‘It really hurt to the core.’ Raleigh city manager reflects on policing and past mistakes
The killing of Tyre Nichols by police in Memphis and the parallels to the murder of George Floyd brought Raleigh’s city manager to tears during a City Council retreat Saturday.
“We have to figure out how we stand in the gap to give people an opportunity and a space to heal,” City Manager Marchell Adams-David said, tears streaking her cheek. “And whatever that looks like, there isn’t a manual. There isn’t a report that can tell us how it’s going to work best.”
Peaceful demonstrations in Raleigh after Floyd’s death in 2020 turned violent when law enforcement repeatedly launched tear gas and foam batons, sometimes called rubber bullets, at protesters and some demonstrators threw water bottles, rocks and fireworks at police and sheriff’s deputies. Some downtown Raleigh businesses had their windows smashed, or were set on fire and robbed.
“We do march and protest every single week in the city,” Adams-David told elected officials. “We are the capital city, so people always come here to march and protest. We thought we had the special recipe (for safe demonstrations). And we realized that we didn’t.”
The manager’s comments came during the second day of the council retreat at the Steve Troxler Agricultural Sciences Center and as protesters gathered downtown to renew calls for police reform after five Memphis police officers were indicted on murder charges and video was released in Nichols’ death.
New council member seeks advice
But other recent events were also on people’s minds.
Three years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The October mass shooting in the Hedingham neighborhood that left five people dead and three injured.
The death of a 32-year-old man in police custody this month after police officers tased him three times.
Council member Christina Jones, who was elected in 2022, asked her colleagues and city staff what they had learned from their times governing during the George Floyd protests in 2020.
“How do we take care of the community?” Jones asked. “How do we take care of the police department? How do we take care of residents who are hurting and expressing that in peaceful and justifiable ways.
“How did you guys do it before? What were the takeaway items?” she asked those gathered around the retreat table. ”What should we do now?”
She said Friday night, the night the Memphis Police Department released the video of officers fatally beating Nichols, was terrifying.
“I don’t know what leadership looks like in this moment,” Jones said. “I don’t know how to lead through crisis. And those are big overarching ideas that we can’t answer in one session or one conversationm but it’s stuff I am going to rely on you guys for. You guys have done it. You’ve been here.”
‘It really hurt to the core’
The city made mistakes, Adams-David said, but it has grown and learned from them.
“It hurt. It really hurt to the core to see all of the things that we have worked on start to crumble,” she said. “But guess what? We’re bigger. We’re better. We’re more united. We’re more compassionate as a community. I think we’re more inclusive. I think we’re more understanding, yet we’re not perfect. So we still have work to do.”
“So I hope through some of the policy revisions, and some of the actions and some of the change in leadership, to be quite frank, has positioned us to be the city that we currently are,” she said.
The city of Raleigh did an internal review of its response to the initial wave of protests and hired a consultant group to review police department policies.
With one presentation left in the day, Adams-David asked for a brief pause before moving to the final item on the council’s agenda.
