayor and his co-conspirator, the city attorney, are in charge of any efforts to investigate the police, we can expect either a whitewash or the sacrifice of a scapegoat. It is the mayor and the city attorney who should be investigaed.
We gave away our Rights with the “Patriot Act” way back after 9/11. This stuff here is just the obvious followthrough.
Land of the “free” . . .LOL . . . yeah, right.
Miro is right that Jan Wrights situation is very different than Del Pozos straight-forward lying. Lori Spicer – friended or tried to friend a number of people who are organizers or supporters of local labor movement, renters rights movement, police accountability, and other racial, economic or social justice movements, myself included.
As we only started the effort to identify others, its too early to tell how many, but given the facts even those only loosely or infrequently involved in these working-class political organizations received requests from this Lori Spicer, it could be dozens or even hundreds of Burlington-area residents.
Since Jan Wright conducted these surveillance and infiltration attempts, in her capacity of LEO, under false pretenses, we could make a strong case that our rights to be free of unreasonable searches have been violated. If this was done systematically as part of BPD internal initiatives, we could be looking at civil rights class action against the city for violations our 4th amendment rights.
Stay tuned.
So this isn’t all the fault of using Ranked Choice Voting/Instant Runoff Voting? I’ll be damned.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program As the Vermont DOC Turns…
I commend the updates on this article and the removal of personal opinion and snark. It is now a news piece and not an OpEd.
Burlington has a phenomenal leader in Jonathon Murad! I hope BTV can find some peace and resolution to all this unrest…
Hi, Rep. Colburn: You’re right. The Spicer account was following you, not a friend of yours. Apologies, and thanks for catching that. It’s been fixed!