Protesters organizing in North Carolina against $16 million in additional funding for a new law-enforcement training facility had a tense first meeting with Durham County commissioners.
The long-planned Durham County Sheriff’s Office renovations call for a new outdoor gun range and 10,000-square-foot classroom building with lockers and showers, records show.
The group has labeled the upgraded training center “Cop City,” linking it to an ongoing protest movement in Atlanta that used that nickname for a much larger police training center under construction that does include a mock city.
Several dozen protesters showed up at Tuesday night’s Durham County Board of Commissioners meeting. When Chair Nida Allam said just over an hour in that the item was being moved to January, a handful of people left in visible frustration.
“If it stays on the agenda tonight, it will be voted on and it will likely be approved,” Allam said. “We are trying to be accommodating by moving it.”
Twenty minutes later, Allam said while the board still wouldn’t vote until 2025, people could speak anyway.
A new hearing is scheduled for Jan. 6. Three new county commissioners will have joined the board by then.
Sheriff Clarence Birkhead said his agency has been using the land since the mid-1980s for mandatory annual firearm qualifications, court-ordered auctions and bomb-squad detonations. There are no bathrooms, he said, only a firing range, utility shed and extended picnic shelter with metal bleachers.
“Tuesday’s meeting was to have been the final approval before the start of construction, so we are disappointed that those who chose to come to Durham to speak out against this project waited until the eleventh hour,” Birkhead said in an email.
‘A future that doesn’t need police’
More than 20 people spoke Tuesday.
“You guys are investing in an opportunity to kill people. This is a shooting range,” activist Amanda Wallace said. “There are so many other things you could be doing with that money.”
Many suggested expanding HEART, a city program that sends unarmed responders to 911 calls that may not require police.
“Police are asked to do too much. They’re expected to be mental health counselors, social workers, substance-abuse experts and more, in addition to our role in solving crime,” Duke University graduate student Elizabeth Johnson said.
“If we’re going to invest so much money into expanding our capacity for our cops, we’re not allowing ourselves to imagine a future that doesn’t need police — which is hard to imagine right now, I understand — but we have to try,” said Faruhk Ayala-Seron, a therapist.
Briana Avant said police handcuffed her and treated her “like a criminal” after she called a suicide helpline in 2018.
“A massive police training center will not make this city safer,” she said.
The renovations, on over 90 acres of county-owned land on Electra Road in northeast Durham County, have been planned since at least 2020, when the project made it onto the county’s 10-year capital improvement plan.
County commissioners were being asked Tuesday night to spend an additional $16.6 million, raising the total cost of the new facility to over $18 million. The rest has been spent on plans and preliminary site work.
“We have a solid plan to modernize the existing training facility,” Birkhead said, adding that the contractors’ prices are only guaranteed through mid-December. “Any delay could increase the cost significantly. "
Disagreements made the night tense
Outgoing Commissioner Nimasheena Burns said this was something they’ve been over several times.
“Where I come from, it’s not just about posting on the internet. It’s about doing your research,” Burns said.
Lily Roth, a student organizer at UNC-Chapel Hill, responded that it was difficult to organize a community, but they had done so.
“It doesn’t really matter to me the ways in which we have shown up in the past. We came here today to have a conversation with you,” Roth said.
Burns replied that she should be addressed by her title.
“You’re right, it’s hard to come to these meetings, but if we’re going to call these white women ‘commissioner,’ we’re not going to call me ‘you,’” said Burns, who is Black.
Another tense moment occurred when Allam directed Wallace, who frequently protests against the Department of Social Services, to put away a sign that declared: “CPS (Child Protective Services) is genocide. Black children are taken from their parents more than any other group.”
“It is extremely disrespectful when there is an actual genocide occurring in this world,” Allam said, referencing the war in Gaza.
The two engaged in a brief back-and-forth, with Allam asking Wallace to leave or put the sign down. Wallace placed the sign on the floor and stayed.
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