The cumulative weight of standing there

In the middle of a bathroom break, South Burlington Deputy Police Chief Sean Briscoe remembered his body camera was on.

He had slipped off to High Hat Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, a martial arts studio that seeks to provide “community, confidence, acceptance, and self-discipline,” its website says.

Briscoe’s video was streaming live to his boss, Chief Bill Breault, at what was now a City Hall command post. Down the street, in South Burlington, a fragile standoff between law enforcement and protesters was about to break down at 337 Dorset Street.

It would soon be the site of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s first public raid of a Vermont home. 

Briscoe had just relieved himself. 

“I had my camera on three-quarters of the way through it before I remembered because I never wear this thing,” he later told a colleague.

Briscoe hadn’t eaten since the previous day, and his chicken tortilla wrap was sitting in the police department’s break room. By 5 p.m., he’d be standing in a crowd of more than 200 people, most of them protesters, and many agitated. Briscoe would be asked repeatedly throughout the day if he supported his assignment.

“My views when I’m in uniform,” Briscoe told a protester, “don’t necessarily match the views I have when I’m not in uniform.”

Local and state police earlier this year released more than 100 hours of body-camera footage from in and around Dorset Street, where three immigrants who refused to leave were detained after an ICE tactical team raided the modest home.

The videos, which are available to the public, captured a side of policing rarely, if ever, seen. Or heard. Much of it is mundane. Knees locked up. Phone batteries died. Someone brought the wrong non-nicotine pouches. But the standing around was broken up regularly by people calling officers Nazis, cowards, family separators, insisting they should quit their jobs, that they should never sleep well again.

VTDigger has thoroughly covered ICE’s March 11 operation, including the raid, possible constitutional violations related to the detentions, public outcry and numerous police accounts. 

But as immigration enforcement becomes an ever-sharper political flashpoint nationwide, and following a federal immigration agent in Maine shooting and killing a person in a vehicle Monday, the March 11 body camera footage offers something wholly unique: an unfiltered, ground-level window into the tedious and often surreal reality of modern policing. 

Local and state police found themselves between an unyielding federal agency that refused to compromise and an enraged community that viewed the local police as complicit traitors. What the footage reveals is officers, hour after hour, lapsing into the most ordinary talk available to them amid the increasingly volatile and historic standoff. 

Indeed, the footage transcends the sanitized summaries of official after-action reports to show the human toll of a police line. It illustrates the real-time erosion of public trust, the stark communication breakdown between local and federal authorities and the visceral anger of a community watching its neighbors get taken away.

For the exchanges between police and the public, VTDigger transcribed the body-camera recordings, profanities included, both manually and with digital transcription services. The time stamps, which are italicized below and indicate the real-time moments in the standoff, were determined by triangulating the footage with our news reporting on the day of the standoff as well as an analysis of 342 pages of official state and local police after-action reports. Officers are often unnamed in the story because they were not identified in the videos.

Vermont State Police declined to be interviewed for this story. In a statement, spokesperson Adam Silverman said its 58-page after-action report and the body-camera footage “speak for themselves.” South Burlington Police Chief Bill Breault similarly declined, also explaining that their report and footage “speak for themselves.”

Burlington Police interim Chief Shawn Burke declined an interview, saying that his department’s role in the March 11 operation “remains under review by the Vermont Criminal Justice Council.” 

7:38 a.m. It started with a car crash. ICE agents in unmarked vehicles tried to stop a man in a Toyota Camry on Dorset Street. The vehicle fled the wrong way down a road, hit an uninvolved parked car and one government vehicle. Two ICE vehicles collided with each other. The Camry then hit a woman’s Honda Odyssey head-on. The man and a passenger then abandoned the Camry at a dermatology office and ran into a home at 337 Dorset Street. 

No one inside the house would open the door. ICE vowed to get a warrant. Until one came, everyone waited as a crowd of onlookers, and then protesters, grew.

And an officer wanted to be somewhere else. It was his day off. 

“I should be playing video games at home,” he said, “not protecting my neighbors.”

Another worried about catching a cold. 

“I can’t get sick. I can’t be sick. By this time next week, I will be two days in, sitting in the sun at my parents’ backyard in Arizona,” the officer said.

A civilian asked how police cruisers kept their lights on with the engines off. An officer explained the hybrid battery system, at length.

Someone in short sleeves complained.

“This had to happen on the morning where it’s 32 degrees,” he said. 

The talk turned to dogs. A pit bull had killed someone days earlier.

“I have two pit bulls. And it gives pit bulls a bad name.” 

The older the dogs get, he said, the harder it is to undo the training.

In another exchange, officers passed around a photo of a new puppy. 

“I think the name was going to be Hex,” one officer noted, explaining that the owner was a Philadelphia Flyers and Ron Hextall fan. 

As the crowd built, a protester leaned in close to one of the officers.

“Call your mom,” he said, “and tell her what you did today.” 

12:27 p.m. The tension between local and federal authorities was explicit. 

Briscoe asked an ICE agent for their plan. 

“We’re getting a warrant, and we’re going to fucking enforce the warrant. We’re going to fucking take those dudes,” the agent replied. 

Briscoe asked at what point the operation became “not worth it.” 

“It sounds like you’re on their side,” another ICE agent said. 

Briscoe later apologized for the confusion.

1:47 p.m. A federal judge schedules a hearing on the warrant, and the next available review would be at 3 p.m. Officers are told to hold their positions.

The conversation was rhythmic. Two officers debated the merits of converting a Ford Explorer into a race car.

“I got a crate motor directly from Ford,” one officer bragged. “That thing has snapped three axle bolts in six months. Absolutely moves. And the other interceptor part I put on was the suspension … I’ve got no body roll up to 60 mph.”

A light-duty officer had been making supply runs back to the station. Another officer asked him to grab nicotine pouches from a duffel bag by his desk. 

The officer returned. With the wrong ones. Non-nicotine. 

The officer stared at the tin.

“I basically want to kill myself,” he said.

The betrayal was discussed, across multiple body cameras, for the better part of 10 minutes.

Officers from New Jersey bonded over their home state. One lived in a familiar part. “Like, you know, the show, ‘The Jersey Shore.’ That’s essentially where I’m from. I could hit a golf ball to where they shot that.” 

An officer told a civilian he’d left Saratoga Springs, New York, after nearly three decades because he was tired of getting hit in the head with rocks at protests. He’d come to Vermont for the peace. 

“I told my wife, ‘I’m going to go work in Vermont. It’s peaceful there,'” he said. He would repeat the story, almost verbatim, to several more people before the day was over.

Another’s knees were going. 

“Shouldn’t have gone to the bar before work,” he said to laughter. 

An officer needed to get home to feed his cats and dogs. Someone said it was supposed to snow Saturday. Officers shared bites of Trader Joe’s ginger chews. They were a little too sugary. Someone said they needed to order pizza.

“When you started serving,” a protester pressed one officer, “did you say, ‘Man, I really hope to stand arm-in-arm with ICE so my community can be ripped out of their fucking homes in front of my face’? Is that what you thought?”

3:12 p.m. The warrant is before the judge. No word yet. Briscoe lays out to officers the rules of engagement. They will not clear a path, will not enforce the warrant, will not go hands-on unless someone is being assaulted. Briscoe orders that local police are not to use gas. If federal agents deploy it anyway, state and local police have orders to retreat.

An officer noted that South Burlington had been ranked fourth-happiest U.S. city. And the second safest. A detective said the best thing about the day was that he didn’t have to look at email.

Back at the City Hall command post, an ICE leader said the tactical team had an “inventory” of gas and impact munitions and would get to the front door with or without Vermont’s help. 

A street sweeper came through on its rounds, and officers couldn’t believe it.

“Literally, they’re sweeping the streets,” one said.

Someone in the crowd had strawberries, but police declined. Another civilian held out a cupcake. 

“Thank you, but no,” an officer answered. “I ate yesterday. I’m good.”

A passing protester cut through the small talk.

“Do you sleep well at night?” she asked. “And I hope you know that was sarcastic. I hope you sleep terribly at night.”

Another tried to get one of the officers to take a side. 

“You agree with this shit?” he asked. 

“I don’t have an opinion in uniform,” the officer said. 

“Yeah,” the man shot back. “Just follow orders. Just follow orders, buddy. You are what you stand for, bro. Today, you did not stand for fucking good. It sucks.” 

“Yep,” the officer said.

A woman zeroed in on a specific officer, accusing him of past misconduct before taking an even more personal approach. 

“I also used to be your insurance agent,” the woman yelled. “Never pay your bills on time.”

A colleague asked the officer if he actually knew her. 

“Apparently she was my insurance person. Did not know that. So, that was news to me. I really got to pay my bills, apparently”.

4:08 p.m. The crowd, which had been roughly 80 people at midday, swells past 200. Several tell officers they will not move and are prepared to be arrested. Officers are told to expect a formal dispersal letter within the hour. 

“If it’s a federal letter, I ain’t fucking presenting it,” a local officer tells a colleague.

The crowd is highly organized. Police overhear protesters using “spotters” to call out tactical vehicle movements. They also organize themselves by risk tolerance, intentionally packing the front entrance with “reds”— individuals willing to be arrested and endure use of force — while “yellows” took on support roles.

Meanwhile, an officer’s phone is dying. 

He sat in his cruiser for 15 minutes to charge it. His personal phone had a message from mom in Arizona. Was he all right? His brother, a cop in Florida, texted the same. 

“I’m like, ‘Okay, so it’s all over the country.’ Great.”

Another officer recounted the time he responded to a call at a local business. It was raining when he went inside, so he left his cruiser running with the wipers on. 

“It stopped raining while I was inside. My windshield wipers were still going, but when I came back out to the car, one of the wipers had fallen off. So the arm was just scratching the windshield. Just you have a big arc.

“And I was like, ‘Oh no.'” 

An officer had a sergeant’s exam the next morning. The wind picked up. It started to rain.

“God made me semi-waterproof,” an officer told a civilian passing by.

It was one of four times he used the line.

Two detectives began negotiating where to eat later. Every Dorset Street restaurant was out; someone would recognize them. They settled on Bliss Bee, but only after they changed out of uniform first. 

One officer wanted a double “Southbound” burger. It comes with barbecue sauce, coleslaw, crispy onions and lettuce.

It would be the first thing he’d eaten all day.

“Your mother,” a protester told one of them, “did not give birth to you to do this.”

4:50 p.m. The judge has authorized the criminal arrest warrant and a search warrant for the Dorset residence. ICE’s tactical team is staged and ready.

Someone noted the protesters had been eerily quieter for the last half-hour. One officer studied another’s face. 

“Hey sergeant, you look nervous there, bud.”

“No,” came the answer. “I’m just cold. And wet.”

An ICE agent approached South Burlington Police Lt. Patrick Mulcahy and asked if local police would clear people out. Mulcahy declined and suggested the agent show the warrant to the people gathered at the front door.

Another officer let his guard down with a civilian. 

“My heart’s just kind of broken about it all,” he said. “It’s really not good.”

“Well,” the person told him, “I appreciate what you’re doing. Thank you.” 

“Y’all follow orders beautifully,” someone else called out. “Hitler would be proud.”

5:11 p.m. An ICE official reads aloud the dispersal order to the crowd. No one can hear him. The speaker is facing the wrong direction. An officer tells him, but the official doesn’t adjust. The order is read again. No one moves. ICE announces that the tactical teams will mobilize in two minutes.

There would be no further warning.

Down the line, an officer chewed on a mint toothpick. A protester noticed.

“You’ve got a fucking mint toothpick in while people are getting deported? You’re eating a mint toothpick. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I like mint,” the officer said.

“Fuck you, man. Jesus fucking Christ. You’re a piece of shit. That’s some Nazi shit. You want to shoot someone with a mint toothpick in your mouth, too?”

“No,” the officer said. “I don’t.”

“Heartless piece of shit. ‘I like mint.’ Do you like people?”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t. Because they’re getting deported. I’ve never met anyone worse than you. I know what a Nazi looks like, and they’re fucking bad. That’s you. Right here in the eyes. You are a bad person. Did you grow up thinking you wanted to be a bad person?”

“Nope,” the officer said.

“Then wow. Surprise. We’re both surprised. You suck. Bad person. And I hope you sleep like shit, every single night, for the rest of your life, so you wake up miserable at 80 years old, and you wasted your whole fucking life.”

“You can’t get a fucking drink without being shamed for the horrors you perpetuated here today,” another said. “I hope you never know another minute of peace.”

5:49 p.m. After breaching the home and searching the property for nearly half an hour, federal authorities emerge with three detained individuals, none of whom were named on the warrant. As their vehicles attempt to leave, pepper spray appears to be deployed into the crowd. People who move to block the vehicles are tossed aside by law enforcement officials, several to the ground. At least two are restrained and handcuffed. At least seven people would be cited for misdemeanors. 

An officer talks with a federal agent. Turns out both men left their previous police jobs, worn down. They were, as one put it, on “F U time.”

“One of your bosses accused me of siding with the protesters, and the protesters accused me of siding with you guys,” the officer told the agent. “I’m just trying to walk the middle.”

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” the agent said.

A woman and her dog stopped near the officer. Her 92-year-old mother lived down the street, she said. Teddy, a rescue, was still being socialized.

“He likes soft, gentle people,” she said. “And if their hands are warm, it works.”

“Well,” the officer said, “my hands are not.”

Officers begin to reckon with the day.

“It’s our faces on the news,” one said. “But we sure didn’t make the decision. I promise you that.”

“The sad part is, we knew something like this would happen,” an officer answered.

As police pulled back, the crowd followed them out.

“Nobody’s ever going to forget this,” one protester called after them. 

“Nobody.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: The cumulative weight of standing there.