BRATTLEBORO-He's only been on the job one week, but Justin Johnston, the new community resource specialist, knows the Brattleboro Police Department (BPD) well.
"I have quite a history with the Brattleboro police," Johnston said wryly.
For years, he was engaged in criminal activity to support his substance use.
"My values and morals, my ways of thinking at that time, were not based in reality as a productive citizen of our community," Johnston said in an interview with The Commons. "They were based on street life and criminal thinking."
Johnston said that he "grew up with a lot of anger towards the cops, as if the officers doing their job was the issue. And, in fact, what recovery taught me is that I was the issue the whole time."
Sober since 2014, he will be working side by side with the police to address the increasing disorderly conduct in town.
Johnston is the first hire of the Brattleboro Resource Assistance Team (BRAT), which will include four Level 2 police officers, three social work police liaisons, and a data analyst for emergency services.
The BRAT will provide street-level support and resources to improve both the real and perceived public safety issues downtown.
According to BPD call data, noncriminal activity - including trespassing, citizen disputes, noise disturbances, vandalism, loitering, and intoxicated persons - comprised a third of the calls the department responded to between 2022 and this past August.
BRAT is part of the Selectboard's broader community safety agenda, including a recently adopted Community Conduct Ordinance, a community safety messaging campaign, and other actions to address public health and safety in town.
BRAT was launched as a pilot project in 2023 and formalized by the Selectboard in August 2024. According to Police Chief Norma Hardy, the project was received positively, especially by local businesses whose principals have consistently raised concerns about public safety to the Selectboard.
"I will be present in the community as much as possible," Johnston said.
In addition to helping local businesses navigate the sometimes disruptive behaviors that discourage customers from coming downtown, he said he will escort people to their cars late at night and accompany children walking to the Boys and Girls Club and the New England Youth Theatre.
Noting the lack of adequate transportation options for people to receive substance use treatment, Johnston also hopes to play a role in helping people get to treatment more quickly.
He believes his lived experience, including his and his family's substance abuse, his stays in foster homes, and his incarceration, give him a unique perspective on police work.
"I may be able to identify red flags in the community or patterns of behavior that can influence where the department focuses its efforts," he said.
'I wondered what my future looked like'
Johnston was previously a recovery coach at Turning Point of Windham County, a recovery and wellness center based in Brattleboro.
He first connected with the organization in 2017 as a recipient of services, then volunteered, and eventually assumed a leadership role as a co-director.
Johnston said Turning Point offered him the positive influences he needed to avoid old habits.
"I had recently been released from incarceration and was lost and confused," he said. "I wondered what my future looked like."
Johnston speaks forthrightly about his past struggles and his journey through recovery.
"I was sober for three years before coming to Turning Point, but I wasn't truly in recovery," said Johnston, who now defines sobriety and recovery as two very different things.
"I can be sober and be 'dry drunk,' but I'm still kind of mean and rude and not working on my trauma. I'm not thriving," he said.
He explains that recovery includes working to be your best version and allowing yourself some grace and forgiveness when you can't be. That struggle, he said, builds resilience and character.
After he joined Turning Point, Johnston's sister, Ashley Hawthorne, died from an opiate overdose. Her death in 2017 gave him a deeper commitment to recovery and self-improvement.
"That's when I started really identifying as someone in recovery," Johnston said. "That's when I really started to work on myself in deeper ways to sustain my sobriety long-term."
He said he hadn't fully accepted that he had substance-use disorder.
"I had to get rid of my thinking that I could somehow responsibly use these substances and be productive," Johnston said.
'It really takes a village'
Johnston believes that the biggest barriers to integrating unhoused people with substance dependency into the community are a lack of sober living facilities, longer treatment options, and structured environments.
He said his time in sober living houses, like Phoenix House in Brattleboro, facilitated his recovery.
But Phoenix House closed in 2021 due to financial struggles, and with no sober living facilities in the area, "I'm not sure I could get sober in this environment right now," Johnston said.
Turning Point is developing a plan to establish an eight-bed sober living environment for men in recovery at the organization's Flat Street site. According to Christine Allen, Turning Point's executive director, "The sober living proposal is a plan to provide safe and supportive housing to help people to maintain their sobriety and to transition back into the community."
In an email to The Commons, Allen also addressed Vermont's lack of long-term treatment options, calling Vermont's 14-day treatment limit for Medicaid recipients inadequate.
"It is completely unrealistic to expect that someone who is in heavy addiction and goes to treatment for 14 days, then goes back to their environment, still homeless, with no family support, surrounded by active use, is going to have the internal strength to stay clean," she said.
"It's going to take everybody stepping up, including the state, to get to a point where we have ample treatment options for folks," Johnston said.
He said that without a comprehensive approach to support individuals in recovery, including housing, treatment, and skills development, "I think folks will continue to spin their wheels."
The price of increased police presence downtown
With an increase in staff, BPD is outgrowing its space on Black Mountain Road, Assistant Police Chief Jeremy Evans told the Selectboard at its Oct. 15 meeting.
To meet the BPD's increased need for space and to locate the BRAT downtown, the board is discussing housing a 2,100-square-foot police substation at the Transportation Center on Flat Street. Preliminary designs for this space also include a community meeting space and four public restrooms accessible 24 hours a day.
"I see this as a positive thing for an area of town that is a hot spot for criminal activity," Evans said. "We have a perfect space there. Having the substation there would change the dynamic of the entire area."
With a price tag of $1.13 million, the project exceeds the resources of the town's Parking and General funds. While the town could take on debt for the project, "the FY26 budget and all future budgets will already face growth in operations from the Downtown Safety Action Plan and from anticipated increases in solid waste services, in addition to regular inflation-adjusted expenditures," staff wrote in a memo to the Selectboard.
One option for funding the project is to use the town's Revolving Loan Fund, which is traditionally used for community and economic development activities and to stimulate new housing initiatives.
Using the RLF for the transportation center project would leave the fund with a balance of $255,267 and would not require an increase to the property tax rate, according to the staff memo.
"The Selectboard will need to decide if this initiative is needed today enough to limit the opportunities available to future selectboards," staff wrote.
'It's a statement about hope'
Johnston said that being hired by the BPD, despite having felonies on his record, speaks volumes about the progress the town and the department have made over the years.
"It's a statement about hope," he said, "that people will give you another opportunity, regardless of your past. That people with a darker past do have value and are capable."
He said he is very excited to have this opportunity.
"I really hope to change some preconceived notions that people might have about themselves, that because of their past, they don't have value," Johnston said, adding that he wants to "challenge folks to believe in themselves."
"I'm super proud to have this opportunity, and to give back to the community the best way I can," he said.
This News item by Ellen Pratt was written for The Commons.