A former Burlington Police lieutenant who had once been in charge of investigating child abuse across Chittenden County now faces charges of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child by the Vermont State Police.
Arthur Cyr, 51, worked for the Burlington Police Department from October 1995 through March of 2016. The alleged crime took place on New Years Eve, two years ago.
In a phone call, Burlington police chief Brandon del Pozo emphasized that Cyr was not an employee of the Burlington police force at the time of the alleged crime. Still, he said that while such an allegation against an officer is “painful and disappointing,” given Cyr's prior role supervising the county's child abuse investigations, this situation “is especially troubling."
From May 2008 until January 2010, Cyr was the sergeant in charge of the Chittenden Unit for Special Investigations, the multi-agency police unit responsible for investigating child abuse in that county.
Del Pozo said it was the same unit that received the allegations against Cyr at the end of last year. In order to maintain impartiality, the Chittenden Unit referred the allegations to its sister unit, the Northern Unit For Special Investigations, where a Vermont state trooper was assigned the case. State Police detectives learned that a juvenile female had reported that Cyr had touched her inappropriately on Dec. 31, 2016, at a home in Bristol.
The case is being handled by the Addison County State’s Attorney’s Office.
