As speakers crowded the Greensboro City Council chamber earlier this month to protest the choice of the city’s new chief of police, many council members found the experience surreal.
In the five months since the new council was sworn in, its members have been tested by a series of large-scale crises and controversies.
Historic winter storms that all but disabled the city.
A series of downtown restaurant closures that shuttered some of the city’s oldest and most beloved restaurants.
The looming threat of an immigration detention center at the former site of the American Hebrew Academy.
The question of how the city would respond to aggressive federal operations that have included the unlawful detention of even legal immigrants in Greensboro.
But the April 7 city council meeting was different.
Looking out from the dais, council members saw angry residents asking questions about transparency in government, about police leadership and policing policy in Greensboro, about racism and sexism in hiring processes.
Policing has long been a third rail in Greensboro politics, with questions over who leads the department inspiring protests, lawsuits, the beginnings of some political careers, and the end of others. Now, a new council faced tough questions over how a new police chief was named, their part in it, and what it meant for the city’s future.
Could a hire from outside the community understand the city and its police force, or is it better to hire from within? Will a new chief dogged by criticism over overpolicing and police violence align with the council’s desire for reform? How large a factor should race be in such a hire?
Not so long ago, several new council members said they would have been on the other side of the dais, asking these same questions, making these same arguments. These were the issues they ran on after years of community organizing and activism—and issues that are still important to them.
“I have been there,” said Council Member Irving Allen. “I’ve been through six chiefs as an organizer, so the process isn’t new to me, and these sentiments from the community aren’t new to me.”
“I think the community needs to be heard, and people did come out to be heard,” Allen said. “What’s new, from this side, is understanding our role and the processes and procedures we need to follow on some of these decisions to stay on this side of the law. I want to make sure we’re doing both things.”
Council Member Cecile Crawford has long fought for police reforms herself—and says that work has not stopped.
“It definitely feels different to be on this side when a decision like this is made,” Crawford said.
“I really hope that folks who have organized with us for a long time and pushed for us to be voted in, trust that we haven’t changed,” Crawford said. “We’re just trying to navigate such a new system and find out where we can move things, what is legal. This is a very different world, and it’s a huge adjustment.”
A new council was never going to overturn all of the established systems on which the city is run, Crawford said—some of which are both worthwhile and enshrined in state law. But they don’t have to tear down everything that exists to make progress, she said, even while acknowledging not everyone in the community will agree with every city decision.
“I don’t want to jeopardize all of the work that all of my communities have been asking for,” Crawford said. “I don’t want to jeopardize that when we have so much moving. I don’t want to hurt our chances of getting the things that we have been looking to get for the longest time.”
Policing and Protest
When word first leaked that the city would hire Kamran Afzal—now police chief in Dayton, Ohio—it sparked rage in Greensboro. Many residents, especially in the city’s Black community, were pushing for Assistant Greensboro Police Chief Stephanie Mardis to be promoted to chief. Afzal’s hiring was “a smack in the face” to the department’s highest-ranking Black woman, angry residents told the council. It was dismissive to a 21-year veteran with strong qualifications, they said, someone who has ties to and trust from a Black community that has had a decades-long tension with the city’s police.
“I’m not understanding how you can have the credentials, you can have everything that you need, but be overlooked when you’ve been out here in the community forever,” said Latoyia Cruz-Rivas during comments at the April 7 meeting. “I too know about being overlooked because I too have credentials. Unfortunately, we don’t say it, but a lot of times it is because I’m a female, I’m a Black female, and I’m a woman.”
Adding insult to injury, some residents said, the decision was made by City Manager Nathaneil “Trey” Davis. Davis, who is Black, served for 17 years in Greensboro’s police department before joining the city staff. Greensboro’s first-ever majority-Black council has supported him.
Online and in public forums, the criticism has been fierce. Residents have said they feel disappointed and betrayed by the manager and council as they demand that the offer to Afzal be rescinded. Some have even suggested Davis to be fired.
Activists and community organizers have also targeted Afzal’s history in Dayton, where police officers shot and killed Reginald Thomas, 44, one week before Afzal’s hiring in Greensboro was announced.
Officers in Afzal’s department stopped Thomas for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk at night without a headlight. Thomas, who was carrying a gun, ran from officers after they asked to do a pat-down search. He was shot and killed in the physical confrontation that followed. The officers claimed they reacted to Thomas taking out the gun during the chase. Afzal quickly released police body camera footage of the March 24 confrontation, which is easier to do under Ohio law. The shooting is being actively investigated.
That incident, and questions about racial profiling and overpolicing from Afzal’s Dayton tenure, are too reflective of problems that already exist with policing in Greensboro, many residents told the council. Community organizers—including some now on council—have for years pushed to require written consent for searches and end regulatory stops for small infractions that disproportionately impact Black residents and too often end in violence.
Violent confrontations between officers and residents have cost the city millions over the last decade.
Last year, the City of Greensboro reached a $1.75 million settlement with the family of Joseph Lopez, an unarmed 29-year-old man fatally shot by a Greensboro police officer nearly four years ago. The Lopez case was one in a series of high-dollar, high-profile settlements the city has made in the last few years over its police officers killing unarmed people. In February of last year, the city agreed to pay nearly $1 million to a woman who was shot in the back of the head by a Greensboro police officer in 2019. In 2022, the city agreed to pay $2.57 million to the family of Marcus Smith, who was killed when Greensboro police hogtied him in 2018.
Mardis was rising in the leadership ranks even as these problems rose to a fever pitch in Greensboro. But she was seen as a potential bridge between activists and community organizers and the police, a steady presence in Greensboro who had the Black community’s trust and support.
County sheriffs run for office in North Carolina. Police chiefs don’t. They are hired in processes that are supposed to be as professional and confidential as any other personnel decision. But as the city circled its choice in the last few weeks, names were leaked to the public and campaigns were waged. The final decision was met with outrage and calls to fundamentally change the entire hiring process.
“I thought it was very unfair that it became that kind of political campaign,” said Mayor Marikay Abuzuaiter. “The candidates deserve confidentiality, and we cannot, and they cannot go back and forth about things that are said, ways that things are characterized. It’s really not fair to them, and it’s not fair to anyone.”
‘Let the Manager Be the Manager’
Residents angry with the result of the police chief search have criticized the process as opaque, deceptive, even undemocratic.
The decision was made with “no community input,” said Cruz-Rivas, the resident who argued for Mardis’ hiring before the city council.
In fact, the city held community forums on the hiring in every district before launching a national search that produced five finalists. Afzal was among them, as was a candidate within the department widely assumed to be Mardis. To preserve the privacy of candidates and follow personnel laws, the city has not identified any of the candidates.
“I think there was community involvement,” Allen said. “There can always be more. But also, we know that there’s a legal barrier and personnel responsibility for the city about what we’re able to share.”
“In hindsight, there may have been some things that could have been done differently or better,” Allen said. “But I think that the community was a part of the process. I think that their voice was heavily involved and given the opportunity to be heard. That showed through in who the finalists were.”
Davis spoke extensively with council members about what they wanted in a new chief, who the candidates were, and their preferences, council members said. They had the opportunity to engage with finalists. But in the end, they respected that it was the manager’s decision to make—and they understood why.
State law makes the hiring of department heads the manager’s responsibility, a provision intended to insulate the professional staff of the city from politics and prevent constant and debilitating turnover with each election. The council directly hires and manages just two employees—the manager and the city attorney.
“Being a city council member is not a full-time job,” said Council Member Hugh Holston. “You need someone managing all the day-to-day. You can’t have nine part-time people managing every aspect of full-time departments with nine different personalities, nine different methods, nine different understandings of the issue.”
The council makes policy, charges the manager with carrying it out, and can redirect them or fire them if they feel they haven’t done so, Holston said. But micromanaging the manager, department heads, or the city staff has historically led to public political fights, resignations, firings, and lawsuits.
“We have definitely seen kind of micromanaging of the manager and city staff happen, and it’s never good,” Abuzuaiter said. “I’ve been on enough councils to know what happens when you do that.”
“We have stressed very carefully and succinctly with the city manager where we wanted to go,” Holston said. “And I feel that his decision in the new chief is a step in that direction.”
Last year, Denise Roth became the first former city manager to be elected to council. Going through the process of hiring a police chief, not as city staff but as Mayor Pro Tem, has been a bit surreal, she said. But her experience—including the hiring of a previous chief when she served as assistant city manager—gives her added perspective, she said.
“You really do have to let the manager be the manager,” Roth said. “And I really empathize with Trey, with what he has to balance, with all of the voices and the perspective and the questioning, etc. This is his decision, and he has to own the decision and how it’s made, and we need to respect the process.”
Keeping that process as confidential as possible is a best practice in executive hiring, Roth said—especially in competitive national searches that produce the best and most diverse pool of candidates. Many people now in good jobs won’t apply if they have to disclose to their employers they’re looking elsewhere, she said. When names are leaked, candidates might pull out, scuttling lengthy and expensive searches.
Roth has herself been part of hiring processes where her name was leaked without her consent. Not respecting confidentiality in that way can have real consequences for candidates, their livelihoods, and their families, she said.
It can be tough to balance that essential confidentiality with public input and engagement, Roth said. But in this case, she believes the manager struck the right balance.
“Arguably, this is probably even more community engagement than we did in previous searches, at least going back to my time on staff,” Roth said.
Some community organizers have said Davis promised them in a November community forum that there would be a public event with the final candidates. Davis denies that, saying he would never have made such a statement before the search process even began.
Defending his choice of Afzal in an April 10 press conference, Davis said he is open to a public forum with finalists in theory—but only if the candidates themselves agree to be identified, waiving their right to a confidential hiring process.
The Assembly reached out to Davis last week but didn’t hear back.
During the April 7 meeting, he noted that the city’s last two searches for a police chief, in which he participated, did not include public forums with the finalists.
The city did have such a public forum with police chief finalists in 2015, with their consent. The two final candidates were Wayne Scott, a white candidate from within the department, and Danielle Outlaw, a Black woman who was serving as deputy chief of police in Oakland, California. When the city ultimately hired Scott, community organizers fiercely criticized the choice, irrespective of the level of community involvement.
In early December of last year, Pat Bazemore of Developmental Associates LLC, the firm hired to conduct the national search for the city’s next chief, told a public forum in District 5 that a forum with finalists was unlikely.
“She was very clear that it was highly doubtful that we could do that kind of public forum with the final candidates,” said Council Member Tammi Thurm, who represents District 5. “She couldn’t speak for the manager, she said, but before they even had any candidates, they just couldn’t commit to that, and it’s easy to understand why.”
At the April 7 council meeting, Davis defended the process by which he came to the decision.
“I need to reiterate that this decision was not rushed,” Davis said. “It was deliberate, and it was a months-long national search. We engaged, as a few folks acknowledged tonight, the community in a meaningful way, which included five different public input sessions where residents helped shape the leadership profile we were looking for. I attended several of those sessions to hear directly.”
Afzal will be expected to engage with the community from day one on the job, Davis said — and the city will create the opportunity for him to do so. He’ll be held accountable for that engagement, for transparency, and for results, he said.
The community has a right to want input and transparency, Thurm said. The community forums on the hire were a way of providing that, as is the consultation elected representatives on the council have with the manager during the hiring process. But history has shown that people who are dissatisfied with the result are likely to criticize the process, whatever it is.
In the latest hiring process, the district community forums themselves became a liability—cited by those who disagreed with the manager’s ultimate decision as proof he didn’t listen.
“You got a city manager that went on tour, took up our time and decided what you said didn’t matter,” said Irish Spencer, an anti-violence activist and recent candidate for the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, at the April 7 council meeting.
Spencer framed Davis’ decision, and the process that led to it, as disrespectful to both the residents of Greensboro and the city council.
“It is so not fair to you all up here that we voted for to go through all this drama,” Spencer told the council.
That doesn’t reflect the reality of the working relationship between Davis and Greensboro’s elected officials, council members told The Assembly.
‘We Respect Each Other’
The new council has navigated some tough political terrain in its first five months without the major public squabbling that has characterized some previous councils. The key to that, council members said, is respect.
That respect was on display in the way they worked together and with the manager through the hiring process, they said, and through the criticism of it.
“I respect Trey,” Crawford said. “I think he does an amazing job as a city manager. He has been a really open and collaborative city manager.”
“As working council members, we understand how the hiring process runs,” Crawford said. “Trey is the city manager. He has the right to make this decision. We each gave our feedback as to who we thought he should hire. We may not all agree with each other. But in the end, it was his decision to make, and we support that.”
Allen’s relationship with Davis goes back to their days as a community organizer and a Greensboro patrol officer, respectively. It’s always been respectful and productive, Allen said, and it continues to be in their current roles.
“It was his job to kind of talk us down, and it was my job to keep people safe when we were out protesting,” Allen said. “So I think we kind of played the same role from different sides, which was interesting.”
Allen was the only council member to attend last week’s community meeting and panel discussion organized by residents opposed to the hire. He wanted it to be clear he’s listening, something to which he believes Davis is also committed.
“I think we all respect each other and we respect the city manager,” said Council Member Adam Marshall. “We respect his experience as a police officer, and we respect his role in this process and know what our role is. Neither of us is looking to undermine the other.”
Previous councils have seen public conflict over the hiring of department heads, including the police chief.
In 2006, a racial profiling scandal forced the resignation of former Police Chief David Wray and later contributed to the firing of former City Manager Mitch Johnson in a vote that split the council and led to years of lawsuits and public recriminations.
Former City Council Member Sharon Hightower publicly criticized the hiring of former Chief Wayne Scott in 2015. She was one of several council members who faced years of accusations that they tried to manage city staff, including department heads, well beyond their authority.
The new council doesn’t anticipate those problems, they said—with city staff or with each other.
“We’ve all been working in the community together a long time in different ways,” said Allen. “We may be new to this council, but we’re not new to this work.”
Thurm, one of just three holdovers from the previous council, said she’s seen the new council working together through tough issues in a way that is “just awesome.”
“Even when we don’t agree, we’re respectful, and we know we are all trying to do the best for the city and our constituents,” she said.
Abuzuaiter, also a council veteran, said she’s been amazed at the way the new council has worked together, avoided potential conflicts, and concentrated on the work of the city.
“They really want to work as a team, and you see that,” Abuzuaiter said. “When you look at how fast they have taken in a lot of new information, a lot of the legalities, codes, policies. The city manager, the city attorney, and the city staff have done a lot to help with that, but the way they have worked overtime to make progress on so many issues so quickly shows you their commitment.”
That commitment to constituents and the issues on which they ran remains paramount, Crawford said.
“I believe and I think our council believes in creating permanent change,” Crawford said. “There are some things that need to change in Greensboro, in policy, in the police department. And so I think we’re all going to keep working toward that and not get distracted.”