[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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