The City of Burlington will pay $150,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the mother of a Black teen with disabilities who was roughly detained by police and sedated with ketamine by city EMTs during a 2021 incident.
The boy’s mother, Cathy Austrian, had spoken out publicly about her son’s experiences in the years before she filed the lawsuit in 2024. In a statement on Thursday, she said the officers “ignored that my son, who was only a child, was in need of support.
“Instead, the public safety officials in our home that day disregarded their obligations to the public, violated their own procedures and policies, and escalated the situation into an extremely dangerous and damaging medical emergency,” she said.
The boy was 14 in May 2021 when police responded to his Burlington home after his mother reported that he had stolen vape pens from a nearby gas station. The teen had “a documented history of complex trauma and behavioral and intellectual disabilities,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, which represented the family.
When he wouldn’t relinquish the last e-cigarette, the officers pinned the teen to a bed, took it from him and then handcuffed him and pinned him to the floor on his stomach.
“Instead of … decelerating and disengaging from the encounter, the two officers again responded with disproportionate force, treating the 14-year-old as if he were an imminent and serious danger to their person,” the lawsuit said.
EMTs who arrived on scene consulted with a doctor before injecting the boy with ketamine — a sedative used to calm agitated patients — and taking him to the hospital.
The incident drew national attention in 2022 amid debates in Burlington over police use of force following the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Austrian said her son’s treatment at the hands of police and paramedics, which she alleged was racially motivated, underscored the need for more police oversight in the Queen City.
“As we have seen too many times before, police needlessly and violently escalated a routine encounter and then refused to take responsibility for the harm they caused, instead blaming the victim,” ACLU attorney Hillary Rich said in a statement.
Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak declined to comment.
Vermont Superior Court Judge Helen Toor sided with the ACLU at key junctures in the case, the legal advocacy group said. She rejected Burlington’s attempts to dismiss the claims by citing qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that protects police officers from lawsuits unless the violation of someone’s civil rights is clearly established.
Shortly after the incident, Austrian sought accountability through the city Police Commission’s complaint process. After a confidential investigation, the commission determined the officers’ actions were inappropriate and unjustified. They concluded that the officer’s actions were “likely motivated by implicit racial bias” and violated multiple department policies.
Then-Burlington police chief Jon Murad rejected the commission’s recommendations and defended his officers’ actions. The ACLU used the police commission’s report in litigation, the group said.
In her statement after the settlement was announced on Thursday, Austrian called on the Burlington community to continue to advocate for police reform.
“We have spent five years fighting to hold Burlington accountable for the harm their officials caused my child, but we can’t make changes alone,” she said. “If you in the community want to ensure other families won’t have to endure this kind of pain and lasting trauma, it’s now up to you to raise your voice and seek changes to this deeply flawed system.”
According to city data shared with the Police Commission in May, use-of-force incidents involving Burlington police have increased dramatically since 2021. The department recorded 280 use-of-force incidents in 2025, the most since 2013.
Black people were involved in just 13 percent of all police interactions in 2025, but they were subject to 28 percent of use-of-force incidents, according to city data. White people, meanwhile, were involved in 63 percent of the use-of-force incidents that year, compared to 83 percent of all police interactions.
Interim Burlington Police Chief Shawn Burke said at the police commission meeting that he would have to review the individual use-of-force incidents before he could comment on the data.
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