Who is Anthony Geraci, Burlington’s new police chief
Burlington City Hall. Photo: Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Anthony Geraci started work Tuesday as Burlington’s police chief, the first permanent chief the city has hired from outside Vermont in more than a decade, after a City Council vote Monday night that turned into one of the sharpest debates of the year at City Hall.
The council confirmed him 10-2. Councilors Becca Brown McKnight (D-Ward 6) and Evan Litwin (D-Ward 7) voted no, Vermont Public reported.
Geraci, who has about 25 years in law enforcement, comes from upstate New York. He started as a patrol officer in New York City, spent about 16 years with the Albany Police Department and briefly led the Watervliet Police Department before he was laid off there in June 2020 during pandemic budget cuts. He was police chief in Newburgh, N.Y., from 2021 to 2024, then went to work on security for the city’s school district.
Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, who picked him after a search run by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said his crime-reduction work in Newburgh helped cut gun violence there in half between 2022 and 2023, Seven Days reported. She also credited him with boosting officer hiring and replacing an “enforcement-heavy street crime unit” with one focused on community engagement.
“I believe effective policing requires trust, transparency, accountability, and meaningful partnerships,” Geraci said at a press conference before the vote. “I also firmly believe that public safety is a shared responsibility and one that we cannot do alone.”
The Newburgh allegations
The fight on the council floor was about how he left Newburgh. Shortly before he resigned in 2024, three women in that department accused him of gender discrimination, retaliation and creating a hostile work environment. An independent investigation found the allegations unsubstantiated.
Brown McKnight said the hiring committee and recruiter hadn’t vetted the claims closely enough. “I will not gamble with the stability of our department when we so desperately need to build a foundation of trust and I will not put the women at the department at risk,” she said. “The absence of answers is not the same thing as the absence of a problem.”
Mulvaney-Stanak, Burlington’s first female mayor, said she had looked into the complaint personally: she talked with the Newburgh police commissioner who supervised Geraci, called other references and brought Geraci back for an extra interview on the subject. “I did not take this lightly,” she said. When Brown McKnight later called the process an example of institutional sexism, the mayor said she was “very disappointed that’s where the level of debate was taken tonight.”
Litwin’s objection was mostly about process. “There was no opportunity for us to meet any of the finalists,” he said. “I met Mr. Geraci for the first time about a week ago in a one-hour meeting with three other councilors.” A 12-member committee had narrowed 15 applicants to three finalists.
Council President Ben Traverse, who announced a run for mayor on Friday, said he weighed his vote until the last few days and ended up supporting Geraci. He told the new chief the council would stand behind him.
Fifty-four officers
The bigger problem waiting for Geraci is headcount. The department had 99 sworn officers in June 2020. As of late October it had 54, according to Seven Days. A council-imposed cap on the force, adopted in 2020, was lifted by Democrats last year, but hiring hasn’t caught up.
Geraci said recruiting is his top priority and asked residents to help. “Everyone has to be a recruiter every day,” he said. “Hire character over competence. We can train you to be a good police officer. I can’t train you to be a good person.”
The department has also been short on stable leadership. Brandon del Pozo resigned in 2019 after admitting he ran a fake social media account to taunt a critic. Jon Murad served mostly as acting or interim chief before being appointed permanently in 2023, then left in 2025. Shawn Burke has been interim chief since early 2025 and will stay on until March to help with the handoff.
The police union welcomed the hire. Padric Hartnett, president of the Burlington Police Officers Association, called it a “welcome and extremely important milestone” in stabilizing the department. Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George said she would miss Burke but trusted the mayor’s judgment.
Geraci arrives in the middle of an unsettled argument over downtown, where business owners, councilors and advocates have clashed over open drug use, homelessness and the stalled “Burlington Forward” public safety resolution. He pledged to be an “apolitical” chief. He also had a message for the officers he now leads: “I’ve been in your position as a member of a police department with an outside police chief, outside the state coming in. Please know that I’m committed to supporting you.”
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