Welcome

Located on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, Burlington is the largest city in the State of Vermont, with a population of 40,000 in a greater metropolitan area of approximately 150,000 residents.  It has been ranked by many organizations as one of the most livable cities in the United States.

The Burlington Police Department was commissioned in 1865 to provide law enforcement services to the Queen City. Throughout our history, the men and women of the department have proudly served their community. We serve a residential community of over 40,000, in addition to thousands of students from local colleges and the University of Vermont. The Department has an authorized strength of 100 full-time police officers and 36 civilian support personnel. We operate using core tenets of community policing.

Online Crime Reporting

The Burlington Police Department now offers the option of reporting low level events that do not require the colection of physical evidence, witness interviews, or follow-up investigation, via our website. To see a preview of this system visit http://www.coplogic.com/product_dors_overview.shtml. This project is a direct response to community and employee feedback during our 2009 re-assessment of community policing. As of September 20, 2010 we began testing online reports. Click the below to get started.

***DO NOT REPORT EVENTS ONLINE THAT ARE IN PROGRESS OR REQUIRE AN INVESTIGATION*** It is designed to accept only low-level reports / late reports of events for which no evidence or opportunity for investigation exist. Please follow the directions carefully (click here for more detailed directions).

CLICK HERE TO MAKE AN ONLINE REPORT

NIXLE Messaging System for Alerts, Traffic Advisories, Community Notification

BPD offers the option for interested persons to subscribe (free of charge) to a messaging system called NIXLE. NIXLE is a trusted messaging system with partners such as National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Council of State Governments, the Police Executive Research Forum, and a host of others.

Those interested in subscribing to messages via e-mail, text, or SMS can do so by visiting www.nixle.com.

In the event that members of the public would prefer to follow these broadcasts via Twitter, NIXLE postings will be automatically cross- posted to Twitter at the following Tweet: http://twitter.com/BPDVT.  It should be noted that BPD personnel will not be directly posting to Twitter.  Rather, messages will be cross-posted using a feature of NIXLE that allows automatic population of the BPDVT Twitter page.

Messages that will be sent, from time to time, include:

• Traffic – information related to traffic problems or diversions and parking bans
• Community Information – information about meetings that relate to public safety topics
• Advisories – Crime Alerts and Press/Informational Releases (from events in which we are seeking information from the public or a neighborhood that may be impacted by a response or have a recognizable interest in immediate information about an event)
• Alerts - Critical Incident Information – information on major events, emergencies, or things such as Amber Alerts, missing persons, etc.

While we do not expect a large volume of messages, we believe that this will be a helpful tool in directly alerting intersted persons of traffic issues, events relating to public safety, general advisories, and in the event of an emergency - critical or useful information.