A welcome banner hangs over Main Street in St. Albans on Friday, November 8. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerFor years, a banner hanging over St. Albans City’s North Main Street broadcast a message to those passing below: “All Are Welcome Here.” Last month, the banner was briefly replaced with a new one delivering a more terse message: “Welcome.”City Manager Dominic Cloud explained at a city council meeting last month that he’d made the switch to reflect priorities the city’s elected officials had conveyed to him over the last several months — that the city must do more to deter petty crime and open substance use in the downtown area.The move wasn’t well-received by everyone at that meeting. “We all know the problems we’re facing, whether it’s homelessness or public safety, they’re not going to be solved by changing words on a sign,” said Erik Johnson, the city’s Ward 5 councilor.“The message ‘All Are Welcome’ isn’t about inviting trouble,” he continued. “It’s about building a place where people can feel that they belong, and where we work together to carry each other.”Cloud told the meeting attendees that “‘All Are Welcome Except Dealers, Addicts and Thieves’ seems a bit much for a sign, but that’s what I was feeling when I changed the friggin’ sign.” He went on, “So, if you want me to change it back, that’s a legitimate perspective, I get it, but that’s where I was coming from.”Ultimately, the original banner was restored, with as little fanfare as when it was first replaced. But the dustup hinted at a broader debate brewing in the northern city. St. Albans City, like other downtown communities in Vermont, is grappling with a significant uptick in petty crime, which police say has been driven mainly by a small number of repeat offenders.People with lengthy criminal records, arrested for minor crimes like retail theft or public disturbances, are often back out on the street hours later. Some days, police in St. Albans respond to the same perpetrators multiple times a day.It’s fueled a growing feeling of frustration and helplessness among residents, who’ve taken to venting on social media forums.“It’s overwhelming,” said Roland Prior, a longtime resident. “People are just scared, disgusted, very concerned.”Things appeared to reach a boiling point this summer during community public safety forums and at council meetings. Officials in September began questioning whether a state-sponsored needle exchange program should be operating within city boundaries. And, according to both state representative candidates, the issue contributed to residents voting out the Democratic incumbent, Rep. Mike McCarthy, last Tuesday.McCarthy said he felt issues around education and property taxes were the main drivers of his loss, but public safety “did contribute in part.”Luneau, meanwhile, said affordability and public safety were “first and second in people’s minds” during his campaign.People walk along Main Street in St. Albans on Friday, November 8. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger“The feelings of a lot of voters is that… there aren’t appropriate consequences for negative behavior — stealing somebody’s packages from their porch or doing drugs in the open during the day,” Luneau said in an interview. “People are not happy with the fact that there’s open drug use during the day in our downtown core, and when somebody’s property is robbed, nothing happens to the perpetrators. It’s a problem.”As the city continues to seek solutions, residents have started turning to one another to keep an eye out. They’ve formed or revived several neighborhood watch groups in recent weeks with help from the police department, which last month held a public information meeting for residents interested in starting a group.“It’s really about just knowing your neighbors and looking out for each other and connecting with each other,” said Trudy Cioffi, the city’s Ward 4 councilor, who is involved in one of the city’s neighborhood watch groups.But other residents are espousing a more radical, and at times violent, rhetoric on social media forums and, sometimes, at in-person meetings. Some people, frustrated with repeat offenders, have suggested taking matters into their own hands, while others have proposed forcibly removing people sleeping in tents or campsites.“That’s why you have to shoot and kill them,” one comment posted to a local Facebook forum reads. “Cops and courts do nothing just let them go.”The spirit of vigilantism online has taken some aback, while others have questioned how seriously that rhetoric should be taken.“There’s a real problem,” McCarthy said, “and then there’s a magnification that happens on Facebook.”‘High Flyers’Since last year, instances of retail theft, disturbances, trespassing, and other petty crime have increased substantially, while major crime statistics have remained level, according to St. Albans City Police Chief Maurice Lamothe.Incidents of retail theft increased from 58 last year to 229 this year, he said at a September city council meeting. Incidents of trespassing, meanwhile, jumped from 44 to 190, and disturbances — public fights or arguments — went up from 170 to 361.Much of that, Lamothe said, can be attributed to “high flyers” — about 15 or so people in the city struggling with substance use issues who are routinely the subject of police calls. It has hampered response times, and the police department has struggled to keep up, according to Cloud.“We’re feeling a great deal of frustration,” Lamothe said in September. “We are dealing with the same people.”Cloud, at a meeting last month, suggested the situation was improving with the implementation of legislation like Act 138, which lifted the $200 cap on bail for people charged with another crime while awaiting trial, and Act 128, which increased penalties for low-level retail theft. “Even though they’re getting let out of jail they are spending some time in jail, so (the police are) beginning to be able to catch their breath,” he said.Lamothe, meanwhile, pointed to a new street crimes unit within the police department aimed at dealing with nuisance calls, which he said will soon be staffed by two police officers and could begin to make a difference.Main Street and Lake Street seen from Taylor Park in St. Albans on Friday, November 8. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerBut officials admit that petty crime, fueled by a staggering substance use crisis, at times feels like an intractable problem. “We’re trying to get the place under control, right, and it’s not right now,” said Cloud. The city’s public safety committee, composed of councilors Cioffi, Marie Bessette, Newell Decker and Mayor Tim Smith, first convened in August and has met every other week since. It has tried to identify the problem and potential solutions.“What we’re finding is a lot of the challenges we have, we don’t necessarily have the power to solve them as a committee, or even as a city council,” Cioffi said.‘A loss of trust’While the police and city try to adapt, certain things seem more and more routine for residents — be it packages stolen from porches, or vehicles broken into in the middle of the night.“You used to at least be able to leave your car out in your yard and, gee, if you forgot to lock it, you know, you got up the next morning and nothing had been touched. I mean, those days are gone,” Bessette, the city’s Ward 3 councilor, said in an interview. “There’s a loss of trust now… We’ve just kind of lost that certain security that we once had.”In response, the city is seeing a growing interest in neighborhood watch groups, and residents have started several in recent weeks.The new groups have had help from the St. Albans City Police Department, which held an informational meeting in October on how to get a neighborhood watch group started.The hope, Lt. Jason Wetherby said at the meeting, is to develop good programs in the city and meet with the groups to keep open lines of communication, according to reporting from the Saint Albans Messenger.Wetherby and Lamothe did not respond to requests for an interview.Bessette said she revived her neighborhood watch group after seeing the outcry over public safety this summer. The group has since started a text thread, in which, if someone sees something suspicious in the neighborhood — someone unfamiliar on a porch, or rummaging through a car — neighbors can send alerts to the rest of the group.Cioffi, who started a group in her neighborhood, said 25 different households came out to the Ward 4 meeting. And Bessette has heard from residents in other wards hoping to start their own groups. For Bessette, the group is about connecting with your neighbors as much as it is keeping an eye out for each other.“I think the more widespread it gets, I think the better off the city is going to be,” Bessette said. “It’s a connection with neighbors. For me, it’s a real camaraderie of neighbors and neighbors getting together and just looking out for each other.”Cioffi and Bessette have pointed to the neighborhood watch groups as better alternatives than social media, where the rhetoric about public safety can be worrying.“I get it. The people are angry and they’re frustrated and they’re getting sick of being ripped off,” Bessette said. “But you can’t take it to the far extreme by handling things yourself.”St. Albans Facebook groups are replete with Ring camera footage of suspicious people walking through town. It’s led to an at times inflamed rhetoric online that has worried some residents.“I think there’s a little bit of a kind of vigilante spirit to some of the comments I’m seeing on some of these community Facebook groups that are not helpful,” McCarthy said.Lake Street in St. Albans looking west on Friday, November 8. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerFacebook posts compiled by residents in the city and reviewed by VTDigger show an at times angry reaction to the petty crime, with multiple posts suggesting residents attack or try to harm people who are considered suspicious.“Time for armed neighborhood watch program,” one comment reads. “We need to start taking matters into our own hands… This is getting out of control,” another reads.Another comment, posted by a moderator of the All Things St. Albans Vermont Facebook group, suggested residents should “march into the camps, tell them to pack their shit and then walk them to the bus stop and stay there until they all get on it and leave. Do this with every encampment.”Cioffi said she understands there is fear in the community. “I don’t feel unsafe in St. Albans. I don’t love all that I’m seeing, but I don’t feel unsafe,” she said. “But some people do, and that’s a real, valid concern that people have.”But she added that she worries what could happen if people take matters into their own hands.“When you have been victimized — and when someone tries your car door on the regular, you are a victim, and that is against the law. So, I understand,” she said. “I do worry that people are going to actually not just say that they’re going to do something… if they actually catch a person in the act, I mean, yeah, I’m worried about that.”Tanner McCuin, a St. Albans resident, said there’s a lot of fear mongering in the community that is driving the online rhetoric.“Ninety-five percent of that is empty rhetoric, no doubt about it,” said McCuin. “But when does empty rhetoric cross the line?”Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘It’s overwhelming’: In St. Albans City, petty crime prompts frustrated residents to organize.