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Police chief fired

Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney is on the outs—City Manager Chip Boyles terminated her contract last Wednesday evening. Brackney, the first Black woman to hold the job, had been at the head of the department since June 2018. 

A recent survey of police officers indicated that the rank-and-file had lost trust in Brackney, but other newly public documents give numerous examples of misconduct within the department and detail Brackney’s efforts to turn things around. Seven officers have been terminated for bad behavior since Brackney took charge. 

The city initially announced Brackney’s firing in a brief press release on Wednesday evening, and then elaborated on the decision in another release on Friday. The city manager’s team declined to speak directly to C-VILLE about the termination.

“I fully supported the difficult personnel decisions made recently by Chief Brackney,” said Boyles’ statement. “However, in order to dismantle systemic racism and eliminate police violence and misconduct in Charlottesville, we need a leader who is not only knowledgeable in that work, but also is effective [at] building collaborative relationships with the community, the department, and the team at City Hall.”

Councilor Lloyd Snook, the only city councilor who could be reached for comment, echoes Boyles’ concerns about Brackney’s ability to build consensus.

“When Chief Brackney came, she very early on ruffled a lot of feathers among the good old boys network,” Snook says. “That didn’t bother me. There were a lot of people who had been in the job too long or had brought an unhelpful attitude.”

But Snook says he became concerned when reports surfaced that department morale had reached an all-time low, and when officers who Brackney herself had hired began to leave. “I’ve been generally quite impressed with the folks who have been hired,” Snook says. “The problem is that most of the folks who I was impressed with didn’t stay.”

Mayor Nikuyah Walker, who had spoken favorably of Brackney throughout her stint as chief, disagreed with the firing.

“The City of Charlottesville publicly eviscerated Dr. RaShall Brackney to protect police officers who are fighting the internal reforms she’s implementing,” Walker wrote on Facebook after Brackney’s dismissal. 

“I supported Dr. Brackney because she is as committed to breaking down these racist systems as I am,” Walker wrote in a separate post. “I’m saddened because little Black girls everywhere are looking at this and learning what happens when you risk everything to tell the truth.”

Shortly after the news broke, Walker posted a four-page memo that Brackney had shared with councilors in early August, which goes into further detail on the type of behavior that was common in the police department.

Officers let their children fire police weapons and detonate explosives, swapped pornographic images and racist jokes on department cell phones, and shotgunned Bang energy drinks before their shift on the anniversary of August 12, the memo reveals. SWAT team recruits “were frequently subjected to humiliating comments regarding their skin tones and ethnicity, as well as stereotypical references to an African American recruit eating chicken,” it reads.

The document also includes a transcript of a text exchange between three officers, in which one high-ranking department member brags that he “just threw the boys into the octagon at the house and told them to fight for my amusement…winner got ice cream. Loser got to watch the winner eat the ice cream…I’m breeding next gen savages!…I want them both fucking the prom queen one day.”

As a result of these incidents, the SWAT team was disbanded, one officer was fired, and two more resigned. Those personnel moves were among the decisions that had irritated the department’s officer corps—some officers complained about the departures of their colleagues in an anonymous survey released two weeks ago. 

On the other side, some police reform activists expressed mixed opinions about Brackney’s firing. 

“While the Chief was not particularly in favor of community oversight, the City’s firing her for trying to change police culture is a step in the wrong direction,” reads a statement from the People’s Coalition, a police oversight advocacy group.

“I’ve never been able to understand, or get a clear answer, as to why there was the development of a Civilian Review Board here,” Brackney said in a 2019 interview with C-VILLE.

Snook says he understands the gravity of letting the department’s first Black woman police chief go, and that he’s heard from some in the community that “by firing Chief Brackney you’re allowing the racists in the police department to win.”

“All I can say is right now, what’s clear is that Charlottesville is losing,” the councilor says, “and we need to figure out a better way to do this.”

Brackney will be paid a lump sum equal to 12 months of her $160,000 salary. Charlottesville has made a habit of paying large severance packages to outgoing officials: Last year, former city manager Tarron Richardson took a check for $205,000 with him on his way out the door. 

Assistant Police Chief James Mooney will take over while the department conducts a national search for a new chief.