[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 150 (Wednesday, December 10, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6528-S6529]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO JAMES BAKER
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, James Baker has served the State of Vermont
with great distinction over many years, and I was saddened when he
announced his retirement in 2009 after 3 decades with the Vermont State
Police. To no one's surprise, he finished his tenure there at the top,
as commander.
But we knew retirement would not last long for a man of his talents.
In 2010, Jim Baker answered the call to step in where he was most
needed, taking the helm of the Rutland City Police Department when the
department and the community were beset by turmoil. Chief Baker's
leadership and loyalty was infections, and his plan to serve for only a
few months turned into a few years.
During that time, Chief Baker pulled together a team of committed
neighbors, businesspeople and community organizers to face the
challenges head-on. They tackled blighted neighborhoods and encouraged
new investment. They sent a strong message to drug dealers: NOT in our
community. And they developed a statistical mapping system to reduce
crime in the city's worst-hit blocks. This effort, known as ``Project
VISION,'' has shown great success.
With Rutland now on a steady course, one might think Chief Baker
would again be thinking of retirement, but that will not be the case.
Instead, Jim Baker will be bringing his leadership talents to
Washington D.C., where he will serve as director of law enforcement and
support with the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Rutland's loss is our Nation's gain. I look forward to a continued
working relationship with Jim, and thank him for his dedication and
leadership to the State of Vermont. I ask that the following profile of
Jim Baker, which recently appeared in the Vermont weekly Seven Days, be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From Seven Days, Nov. 19, 2014]
Influential Police Chief Has a New Gig
(By Mark Davis)
When Jim Baker first took over Rutland's scandal-plagued
police department in the winter of 2012, he had a running
joke with the mayor.
In department-head meetings during which a particularly
vexing problem arose, Baker would hold up his city-issued
notebook and point to the first word of his job title.
``Mayor, mayor, look--`interim,' OK?'' Baker would say to
Mayor Chris Louras. ``That question is for the next guy.''
Baker, a former head of the Vermont State Police, initially
signed on for a six-month stint as Rutland's chief of police.
Nearly
[[Page S6529]]
three years later, he still occupies the corner office at the
Rutland police station.
Baker is widely credited with stabilizing the department,
initiating a statistics-based policing program and rallying
dozens of community groups to fight the city's drug problem.
``He was the driving force not just to turn around a
dysfunctional department but in helping the renaissance of
the city,'' Louras said. ``It would not have happened without
him.''
But now, talk of the ``next guy'' is no joke.
Although the mayor had started preliminary contract
discussions to keep Baker around for a couple more years, the
chief decided it was time for something less stressful. In
December, Baker is leaving for a position with the
International Association of Chiefs of Police, a Washington,
D.C., think tank.
``I burn a lot of jet fuel when I get into a situation like
I found here,'' said Baker, who has preferred working short
stints--no longer than a few years--during his lengthy law-
enforcement career. The D.C. opportunity, he said, will
enable him to engage in national and international issues on
a less demanding schedule.
A New York native and Southern Vermont College graduate,
Baker methodically climbed the ladder during the 30 years he
worked at Vermont State Police. He held nearly every position
there, including director, before retiring in 2009.
Baker says it is unlikely he'll ever stop working. After
leaving the state police, he launched a consulting business
and became something of a Mr. Fix-It for Vermont law
enforcement. Then a scandal rocked the Vermont Police
Academy: A training coordinator committed suicide after his
computers were seized during a child-pornography
investigation. It prompted the director of the academy to
resign, and in 2010, Baker took over that job for several
months with the intention of rooting out problems and
improving morale.
Next Baker spent a few months as interim police chief in
Manchester. That's when Louras and Rutland Police
Commissioner Larry Jensen came calling. They convinced Baker
to come aboard for six months to help ``settle down'' a
department in the midst of its own scandal.
The Rutland force had been in disarray since 2010, when
state police busted former sergeant David Schauwecker for
viewing pornography on his work computer and removing a
pornographic video from an evidence locker for personal use.
After he accepted a plea deal, Schauwecker was fired. Rutland
aldermen urged the police commission to do the same to then-
chief Tony Bossi, but they said no; Bossi finally resigned in
early 2012.
The Rutland Herald asked for documents related to the
investigation, but the city's police department refused. So
the newspaper sued--and won: In 2013, the Vermont Supreme
Court ordered the department to release the records, which
revealed that, years earlier, two other Rutland officers had
also watched porn on the job.
Meantime, the city wasn't faring much better than its
police department. Once a boomtown fueled by railroads and a
marble quarry, Rutland's economy had lagged for decades. Out-
of-state drug dealers moved in as property values plummeted,
downtown went dormant and vacant buildings proliferated.
Drugs had decimated large swaths of the city long before Gov.
Peter Shumlin devoted his 2014 State of the State address to
Vermont's ``opiate epidemic.''
Known throughout Vermont as ``Rut-Vegas''--a moniker that
Baker forbade his officers from using inside the station--the
city was the brunt of countless jokes.
Then, in September 2012, a tragedy illustrated the severity
of the city's plight. A 23-year-old Rutland man passed out
while driving through downtown, as a result of inhaling gas
from an aerosol can. His foot remained on the accelerator,
and, moving at 80 miles per hour, he slammed into a bank of
parked cars outside the Discount Food and Liquidation Center.
Carly Ferro, a 17-year-old Rutland High School senior, had
just worked a shift in the store and was walking to her
father's car when she was struck and killed.
``That was the tipping point,'' Baker said. ``That was the
single incident where people in the community said they had
finally had enough and starting rallying around the police
department and the neighborhoods.''
To tackle Rutland's growing list of urban ills, Baker and a
few others organized regular meetings with housing agencies,
social workers, neighborhood activists, lawyers, mental
health experts, educators and city hall workers.
The group that formed called itself Project VISION--Viable
Initiatives and Solutions through Involvement of
Neighborhoods--and focused on problems related to drugs,
crime, housing and jobs. Its monthly meetings, which
attracted 70 to 100 people, helped build public support for a
methadone clinic that opened earlier this year, among other
initiatives.
Seeking further collaboration, Baker invited mental health
workers, social workers, prosecutors, probation officers and
domestic violence experts to relocate their offices to the
police station.
Meanwhile, inside the police force, the chief aimed to
strengthen relations with residents and institute smarter
enforcement. He helped create a crime-mapping project that
plotted the details of every police call--whether for a
family fight or a noise disturbance--into a database. Every
two weeks, officers and members of Project VISION reviewed
``hot spots'' and developed strategies to defuse them.
Baker also instructed his officers to stop measuring
success by arrest numbers. ``We're not focused on arrests or
how much drugs were seized, but on working through
problems,'' Baker said.
When his first six-month contract was up, Baker signed a
one-year extension, then two more, the last of which paid him
$125,000 a year. ``I saw some opportunity, that I thought I
could contribute,'' Baker said. ``I found out there were some
people in the community working very hard to get it right.''
Among them was Linda Justin. A Rutland native who had
become increasingly distraught by the city's decline, she and
her husband, Bill Beckim, cashed out their 401(k), bought a
derelict building in Rutland's Northwest neighborhood, and in
January 2013 opened the Dream Center, where they host youth
groups, prayer sessions, meetings, block parties and free
meals. One day, Justin called Baker looking for an answer to
a neighbor's question.
After talking for a while, Baker realized, ``Oh my gosh,
you guys are doing what we're talking about doing,'' the
chief recalled.
Baker started to join Justin and Beckim on their
neighborhood walks, chatting with residents about problems
and their ideas for making things better. ``He doesn't just
sit in his office and direct,'' Justin said. ``He gets his
hands right in it. He's a real person. He's down-to-earth.''
And while no one is declaring victory, officials say
Rutland is improving. Calls for police service have dropped
since Project VISION launched, and Baker said the department
is registering double-digit drops in burglaries and property
crimes this year.
Rutland police have had a lot of help. Federal authorities
conducted a three-year operation in the city and have been
responsible for most of the prosecutions against prominent
drug dealers operating there. Vermont Attorney General Bill
Sorrell tasked one of his prosecutors to focus exclusively on
Rutland; assistant attorney general Ultan Doyle works out of
the downtown police station.
Its porn scandal may be over, but the department still
isn't perfect.
In September, two officers were suspended after a brawl
outside a Rutland bar.
In a pending lawsuit filed in January 2013, Andrew Todd, a
former Rutland police officer and now a Vermont State Police
trooper, describes a culture of police misconduct and cover-
ups, and alleges that superiors subjected him to racial
abuse.
Todd, who is African American, claims he brought several
concerns to higher-ups but that little was done. The alleged
misconduct, including officers stealing, having sex and
sleeping while on duty, occurred before Baker came to
Rutland. Though Todd left the department before Baker
arrived, he has alleged that Baker tried to ``influence'' an
outside review of the Rutland police department.
Baker declined to comment on the lawsuit.
In three years, nearly half of the department's roster has
turned over, through firings and attrition. Baker says he is
proud of the holdovers who were willing to adapt to his
methods. ``It would have been very easy for those folks to
bunker down, wait me out,'' Baker said. ``My track record is
pretty clear--I don't stay anywhere very long.''
The mayor is intent on continuing Baker's legacy. Guiding
the search for a new chief, Louras said, will be his or her
ability to adopt Baker's methods.
That includes the continuation of Project VISION. In recent
months, Baker handed off much of his work there to Capt.
Scott Tucker. The community agencies that populate the top
floor of police headquarters aren't going anywhere. And the
monthly Project VISION meetings still attract a crowd.
``You can't lead,'' Baker said, ``if no one is following
you.''
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