Three weeks before Etan Nasreddin-Longo was fired, he received a compliment from the director of the Vermont State Police. Col. Matthew Birmingham had told him he was doing great work leading a committee under the Department of Public Safety, Nasreddin-Longo recalled this week.

“And then, in September, I get fired for absolutely no reason,” the former director of the Fair and Impartial Policing and Community Affairs Committee said.

Now, almost two months after he was fired, Nasreddin-Longo said he is “still in the dark” and has had no communication from the department about reasons behind his removal.

While DPS Commissioner Jennifer Morrison said the decision was hers alone, she and other members of the state police have declined to comment on why he was removed, as it involves “personnel matters.” Birmingham did not respond to a request for comment.

Nasreddin-Longo, 62, is a professor of musicology and composer, a longtime advocate for racial justice and, until recently, the salaried part-time head of the DPS committee that advises and provides implicit bias training to law enforcement, among other things.

He said he came to the position by chance when a gym buddy who was in law enforcement asked him to join a committee exploring bias-free policing. He was surprised by the term and recalled saying, “if you don’t have any bias, you’re probably dead.”

Nasreddin-Longo, who identifies as mixed race, Jewish and Muslim, said he initially thought he would not get involved, but got drawn in more so after George Floyd’s killing in 2020, when he became a salaried civilian employee of the state police.

“You cannot be Black in this country, have a brain and have a heart and not get into this work at some point in your life, either professionally or not professionally,” he said.

Since then, Nasreddin-Longo’s work has been celebrated by advocates and racial justice leaders to advance equity statewide, such as creating a first ever anti-bias police training outline. In 2022, he was given an award for outstanding dedication and his contributions to the committee at the Vermont State Police’s annual ceremony at the statehouse.

He is “a trusted resource, a thoughtful educator” who has built bridges between marginalized communities and law enforcement, said Amanda Garcés, the new commissioner of the Vermont Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She briefly worked with him on a different Fair and Impartial Policing subcommittee under the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, which is tasked with creating the statewide model policy for fair and impartial policing.

“In every setting I have been part of, whether in community conversations or in discussions with law enforcement, people consistently spoke of Etan with genuine respect. His trainings, his approach to dialogue, and the care he brings to difficult issues have earned him deep regard across the state,” she wrote in an email.

Nasreddin-Longo said he particularly enjoyed forging new relationships between the DPS and groups like the Root Social Justice Center, which prioritizes Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities. But he received positive verbal feedback for such work from supervisors, he said, and has never faced a disciplinary action that he knows of.

An ‘abrupt’ departure

The first indication Nasreddin-Longo had of any issues involving his position was at the beginning of September, he said, when he was asked to write his own contract for the first time. At that time, he learned that the department wanted to turn his salaried position into a consultant contract, with no reasons given. He declined but said it felt “very irregular” and “very abrupt.”

Then, during a Sept. 25 meeting with Morrison, Nasreddin-Longo was handed “a boilerplate termination letter” with no reasons given. He signed it and left.

“I had no plans to say anything. I want them to say something,” he said.

The public safety department issued a brief news release on Sept. 29 confirming Nasreddin-Longo was “not currently a state employee.”

Almost two months later, Nasreddin-Longo said he doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that he was removed at a time when DEI efforts and diverse voices are being undermined and undercut across the state and nation.

“I certainly wasn’t thinking of retirement,” he said.

Morrison plans to post the currently vacant part-time civilian position early next year, with input from the community, according to Adam Silverman, public information officer for Vermont State Police. Nasreddin-Longo’s co-director and police counterpart Sgt. Daniel Bennett is leading the committee. Bennett did not respond to a request for comment.

In a Nov. 7 email to the Fair and Impartial Policing Committee, Morrison said she is focused on hiring a new co-director of FIP and more clearly defining the role of the FIP committee in consultation with longtime FIP committee members.

The committee, established in 2009, meets four times a year and acts as an advisory group to the Vermont State Police to address bias and hate crimes in policing, hiring and working with marginalized communities, and conducts law enforcement training, according to the website.

Other advocates of the FIP committee’s work also see Nasreddin-Longo’s sudden removal as an ominous sign of the times.

With the federal government rolling back decades of civil rights progress and threatening states that fail to comply, Vermonters are right to question the motives behind the firing of one of the state’s most respected racial equity leaders, James Duff Lyall, executive director of the ACLU of Vermont, said in an email.

“The evidence is all around us that systemic racism is alive and well in our state and continues to perpetuate real harm in our communities — and the silence and inaction of so many state leaders is telling,” he wrote.

Vermont’s criminal justice system, Lyall added, still has some of the worst racial disparities in the country — from racial disparities in state prosecutions to the House and Senate judiciary committees failing for three years to advance a bill that could address pervasive racial profiling on Vermont’s roadways.

“These are the kinds of injustices Etan Nasreddin-Longo worked to dismantle,” he said.

“Until we know more, it’s difficult to see this as anything other than a slap in the face to Vermonters who are calling on state leaders to act with urgency and resolve in defense of our laws and our values,” Lyall wrote.

The Windham County NAACP also called for community support in the wake of “the perceived unfairness” of Nasreddin-Longo’s removal and offered its help.

Garces said it is sad to see a widely respected state employee removed from his role without a clear explanation.

“Vermont has long benefited from his integrity, compassion and experience in equity work. My hope is that the commitment to fair and impartial policing remains strong and transparent moving forward,” she said.

Nasreddin-Longo said he is humbled by the community support he has received: “It’s nice to know that that’s there. I’m just sorry that things have worked out this way. I wish I had a reason.”

After years of work by the FIP committee, advocates are mostly worried that progress may be reversed or terminated.

Federal policies have no impact on the work of the committee, according to a Nov. 7 email from Morrison to the Fair and Impartial Policing Committee. Marginalized communities will continue to be heard, and there is “no intention of watering” the FIP down, she wrote.

Rep. Angela Arsenault, D-Williston, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee and the Joint Judicial Retention Committee, doesn’t have any information on the dismissal either and urged transparency from the department.

“I do think that the Department of Public Safety’s failure to provide a clear rationale — to a valued employee and a concerned public — could serve to uphold many of the harmful constructs that Etan was charged with helping to dismantle,” she said.

Nasreddin-Longo said he had volunteered on the committee since about 2012 and was hired as a co-director in 2020. When Birmingham hired him, he said: “Your job is not to be a yes man,” Nasreddin-Longo recalled, and said he took it to heart.

After years of helping to build relationships with communities of color and other marginalized groups, Nasreddin-Longo said he hopes the work continues with intention and better communication.

“I just hope that they’re going to approach this process of reformulation and hiring that I knew nothing about with a lot more cultural sensitivity than they showed in firing me,” he said, “because if they don’t, they’ve already lost the battle.”

This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.