This commentary is by Allen Gilbert, a former journalist, teacher and executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Vermont.  In 2014, when I worked at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), I was surprised when an Associated Press reporter, Wilson Ring, called me a nd asked if I knew anybody who kept a list of police fatalities in Vermont. This was at the time of the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which became a national issue.  Journalists around the country were asking about police shootings — how many were there in each state in a year? No one seemed to know, despite a federal law requiring that all fatal police shootings be reported to the U.S. Department of Justice. The Washington Post took it upon itself to begin keeping yearly records of fatal police shootings in the United States. The records — started in 2015 — are considered the most authoritative police shooting database in the country.  I retired from the ACLU in 2016. But I couldn’t shake the questions the makeshift national database raised. Why are shooting rates different from state to state? Are there ways to de-escalate tense encounters?  I decided to keep a list of Vermont’s fatal police shootings, adding data every year, and trying to examine police shootings in the past as well, to see if there were any trends. The database now spans 1920 to 2025. I learned that 2019 was the deadliest year in the deadliest decade for fatal police encounters in Vermont. And nearly as many individuals were killed by police between 2010 and 2019 — 17 — as had been killed in the previous 40 years. READ MORE The sharp rise in the early 2000s was taken up by the state Legislature in the 2020 session. Some changes were made to the protocols regarding the use of deadly force. Fatal shootings slowed: there were no more than two per year in the first four years of the decade. But in both 2024 and 2025, the number per year climbed to three, and the total for the decade so far is 11 – a second decade of double-digit fatal shootings.  In 2025, the first incident that led to a fatality was a Border Patrol officer’s shooting of a German national, Felix (also known as Ophelia) Bauckholt, believed to be part of a radical group called the Zizians. The encounter on Jan. 20, 2025, on I-91 in Coventry, Vermont, became a bloody shootout, with a Border Patrol agent also dead.  The second fatal incident came on July 7, 2025, when a Putney man, Scott Garvey, 55, was shot by a state trooper after neighbors called the police and reported “mental health concerns” and, later, “concerning behavior” and “making threatening statements, including of self-harm,” according to a contemporaneous police press release. Garvey had barricaded himself in his apartment when police arrived in the late afternoon. According to the police report, “troopers encountered Mr Garvey and reported that they saw an object in his hands that they believed to be a firearm. Mr Garvey did not respond to commands given by the troopers. Trooper (Peter) Romeo fired his service weapon.”  Garvey was pronounced dead at the scene. A search of the apartment found no firearms inside. Garvey had moved to Vermont just seven days before he was killed.  Independent reviews of Romeo’s use of force by the Vermont Attorney General’s Office and the Windham County State’s Attorney’s Office are still ongoing.  The third fatal incident, on Aug. 21, 2025, was in Springfield, Vermont, when local police shot and killed James Crary, a 36-year-old resident of Newport, New Hampshire. Crary had driven to Springfield to visit friends when Springfield police and the Windsor County Sheriff pulled up to the house to ask questions of the occupants about an ongoing investigation.  The officers said Crary, sitting in his car, started driving toward them as they stood outside their cars, and they fired at him. Crary was pronounced dead at the scene. An investigation into the shooting is pending. The number of police fatalities for 2024 was updated in November 2025. The death of cyclist Sean Hayes, hit by Shelburne police officer Sgt. Kyle Kapitanski, in November 2024, was litigated and settled after Kapitanski accepted a plea deal and entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of negligent operation with death resulting.  The lesson of the past decade is not simply that fatal police encounters continue to occur, but that consistent tracking and public review are essential to shaping better policy. Vermont should not rely on private databases or occasional news investigations to understand when and why deadly force is used. At the beginning of 2025, the Washington Post announced it was closing its police fatality tracking system, citing staffing issues and complaints of anti-police bias. That decision underscores the need for a permanent, statewide reporting system — paired with an annual public review of fatal encounters and the tactics involved — so lawmakers, police leaders and the public can see trends clearly and respond before another decade of rising numbers is behind us. In a democracy, preventing avoidable police fatalities must remain a central public responsibility. Read the story on VTDigger here: Allen Gilbert: Police shootings are rising — again. ...read more read less