Brattleboro settles police-shooting case

Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian

Posted August 2, 2006

BRATTLEBORO — Nearly five years after Brattleboro police shot a desperate man seeking sanctuary in a church, town officials last night said they had agreed to settle out of court with the man’s family.

The Brattleboro Selectboard announced the settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed, after approving it in executive session. The settlement was expected to cost the town only $500, the deductible on the town’s liability insurance policy.

The case has been wending its way through the courts after an investigation by the state attorney general’s office found that two Brattleboro police officers were justified in shooting Robert Woodward, 37, of Bellows Falls.

Woodward went to Brattleboro’s Unitarian Church on Dec. 2, 2001, while the church was in session, asking for protection and telling parishioners that federal agents were pursuing him. Witnesses said he spoke incessantly and sometimes incoherently about other subjects, such as fuel-efficient vehicles, and wielded a folding knife with which he threatened to harm himself.

Officers Terrence Parker and Marshall Holbrook reportedly opened fire less than a minute after they entered the church, shooting Woodward seven times, including shots to the back as he lay at the foot of the church lectern. He died later that afternoon.

Police maintained that Woodward lunged at them with the knife. More than a dozen congregation members witnessed the shooting. Several eyewitnesses testified that Woodward did not threaten the police. All said he did not threaten parishioners.

The family filed a civil suit claiming that Woodward’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated by excessive use of force, after the Vermont Attorney General’s office and later the U.S. Department of Justice found no wrongdoing.

A year ago, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that Windham District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha may have been improvident in dismissing the testimony of four witnesses to the shooting, who swore that Woodward made no threatening moves toward police before he was shot, and asked Murtha to revisit his ruling.

The long, slow drama of the case has cast a pall over police-community relations in Brattleboro and seemed to exacerbate other citizen complaints about police conduct.

It has also led to the establishment of the state’s first citizen police oversight committee, which has received 12 complaints in the three months it has been operational. Observers, however, say the panel is powerless to investigate or prosecute complaints.

“As a citizen of this town I still do not believe [the settlement] brings solace to the community,” Tara O’Brien, a board member of the ALANA Community Organization, told the selectboard last night.

She said although the attorney general’s office cleared the police of wrongdoing, they also recommended the town take steps to improve policing, including the creation of a team of mental health professionals; development of training and cross-communication skills; improved coordination with social services agencies; addressing the perceived problem of racial profiling, and an independent review of the use of deadly force.

“How many of these have been acted on?” O’Brien asked the Selectboard.

“I think we’ve made some improvements,” responded Town Manager Jerry Remillard. “I don’t think we’re all the way there yet. I think there is some more work, some more citizen communication that’s got to be done between the police department and its citizens, and I think most of all it’s going to take a commitment that doesn’t rise and fall, that stays steady. The board hasn’t talked specifically about how to accomplish that, and I think that’s probably one of the next step.”

Police Chief John Martin did not attend last night’s meeting.