click to enlarge - File: Courtney Lamdin ©️ Seven Days
- Acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad
One night last summer, a University of Vermont Medical Center trauma surgeon was treating a gunshot victim, the latest casualty in Burlington’s spate of gunfire. The patient was in critical condition, and police officers were under orders to stay nearby in case he revealed who had shot him.
The surgeon repeatedly ordered officers to clear the room. Shortly after, acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad arrived and took an unprecedented step: He threatened to arrest the doctor, hospital officials said. The surgeon later filed a complaint with the city’s police commission. The incident, and his complaint, have not been previously reported.
In interviews this week, Murad and Mayor Miro Weinberger were asked about the hospital’s account and did not corroborate it. Both officials dodged direct questions about Murad’s threat of arrest, instead labeling the altercation as a “disagreement” for which the acting chief has since apologized.
The hospital backs the surgeon's account. Hospital spokesperson Annie Mackin said the city has not disputed "to UVM Medical Center leaders that the threat itself was made."
Hospital chief operating officer and president Dr. Stephen Leffler said that until last August, he’d never heard of a UVM doctor being threatened with arrest during his 30 years in emergency medicine. The surgeon, whom
Seven Days is not naming because he submitted his complaint confidentially, said it’s his job to treat patients and protect their privacy.
“Everyone who comes into the hospital … deserves my complete attention and the very best that I can do,” he said. Murad’s behavior, he added, “did interfere with the care we were providing.”
The conflict remained under wraps even as voters considered a controversial proposal to empower a civilian panel to investigate and discipline police, including the chief. Now public, the incident could complicate Weinberger’s plans to install Murad as the city’s permanent police chief, a position that hasn’t been filled for more than three years.
click to enlarge - Courtesy of WCAX
- The car in which the shooting occurred
The complaint dates back to last August, when an 18-year-old man was shot, possibly accidentally, by a friend who was in the back seat of his car. The alleged shooter fled the scene before an ambulance arrived and brought the victim to the emergency room, a police affidavit says. Burlington Officer Sergio Caldieri followed in his cruiser.
According to the affidavit, Caldieri was in the patient’s hospital room when the trauma surgeon ordered him out. But Caldieri’s superiors told him to stay by the patient, and he reentered the room twice after getting permission from other staffers, he wrote. The back-and-forth culminated in the surgeon reporting the officer to hospital higher-ups.
“[They] scolded me and ordered me to vacate the room, citing victim privacy issues,” Caldieri wrote. He refused to leave, and Murad, who had been at the shooting scene, arrived “soon after.”
Fewer details have emerged about the ensuing altercation. But the surgeon said in an interview that Murad threatened to arrest him following an argument about officers' presence.
Hospital officials initially agreed on Tuesday to provide a redacted copy of the surgeon's complaint to
Seven Days. But they reversed course hours later after hospital lawyers determined that doing so would violate the patient’s privacy rights under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, according to Mackin.
The city declined a request for a copy of the complaint. Such records are typically confidential but have been provided to this newspaper in the past. In February 2022, ahead of his first confirmation hearing, Murad gave the city permission to share the complaints made against him “for the sake of transparency,” the mayor’s chief of staff said at the time. All were for minor or unsubstantiated claims. The council later rejected Murad’s appointment, but Weinberger has kept him on in an acting role. Murad has held that position for nearly three years.
This week, the city did provide other records that shed light on its response to the complaint. According to those documents, which were partially redacted, the surgeon submitted his complaint four days after the incident using the police commission’s online portal. A commissioner acknowledged receipt within 15 minutes, responding that the body would “give this matter serious consideration.”
Weinberger and Murad met with the surgeon later that week. Murad offered a “fulsome and sincere apology,” the mayor wrote in an August 23, 2022, email to police commissioners that the city provided to
Seven Days. All parties agreed that it was important for the hospital and police department to maintain a good working relationship.
“I am now satisfied that this matter is resolved,” Weinberger wrote. “I would ask the Commission to consider adopting the same posture.”
But the commission did not. In fact, in October 2022, it referred the complaint to the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, a state body that investigates misconduct. According to Weinberger, commissioners alleged that Murad had committed a “Category B” offense, which Vermont law defines as “gross professional misconduct” such as sexual harassment and using excessive force. The mayor disagreed with that assessment.
The following month, Weinberger discussed the complaint with members of the police commission and City Council President Karen Paul (D-Ward 6). But he didn’t inform the full council until late December 2022, after Democrats picked up a seat in a
special election that month that gave them a plurality on the council. In the memo, the mayor said he wanted to let the council know of the complaint as he again considered appointing Murad as the permanent chief.
Weinberger criticized the police commission’s investigation and expressed frustration that they went to the criminal justice council without consulting him, saying they had certain facts wrong. He urged councilors to keep the complaint confidential “at least until we have had a chance to discuss this together.” They did, in a closed-door executive session on January 9, though the issue was never discussed publicly.
Meantime, police oversight took center stage in the city’s ongoing debate over policing. A ballot item on Town Meeting Day on March 7 would have created a new oversight board with the power to discipline cops, including the chief, for misconduct. Weinberger
lobbied against it — and so did Leffler, the hospital president. The item
failed resoundingly, 63 to 37 percent.
Asked if voters should have been aware of the incident involving the chief, Weinberger cited confidentiality rules around the complaint process. He still hopes to bring Murad’s name forward again for a council vote but hasn’t decided when, partly because the complaint is still pending with the criminal justice council.
“I think the chief made a mistake in getting involved in a dispute this significant, but he was there trying to protect the public, fighting for the public,” he said.
“The important piece,” Murad said, is “there was an apology.”
He reiterated that police wanted to be there in case he identified the shooter. Other teenagers who were on the scene were not cooperating with police, according to an affidavit.
Two days after the incident, police believe, the alleged gunman — 19-year-old Abukar Hilowle — shot two more people following an altercation downtown. He has been charged with shooting all three victims.
“This was in the midst of a massive problem that the city was experiencing in an incredibly tumultuous time,” Murad said, adding that both hospital staff and police were “under a lot of stress and working with urgency.”
City police frequently accompany arrestees and victims to the emergency room and also respond when medical personnel are assaulted. Last summer, nurses called on the hospital to hire more security to protect them after an uptick in violence against staff.
Leffler said his concerns about staff safety led him to publicly lobby against the oversight board. He feared that had it passed, the city would have struggled to recruit officers and said such a board was not needed to address the situation with Murad.
“We were very comfortable with the results of an event and how it was handled,” he said. “[Murad’s] boss, the mayor, was made aware of it the next working day and didn't take it lightly, and it was addressed.”
The hospital confirmed that it does have guidelines for police interactions with staff and patients, including a policy that has been in place since at least 2014. That one-page document, titled “Role of Police (Law Enforcement),” notes that officers can respond to the hospital for “law enforcement intervention and criminal investigation” but “must be asked to leave” once their work is complete.
Officers staying longer than necessary, the policy says, “creates confidentiality issues, an appearance of intimidation, and overall ethical issues.”