Brattleboro police chief Norma Hardy poses with historical society photos of her predecessors. Photo by Kevin O’Connor/VTDigger Norma Hardy pounded the pavement as a New York City law enforcement leader for a quarter century. So when the Brooklynite spotted an ad seeking a Brattleboro police c hief in 2021, she could be excused for even a fleeting thought the job might be a comparative walk in the park. Then again, Hardy had yet to face mud season. Arriving for her interview, the career cop found Black Lives Matter protesters seeking to defund the police. Meanwhile, the department’s staff count had fallen by almost half because of attrition and a lack of qualified applicants. “Then I met the officers,” she recalled in a recent interview. “I could see that they really, really cared about this place, even though, for a little while, they felt no one cared about them.” Hardy accepted Brattleboro’s offer to become Vermont’s first and so far only Black female police chief. Five years later, she has rebuilt the depleted ranks, added a new unarmed Brattleboro Resource Assistance Team (or BRAT), partnered with an area human services agency for social worker support — and now, at age 66, announced her retirement as of March 30. “I felt I could help change people’s minds about policing, particularly on a local level, by demonstrating all the things that a police department could offer,” she wrote in her exit statement. That doesn’t mean everyone is satisfied. During her tenure, social media critics have posted racist and sexist messages. Black activists and arrestees have questioned her allegiance. Others have complained that the department works with all members of the media, including a liberal-baiting, First Amendment-boasting citizen journalist in a town where nearly 80% of the electorate voted for 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Hardy has attended public meetings where one resident has called for more police (“I sleep with a tire iron next to my bed”) and another demanded less (“Regardless of how many cisgendered, able-bodied, neurotypical or white people have been taught to consider that they can rely on police as a form of safety and support, that is not the same for almost any other demographic”). “I have people who want my help, who ask for my help, and people who feel harm, who feel fear of us,” Hardy said. “It’s a very, very thin line to walk.” The police chief has sought balance on that tightrope amid the upending societal challenges of drug disorders, mental health problems, poverty and polarization. “We want to be empathetic,” Hardy said at one meeting about people seen overdosing on park benches and bathing and urinating in public fountains, “but you have to be realistic that at some point you have to start thinking about everyone else who lives here.” Recounting her life story, Hardy argues for more talking and training, community cooperation and support services ranging from substance use treatment to sober living options. “Why does it have to be ‘instead of this, do that’ rather than ‘along with this, let’s try that’? I don’t think one community can solve the problem, but I think it can find ways to make it better.”  Norma Hardy started work as an officer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 1992. Provided photo ‘How do I make that different?’ Born and raised in Brooklyn, Hardy smiles when she shares how her mother single-handedly raised a family while standing up for everyone else in the neighborhood. Take the time the matriarch was pictured in a New York tabloid speaking out during a funeral of a youth shot by police. “There was a lot of distrust,” the current chief recalled. “I always thought, ‘How do I make that different?’” Hardy then met an officer who was Black. “He told me, ‘You don’t like what’s going on? Instead of complaining, be part of the change.’” Hardy, studying music composition and theory at the same high school attended by Barbra Streisand, moved on to enroll at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, enlist in the Army National Guard, become an emergency medical technician and, in 1992, begin her law enforcement career. Hardy joined the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as an officer at the World Trade Center. She still remembers her police academy classmates telling her, “You’re going to get bored — nothing ever happens there.” Then came Feb. 26, 1993, when Hardy heard and felt a bomb explode before receiving a medal of valor for leading a group of children and commuters to safety. Eight years later, she aided rescue and recovery efforts after a second attack on Sept. 11, 2001, destroyed the twin towers and killed nearly 3,000 people. READ MORE Hardy went on to earn promotions as a sergeant, lieutenant, captain and assistant chief before capping her Big Apple career in 2018. “Everyone loved the police,” she said of that time. “We would come walking down the streets and people would have signs saying ‘thank you.’” Hardy was two years into a restless retirement when the 2020 Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd led to a wave of Black Lives Matter protests. Applying for the Brattleboro job, she learned a small town 1,300 miles away in one of the nation’s whitest states nonetheless felt the ripple effects. Norma Hardy is sworn in as Brattleboro police chief in 2021. Photo by Kevin O’Connor/VTDigger ‘You have to be realistic’ Just before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, many of Brattleboro’s 12,184 residents sought a police crackdown to fight a 411% spike in drug-related vehicle break-ins. A year later, local officers faced complaints about disproportionately stopping people of color, while staff departures reduced patrols to the point that authorities worked days, then covered nights on call at home. In response, Hardy boosted training. “If you have your biases, you may not know you have them,” she told VTDigger this month. “That doesn’t mean everybody’s bad and wants to hurt people or abuse their authority. It just means you don’t understand.” Hardy also contacted the researchers behind the 2014-19 “Trends in Racial Disparities in Vermont Traffic Stops” study to argue that with 18,016 impacted drivers being white and 578 being Black, a smaller change in the minority numbers could more easily skew the related percentages. Hardy aims to see all sides of things. Brattleboro, she notes, is the first northbound exit at Interstate 91 — convenient both for tourists all along the East Coast as well as drug dealers based an hour south in New England’s prime distribution centers of Hartford, Connecticut, and Springfield, Massachusetts. Likewise, the town is a regional hub brimming with more social services — and more people seeking them. In 2022, that convergence sparked complaints. “We can attest to ongoing public alcohol and drug use and sales, intoxication, littering and loitering,” leaders at downtown’s Boys Girls Club wrote in a public letter after their van was vandalized and left undrivable. Police responded to homicides throughout town that July and August and, in 2023, March, April and August. But to her surprise, Hardy faced charges of fearmongering when she cited such crime statistics at local meetings. “What you’ve been doing in Brattleboro has not been working,” Hardy responded at the time, “so we’re trying to come up with another way.” Brattleboro Police Chief Norma Hardy and honorary junior officer Nolan Goodnow, who saved his family from a 2021 fire. Photo by Kevin O’Connor/VTDigger ‘If you want to see change’ Local leaders voted in 2024 to boost the police budget, although a Town Meeting crowd went on to overturn a strengthened public conduct ordinance that some charged was an attempt to “criminalize poverty.” “That narrative is totally false,” Hardy said this month. “If someone’s shooting up in the middle of Main Street, I’m not criminalizing the fact they have an addiction. What I’m saying is you can’t have such behavior that affects everyone else there. At some point, you have to hold people accountable.” Brattleboro Police have long worked to connect people who overdose or face arrest for minor drug offenses with treatment options. Hardy expanded an effort that began in 2018 by hiring a former arrestee turned assistance team staffer to help others escape the hard knocks of substance use and the streets. In another public gesture, Hardy deputized a Brattleboro preschooler as an honorary junior officer after he woke his sleeping family and saved everyone from perishing in a 2021 total-loss fire. “Children are the future,” she said at the time. “We want them to know they can come to us if they need help and not be afraid.” The chief aims to extend that feeling to all. She notes that trouble and tragedy affect not only residents, but also first responders. “When someone doesn’t agree with the police, they use the word ‘trauma’ so much against us that they don’t realize we’re human beings dealing with it, too. If you want to see change, wouldn’t you rather have people like me in the profession?” Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify Hardy’s thoughts when learning about the Brattleboro job. Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s first Black female police chief has the last word on public safety. ...read more read less