BRISTOL — After surveying town residents, the Bristol Town Wide Police District Committee (PDC) decided at its Oct. 23 meeting to recommend maintaining the status quo.
“It was good to get feedback and comments from people,” said Bristol Police Chief Bruce Nason, even though the committee decided not to add more police officers or expand its coverage to the entire town.
Nason said he plans to present the committee’s findings to the selectboard at its Nov. 4 meeting.
But it may not be the end of the district expansion discussion, he said.
“I think there is potential for this issue to be revisited in the future.”
In the meantime, inspired by community feedback, Nason has been mulling over the idea of setting aside one evening a month to hold open public discussions about any concerns or issues citizens may have.
“I feel like I’m already pretty open — I give everybody my email address and my cellphone number — but I think this could be a good way to connect with people,” he said in a Friday interview.
The Bristol selectboard decided in August that it was time to revisit the idea of expanding the Bristol Police Department’s coverage area to include the entire town. Currently the BPD polices roughly one square mile of Bristol Village. The expansion would have increased the department’s geographic coverage more than 40-fold.
Between Oct. 7 and 21, the PDC surveyed 521 people: 514 town residents, and 7 nonresidents. The total number of registered voters in Bristol is roughly 3,000.
Non-Police District residents outnumbered Police District residents in the survey, 289 to 223. Nine people said they were not sure whether they reside in the current district.
An overwhelming majority of respondents (393, or 75.4 percent) said they were satisfied with the level of police service they were receiving, and a strong majority (314, or 60.3 percent) said they would not support expanding police service town wide, with all taxpayers funding the Bristol Police Department.
The numbers stand in stark contrast to a previous police district expansion survey, which was conducted in 2012 by the Bristol Police Advisory Board — a separate, long-standing committee led for years by resident Jim Quaglino.
Of the 1,139 respondents in the 2012 survey, 576 (or 50.6 percent) approved, 248 (or 21.8 percent) said they were opposed and 315 (or 27.7 percent) were undecided.
The 2019 survey, in addition to the above questions, asked respondents to rank their top choices among five options. Here are the results:
• keep the district as it is (255 votes, or 48.9 percent).
• extend the district with one police officer and one car (131 votes, or 25.1 percent).
• dissolve the district and contract with another law enforcement agency (41 votes, or 7.9 percent).
• dissolve the district and have no regular policing in Bristol (35 votes, or 6.7 percent).
• extend the district with multiple officers and cruisers (24 votes, or 4.6 percent).
The survey also asked people to indicate how important certain police services were to them.
“Investigating crime” won more “important” and “very important” votes (411) than any other category.
Other services included:
• keeping Bristol’s businesses safe (367 votes).
• working together with/in the schools (344 votes).
• running speed traffic control (328 votes).
• responding to every call anywhere in town (265 votes).
• patrolling near the respondent’s home (238 votes).
The eight-member committee, chaired by Nason, includes Joel Bouvier (the selectboard representative), Eric Carter, David Cobb, Reg Dearborn, Andrea Denny, John Moyers and David Sharpe.
The group had hoped to build upon similar work accomplished by the Bristol Police Advisory Board, including the 2012 survey, but in the end decided that newer data was needed.
Survey results can be found by visiting the town website: http://bristolvt.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/TW-PD-Survey-Results.pdf.
Reach Christopher Ross at [email protected].