My brother Scott Garvey was killed by Vermont State Police in Putney on July 7, 2025, during a mental health crisis. He was 55 years old. He had moved to Vermont less than a week earlier because our family believed he would be safer here near to my sister, a lifelong Vermont teacher. He was physically disabled, unarmed, in crisis, and alone inside his own home.
A few days before Scott died, I handed my brother a handwritten letter. We had just completed a four-day drive from Memphis to Vermont. We had unpacked boxes, carried in his drums, set up the apartment, and tried to help him and mama begin again. In that letter, I told Scott I loved him. I told him I was proud of him. And I told him something I have replayed every day since: I told him to trust the system.
Scott did not trust systems. He feared hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and police. I thought some of that fear was part of his illness. I now understand that much of it was learned experience. Many of those suffering from mental health issues share this fear. The hardest truth I have faced since Scott’s death is that my brother’s fear was not irrational. He believed that one day police would kill him during a mental health crisis.
And they did.
Scott should not be reduced to the final hours of his life. He was a son, brother, uncle, musician, poet, writer, caregiver, animal lover, believer, and friend. He gave away socks and sleeping bags to people who had less than he did. He volunteered with animals. He sent postcards. He played drums. He prayed for his family, for people who were homeless, and even for police and firefighters. He was complicated, funny, generous, faithful, frightened, creative, and loved.
Here are ten things we think Vermonters should know about Scott’s killing:
1. Scott was holding his cane, not a “pole.”
The State has repeatedly described the object in Scott’s hand as a “pole.” That word matters. It makes a disabled man’s mobility aid sound like a weapon.
Scott used that cane because he was physically disabled and had serious mobility limitations. Officers were aware of his condition. They had been shown video of him using the cane earlier in the day. They were told he had physical limitations.
After Scott was killed, the State chose language that made his cane sound threatening instead of what it was: a tool he needed to walk.
2. “Barricaded” does not mean what many people think it means.
The State has repeatedly used the word “barricaded.” Vermonters should understand how misleading that word can be.
Scott had moved into the apartment only days earlier. There were still moving boxes throughout the home. Some boxes were near the front and back doors because I had personally placed them there several days earlier while moving my mother and brother into the apartment. If officers had asked our family, we could have told them that.
There was no couch pushed against the door—they didn’t yet own one. No table. No furniture fortification. No armed standoff bunker. There were only moving boxes in a barely unpacked apartment where a disabled man and his 84-year-old mother had just begun trying to start a new life.
Calling that a “barricade” makes ordinary moving clutter sound like a tactical threat. Simply put: the door was only locked, and my sister gave State Police the key to open it. It also obscures one of the central failures of that day: officers had family nearby who knew the apartment, knew Scott, knew the circumstances of the move, and could have helped them understand what they were seeing.
They did not use us. Despite our efforts.
3. Officers knew Scott was in a mental health crisis.
This was not a mystery. Police knew Scott was experiencing a mental health crisis. Mental health professionals were involved. The State knew he had a history of serious mental illness.
That should have shaped every decision made that day. A mental health crisis requires patience, time, distance, containment, family support, and de-escalation.
These are not abstract ideas. They are the very principles Vermont says it expects officers to follow. The very principles adopted after earlier Vermont State Police shootings ended precisely the same way.
4. My Mother Judy and Sister Kara were nearby, willing to help, and were turned away.
Scott was not alone in the world. His mother Judy and his sister Kara were nearby, in the parking lot or at home 2 miles away. They loved him. They knew him. They knew what scared him and what might calm him. They could have helped. They asked to.
Kara asked to speak with Scott through the door. She was refused. According to Kara, the supervising officer told her: “I am getting him out of there one way or another. No one is going to talk to my officers like that.”
That sentence should haunt Vermont. In a mental health crisis, the goal should not be to get him out one way or another. The goal should be to preserve the life of the person in crisis and prevent putting Vermont State Troopers in unnecessary danger.
5. Vermont State Police escalated the situation.
Police were outside Scott’s home for hours. He was alone inside. There was no gun. There was time to slow down. There was time to follow state policy and training.
Instead, at approximately 4:30 p.m., officers chose to storm their home. Our family still has not heard any explanation for why entry had to happen at that moment. Scott was not outside threatening neighbors. He was not firing a weapon. He was not holding anyone hostage. He was inside his own home, frightened and in crisis, worried desperately about his two dogs, behind a locked door in an apartment he had only started moving into.
The question is not only whether the final trigger pull can be defended after officers created a dangerous doorway confrontation. The deeper question is why that confrontation was created at all. And whether any one—the State Trooper himself or the Supervising Officer who pursued this strategy—will ever face any consequences at all.
6. When the shield officer got stuck, officers should have backed out.
The body-camera video raises serious tactical questions. The officer with the ballistic shield appears to be stopped at the doorway, leaving all the Troopers clearly stuck outside the home, on the back patio. That placed other officers in danger and worsened the risk that police now use to justify the shooting.
That should have been the moment to stop, back out, reassess, and de-escalate. As state policy and best practices clearly dictate. Instead, officers continued standing outside the door on the sidewalk, ultimately firing into a darkened living room from outside the house, unclear of whether who’s lives they were endangering, including their fellow troopers trying to get in the front door directly behind Scott.
When a tactical plan breaks down so seriously, officers should not solve that failure by shooting the person in crisis.
7. Trooper Romeo did not appear to have a clear view.
Trooper Peter Romeo was not standing inside the apartment with a clear view of Scott. He was positioned outside the back door, behind a doorway, behind another officer, and behind a ballistic shield. Even given the poor quality, technical malfunctions, and limited perspective of the body-camera footage, that lack of a clear view is apparent to anyone who watches.
The Attorney General’s own account says that when Romeo was asked what he saw, he answered, “I don’t know.” It also says he was unsure whether the object was a gun.
That uncertainty should have led to restraint. It should have led officers to back out, slow down, and de-escalate.
Instead, Romeo blindly but quickly fired off seven shots through a small opening in the door into Scott’s home. Three hit my brother; two in the chest and one in the leg. Four others landed in the hallway, the ceiling, and the front door, behind which two of his fellow officers were also trying to get in at the same time. This was reckless and anything but controlled, endangering the lives of his fellow officers and neighbors and small children.
8. No gun was found.
No firearm was recovered from Scott’s apartment.
That fact must not be buried. Scott did not have a gun. The object the State now describes as a “pole” was his cane. Officers knew he used it as a cane. Yet the State continues to frame the object in the most threatening way possible.
Vermonters should ask why. I think I know: I believe it’s because they are attempting to cynically sway public opinion in order to deflect from accountability. You decide for yourself.
9. Less-lethal alternatives were not used.
Police had options. Time was an option. Distance was an option. Containment was an option. Continued negotiation was an option. Family-assisted communication was an option. Mental-health-led engagement was an option. Backing out of the doorway was an option.
Less-lethal tools such as gas or pepper spray have been used in other Vermont incidents. They were not used here.
Deadly force should not be the default ending to a mental health crisis.
10. The harm to our family did not end when Scott died.
After the State killed Scott, our mother was told the family had to pay to release his remains so he could attend his own funeral. The amount was $1,925. They took a credit card. It was the last formal communication from the State for nearly 350 days. Really.
Then my mother was told her apartment was “cleared” for her return. They didn’t warn us what she would find. Pools of Scott’s blood on the floor, body fluids on the walls, and bullet holes in the walls and ceiling. Every item they owned was upended in the vain search for a gun. What we returned to was not a home. It was the aftermath of a brutal killing. Only after, we were told it was my mother’s financial responsibility and a state legal requirement to hire professional cleaners because of the bodily fluids. Really. In Vermont.
That is not humane. That is not how a state should treat a grieving family after a state-involved death. It is unworthy of the great tradition of the Vermont State Police. All of Vermont should be ashamed that any family was left to face that.
Vermont has shown little appetite for accountability or reform.
Our family has tried to handle this through every public and democratic channel available to us. We called. We wrote. We submitted requests. We asked to meet. The Governor has failed entirely to respond to more than 30 phone calls, emails, and website requests seeking a meeting about what went wrong that day and how it devastated our family.
We worked on legislation introduced by Representative Michelle Bos Lin to address these failures, including better training, victim support, and clearer standards for law enforcement responses to mental health crises. Vermont currently requires only eight hours of classroom training on mental health calls for new recruits—placing Vermont tied for last in the United States. We asked for more. If not for the safety of the public, for the safety of the undertrained State Troopers asked to protect us. We asked for a serious commitment to change.
We did not get it. Apparently, there’s little appetite for such reform amongst the state’s political leadership.
Vermont’s current posture appears to protect institutions more than people. It leaves residents in crisis at risk, places troopers in dangerous situations they have not been adequately trained to resolve, exposes taxpayers to costly litigation, and still fails to answer the basic question:
What will the State do differently next time?
The words matter.
The language matters. Scott’s cane becomes a “pole.” Moving boxes become a “barricade.” A disabled man in crisis becomes a threat. A failure to see clearly becomes a reasonable fear. A decision to force entry becomes an inevitability. Seven shots become “justified.”
This is likely one reason Vermonters are so cynical about state government and investigations of this type. Vermont State Police’s own updated officer-involved fatal shooting database now lists Scott as number 49. According to that database, every VSP officer-involved fatal shooting since 1977 has been deemed justified. Not one fatal shooting by VSP was found to be unjustified.
Source: https://vsp.vermont.gov/sites/vsp/files/documents/20260623_OIS_spreadsheet.pdf
A process that reaches the same conclusion every time does not inspire confidence. It teaches families that the outcome may already be written before the investigation begins.
Our family is not asking Vermont to pretend every police shooting is unlawful. We are simply asking Vermont to stop pretending every police shooting is unavoidable. Those are not the same thing.
If every fatal shooting is justified, then no fatal shooting teaches the State anything. No policy changes. No training changes. No commander is questioned. No tactical decision is scrutinized. No family receives a meaningful answer. And the next person in crisis — and the next young trooper sent recklessly into a dangerous doorway — is placed at risk all over again.
Scott’s death should have been a moment of reckoning and reflection by the State. Instead, the State has offered biased legal conclusions, self-protective language, and excruciatingly painful silence.
That is not enough.
Scott Garvey should be alive.
Scott Garvey came to Vermont because we believed being surrounded by his family could help him. He was in crisis, but he was reachable. He was frightened, but he was loved. He was disabled, but he was not dangerous in the way the State now wants people to believe.
Scott reached out and begged for help and care.
Instead, he was brutally shot to death.
Vermonters deserve better — not someday, not after the next family becomes number 50, but now.
Our family is reeling. We have waited to file a lawsuit with the hopes that someone in charge of this great state would accept a modicum of accountability. An ounce of political courage to discuss reforms. But they won’t. No one is listening. And so, sadly, we utilize the only tool left available to us. A lawsuit.
This could have all gone a different way. But Vermont leadership chose instead to entire disregard accountability for this killing.
Contact and publishing details:
Shawn Garvey
- Phone: (530) 559-2791
- Email: shawn@buildmomentum.io
All rights reserved. Available for republishing only in its entirety.
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