Far be it for me to imply that the Burlington Police Department doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing, but in this case they clearly didn’t.

The BPD is in hot water, possibly to be joined in the pot by the Burlington Public Schools and Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, whose recent reappointment of Police Chief Jon Murad, over the objections of her fellow Progressives, now seems like maybe not such a great idea.

On Wednesday, a group of 20 Burlington High School students were on a field trip to One North Avenue when screams rang out and two women ran into the room, pursued by a masked gunman. Who opened fire.

It was a drill staged by the BPD with the apparent goal of scaring the shit out of the kids and maybe giving them PTSD. “I’m shaking and crying because I’m like, Oh my god, I’m gonna get shot,” one student told Seven Days. “It felt so real.”

In an utterly inadequate press release blandly (misleadingly) entitled “BHS Scenario Response,” the BPD called this a “roll- playing scenario” (sic) that “was not directed at any students or faculty.”

Pardon me, but what the actual fuck? The masked gunman was in the room with the school group and gunshots rang out. How in hell were they supposed to know that it “was not directed” at them?

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