Carla OccasoThe Montpelier Police Department began shortly after 1895, when the village of Montpelier became the city of Montpelier, per a 1981 report written by Cheryl Howsmon. City hall, built between 1909 and 1911, housed the police department for decades, until the department moved into its own building.
The new police station was built around 2000 behind city hall.
The first police chief was John L. Tuttle, appointed in 1897, who served until 1900. He had one or two officers, but also several special officers employed by the Central Vermont Railroad, Howsmon wrote. Those officers focussed exclusively on monitoring the premises and cars owned by the railroad.
The city council, which oversaw the police department, was, according to Howsmon, “given the power to make, establish, alter, amend or repeal ordinances, regulations and by-laws and to impose penalties for the breach thereof. The purposes included: ‘to prevent riots, noises, disturbances and disorderly assemblages’; ‘to abate and remove nuisances and to restrain and suppress houses of ill-fame and disorderly houses’; ‘to restrain and punish vagrants, mendicants (beggars), and common prostitutes, and to make regulations respecting paupers’; ’to prevent immoderate riding or driving in the streets, and cruelty to animals’, and ‘to regulate or restrain the running at large of dogs.’”
In 1905, Montpelier police made 295 arrests, 96% of those related to alcohol intoxication. Most of those arrested paid a fine and were housed in jail. For example, “in 1915, Harold Butler was arrested for intoxication, pled guilty, and was sentenced to seven months in jail,” Howsmon writes. And adultery also plagued the police in the 1920s, with convicted offenders spending years in jail.
The police in years past faced social problems similar to those the Montpelier police are facing now, such as sheltering those with nowhere else to go. Howsmon writes that on April 28, 1932 the police department opened up a room in the basement of city hall for night lodgers. In 1932, from April to December, there were 1,393 night lodgers. The cost of the night lodgers that year was $278.60 compared to the cost of taking them to jail at $1,044.75. This amounted to a savings of $766.15, Howsmon noted.
