Asheville – It sounded as if Asheville City Councilwoman Kim Roney were on trial. Several members of the public spoke passionately for and against her “anti-police” viewpoint and how this allegedly caused her to be removed from the city’s Public Safety Committee. In a recent restructuring of council committees, the Public Safety Committee was folded into what is now the Environment and Safety Committee, and Roney was replaced by new councilmember Maggie Ullman. Ullman, who graduated from UNC Asheville with a degree in environmental policy and management, served as the city’s first sustainability officer. While her credentials in climate change positioned her well for a seat on the three-member committee, it could not be demonstrated whether or not the new committees had been topically gerrymandered to double-bunk Roney and Ullman.
A piece that appeared in the local daily the day prior to the council meeting alleged the Asheville Police Department’s Chief David Zack had persuaded Mayor Esther Manheimer, who unilaterally makes appointments to all but three of the council committees, to give Roney the boot. The claim, along with other material from the article, echoed through public comment on the consent agenda, following Roney’s request to remove five items. Four of these items pertained to requests for police funding; namely, $111,426.95 from the city’s budget to renew the contract with LexisNexis for the crime analysis platform the department has been using since 2016, $162,000 from the city’s budget for a two-year contract renewal with Cole Pro Media for public relations services with special emphasis on damage control, $80,145 from an Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant for the purchase of a DNA analyzer and other technology, and $20,327.22 from the Department of Justice’s Bulletproof Vest Partnership. The other item sought approval for the council committee appointments made by the mayor.
Pros –
Sheila Surrett, who frequently speaks at council meetings, said she did not feel safe as long as Roney was serving on the now-defunct Public Safety Committee. Surrett spoke about Asheville’s high crime rates and how the district attorney is not interested in getting repeat offenders off the streets, and he said Roney “votes against APD” all the time. She said she had witnessed multiple assaults and vandalism downtown. She said if the police need bulletproof vests, the council needs to provide them so the police, in turn, “can protect us.”
Sandy Aldridge said she was a single woman who, despite taking several self-defense precautions, did not feel safe walking around downtown. She thought the council could do more to improve the quality of life for its citizens. “I don’t believe in defunding the police. That’s such an asinine thing to even come up with,” she said.
Honor Moor thanked the council for “rotating off” Roney. Moor said she had attended several Public Safety Committee meetings, only to see Roney vote against the police 99% of the time and twice on the issue of bulletproof vests. “What a slap in the face this is to the police department,” she said. She described the department, operating without 42% of its force, as “beleaguered,” “ignored,” “punished,” “maligned,” and “disregarded.” While professional panhandling families exploited children, business interests complained about theft and fighting in parking lots, and a group of female runners was recently chased by a man. She called Roney “an elected protester versus a public servant willing to govern with balance” and asked, “Must we frame everything in extremes and vilify one group in order to sacrifice a level of common sense?”
David Plyler said he used to wear a ballistic vest and zip people in body bags in Buncombe County. In light of the lack of respect officers get from elected leaders, if he were still on the force, he would be leaving and would encourage other officers to do the same. Accepting the grants and removing Roney from the committee, he said, were both steps in the right direction.
Stacey Griffin, the wife of an officer, gave an impassioned plea for some mercy for officers who work 12-hour shifts for up to 15 consecutive days. She asked why nobody was worried about their mental health. She asked if anybody had ever attended a police officer’s funeral. She asked why nobody was reimagining a police department with enough funds to police downtown and pay its officers adequately.
Cliff Feingold supposed no one on council had invited the chief out for coffee to ask how they could help improve public safety. He didn’t think the city needed to spend $225,000 on an advertising campaign for the police department. The department, he said, wasn’t suffering from a lack of advertising; instead, he told the councilmembers he would tell them how to fix the department without “charging a cent.” The cure was a combination of respect, honor, and support. Another way the city was wasting tax dollars was to let criminals have their way and clean up afterward. A nonviolent illustration was from 2020, when police stood down and let vandals spray-paint the police headquarters. The next day, the city removed the paint and handed taxpayers the $18,000 tab. He said the new committee was going to spend about 90% of its energies on the environment and only 15% on public safety, so he did not see how this was going to improve public safety.
Carol Duermit read prepared comments against renewing the contract with the media firm. “I gotta admit, I paused when I read about the Cole Pro Media marketing. Their mission, to create media content that would provide community-building spin, for lack of a better word, can be taken at face value to be troubling. But why do we need a PR firm in police departments across this country? Because we have learned that the playbook has changed quickly and radically in the reporting of incidents to the media, to even faster and more careless content. Spin is everywhere. Spin is never necessarily lying per se, but it’s leaving out facts, editing quotes, and phrasing content in a way that leads a predisposed public to immediate danger, anger, and indignation. It promotes a one-sided narrative that will never lead to consensus or resolution that benefits us, the public.
“So, when you have an agenda that seeks to discredit the police, whenever possible, and people that specialize in spin naturally on your side, you leave a police force, whose job it is to serve and protect the community with a choice: Don’t respond because they have resources, pull a person off duty to deal with the media and try and fill in missing context, or keep the officers doing what they are so minimally paid to do and hire a PR firm.
“Proposition: This is a renewable contract. Chief Zack is not required to renew it next year, so why don’t we all spend this year working toward not needing it next year? Let’s stop creating spin on either side of the issues. Let’s commit to reporting the facts of every situation with complete integrity and instead use our precious resources of time, intelligence, passion, and money to work together with compassion and a newfound absence of animosity to support the thing that we all want: a safer Asheville for our homeless, our police, and our community at-large. Clearly, it’s not easy, or we’d already be doing it, but let’s admit when we’re wrong, point out when the opposition is right, and practice grace and stop believing everything we read.”
Of course, Cole Pro Media explicitly states on their website that they are not spin doctors. The staff report describes their function as providing “police transparency” and states the city initially entered into a contract with them following an unspecified incident that involved excessive use of force by a police officer. A policy review conducted by Cole Pro recommended, among other things, that “the city should consider retaining a firm to provide crisis response services to the APD and the City of Asheville in the future. Relying on skilled crisis management experts can reduce the scope and impact of a critical incident, by taking an active role in developing a cohesive, coordinated response across involved parties. These strategic responses can involve asserting control over media exposure, reducing liability, and preserving public safety in the immediate aftermath.”
Cons –
Many citizens claimed Roney had been removed from the committee simply for asking questions. This led to excoriations of council members for letting the police chief, overriding the concerns of citizens, tell elected leaders how to do their jobs. These commenters included some activists from the original Defund protests.
David Greenson said thanks to the local daily, the public now knows the police chief considers Roney to be a threat to public safety. Did Manheimer also consider her a threat? He said when people want to make claims like that, they need to articulate an explanation rather than cast aspersions. Greenson said he knew Roney could be a thorn in the side, but sometimes support comes in the form of asking questions. Roney asks a lot of questions that can make people feel uncomfortable. She pushes back and wants to know the numbers. The real threat, he said, was considering that to be a threat.
Grace Barron-Martinez complained about copaganda, full of lies, coming out of a fixer firm following the Johnny Rush incident that turned the APD into an international disgrace. She said cops had been coached to believe there could not be enough “cheese factor” when performing for social media following the George Floyd incident. In Asheville, police violently force campers out of their tents while faking good deeds for social media. The PR firm would only “spin whatever horrific act we catch our police engaging in next.” She viewed the police as being fascist and pro-KKK while harassing and abusing blacks disproportionally.
Rob Thomas appeared nervous, quivering, and hunched over. He went silent a couple times before saying, “I’m sorry. I can’t do this right now.” Mike Martinez also stopped short. He said he came from a family of cops, but the criminal justice system had done more to traumatize him than anything else in his life.
Tyler Smith spoke to audience members, saying, “If you are trying to help Kim Roney and take the city forward, maybe think about joining the DSA [Democratic Socialists of America], starting a union, or having some way to withhold your labor so that way you can do something where you build power in your community instead of coming up here with no power and just kind of begging for people to do what you want.”
Lastly, Alle K from Washington, DC, whose pronouns were he/him, wanted everybody to use their pronouns. He also wanted Roney on the committee. He wanted to defund the police because they’ve never protected him, and if he should go to jail, he would create a moral dilemma, as somebody would have to decide whether he would be assigned a cell according to his genotype or phenotype.
Back to the Dais –
Roney, in her own defense, said she accepted that the city was in crisis, but her questions and concerns were directed toward making sure the city dispatched more appropriate responses. She voted against accepting federal funds for bulletproof vests because she expected the police department would have enough funds in its budget already. Although she was not seated on the committee this time, she promised her constituents she would remain committed to equity.
Ullman justified her appointment, saying she was a national leader with the most professional environmental experience on the council. She would be serving with two of the three women of color on the committee, and women of color were the most-impacted by climate change. Ullman said as climate change progresses, the intersection of public safety and the environment will grow. She thought that instead of nitpicking who was appointed to the board, people should be celebrating the elevation of environmental concerns to a dedicated council committee.
Manheimer concluded, saying council committee appointments are normally an internal matter decided by the mayor. This year, they were attached, as extraneous information, to the request to approve the three non-mayoral appointments. The mayor was, however, happy to see how doing so had generated lively debate among citizens. Still, “I gotta say I’m a little ruffled at the idea that I need a chief of police to tell me what to do, because that’s not how this works. I can make my own decisions, and I do make my own decisions. So, I definitely do that, with the greatest respect for our chief of police, but I take all that input from the community and then make my decisions. My topmost concern is that we’re able to function as a city, that we can get the work done.”
She continued, “To me, this is not a decision about what matters more: APD or reimagining public safety. That, to me, is not what this conversation is about. It’s about getting the work done. I am personally very focused, and I know this council is very focused, on continuing the work around reimagining public safety. We have not taken our foot off the gas pedal in that goal. So, please know these are difficult decisions. I did speak with Councilwoman Roney prior to tonight about this decision. We had a discussion about it, and,” she paused, “we’re all going to play nice in the sandbox. So, …”