Tag: RaShall Brackney

Two months after her controversial firing, former Charlottesville police chief RaShall Brackney has filed formal complaints against the city, and is threatening to bring a lawsuit.

In complaints submitted to CPD’s human resources department, the local Office of Human Rights, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the NAACP, Brackney—the city’s first Black woman police chief—says her firing was direct retaliation against her efforts to dismantle white supremacy within the department. Since Brackney’s firing by then-city manager Chip Boyles (who has since resigned) on September 1, she also claims that city leadership has defamed, harassed, and discriminated against her based on her race and sex.

Brackney is demanding $3 million and a public apology.

The city is allowed to fire Brackney without cause. However, Brackney claims that after she was dismissed, public comments from the city manager and other leaders insinuated that she was fired with cause. That, her legal team argues, constitutes a wrongful termination.

“For the actions I took, for the attempt to dismantle racism, misogyny, nepotism, and police violence, I was deemed, quote, ‘not a good fit’ for this city,” said Brackney at a downtown press conference last week. “My professional reputation has been diminished, harmed, devalued by this city.”

City spokesman Brian Wheeler, who also announced his resignation this month, said the city has “no comment at this time” on Brackney’s complaints.

During the press conference, attorney Charles Tucker of The Cochran Firm walked through the events leading up to Brackney’s firing, beginning with her receipt of an email and video from a “concerned citizen” on June 6.

“What the video uncovered was that several officers using a city phone were engaged in police misconduct,” said Tucker. “[Brackney] put those who were responsible under investigation.”

According to a city statement released in August, the investigation revealed that SWAT team officers filmed their children setting off explosives, circulated pornographic videos and racist jokes on department cell phones, threatened to kill department leaders, and fired semi-automatic weapons at unauthorized events. Brackney fired one officer, and dissolved the SWAT team. Two more officers resigned.

As early as August 2, Tucker said that Boyles began holding secret meetings with city leaders to discuss terminating the chief. In her complaint to the Office of Human Rights, Brackney accuses Boyles, City Attorney Lisa Robertson, City Councilors Heather Hill and Lloyd Snook, Vice-Mayor Sena Magill, Police Civilian Review Board Chair Bellamy Brown, Police Benevolent Association President Mike Wells, Major James Mooney (who has also since retired), and Captain Tito Durrette of colluding to get her fired, in response to her disciplining “white male officers for criminal and departmental misconduct.”

Tucker claimed he and Brackney have records of emails with evidence of the meetings, but did not plan to release them publicly at this time.

Brackney declined an interview with C-VILLE for this story, but did provide written responses to our questions.

Before her termination, Brackney writes that she had an “open, transparent, and professional relationship” with Boyles, and that he gave her “no indication” he believed the department needed a leadership change.

Citing community backlash against Brackney’s termination—along with Mayor Nikuyah Walker’s pushback—Boyles resigned as city manager in October. He has taken a new job as executive director of the George Washington Regional Commission in Fredericksburg.

“The city’s response to my actions…[sends] a message that proclaims throughout CPD and City Hall that the good ol’ boys system of patronage and insularity are alive and well in Charlottesville,” said Brackney during the press conference.

In addition to disbanding the SWAT team, removing school resource officers from city schools, and ending CPD’s relationship with the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force, Brackney said she held officers accountable for severe misconduct, including police brutality, domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. She also claimed the SWAT team has been secretly reassembling since her termination, and will be fully funded in the FY23 CPD budget.

The former chief also accused the city of rewarding people who support systemic racism. Brackney said Durrette, a former SWAT team commander, was on a “performance improvement plan” before he was promoted to assistant police chief, following Mooney’s retirement last month. Durrette is leading the department until a new permanent chief is hired.

During her three-year tenure as chief, Brackney writes that some officers “openly embraced and supported reform.” But some of her initiatives were met with concerted pushback. In particular, she required officers to participate in implicit and explicit bias training, which was unpopular. She also required them to file Response to Resistance reports for every use-of-force incident in the field. Officers also disagreed with Brackney’s response to last year’s protests against police violence, and believed CPD “should confront and arrest individuals for blocking streets, shutting down traffic, or other violations of a special events permit.”

“My reward for doing what’s right? Slander. My reward? Defamation. My reward? Retaliation, harassment, humiliation. My reward for challenging the system of supremacy? Termination,” said Brackney at the press conference.

During a City Council meeting following Brackney’s termination, Boyles, who said he’d held discussions with police officers, city leaders, Wells, and other parties, claimed that key departmental leaders planned to quit their jobs due to their lack of trust in the chief. He pointed to the results of two anonymous surveys of officers—one conducted by the department last year, the other conducted by the Police Benevolent Association in August—which led him to believe the department would only descend into “further chaos” under Brackney’s leadership.

Tucker emphasized that the PBA survey was commissioned in July, shortly after Brackney had disbanded the SWAT team and disciplined multiple officers for misconduct. It remains unclear who the survey was sent to. “The timing of it is suspect, where it came from is suspect, the way it was used is very suspect,” he said.

Brackney pointed out that Boyles himself admitted he had no faith in the survey, and called it “unscientific.”

In explaining his rationale for the firing, Boyles claimed that he had consulted various department employees and area public safety experts. Brackney’s team submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for records of those meetings, and was told that no records matched the request. “Not one shred of documented evidence exists that these ‘interviews’ were conducted,” she writes.

“You slandered me. You libeled me. You literally diminished me. And then now you’ve been torturing me for the past two months,” said Brackney of Boyles.

According to Tucker, Brackney still works at the department, and will be on the payroll until the end of the month. However, she has lost access to all CPD spaces and systems, and must make an appointment to enter the department and be escorted around by a subordinate officer.

“They have curtailed the information that she’s receiving on a day-to-day basis, and have basically stripped her of her responsibilities for the most part, and have her shadow a captain,” he explained during the press conference.

The city has until November 26 to respond to Brackney. If it does not reach a settlement agreement with her, the former chief will take her case to federal court. In her complaint to the NAACP, she also urged the organization to file a class-action suit against the city for its “pattern” of discrimination.

After all this, Brackney remains open to staying at CPD, if the city’s new management offers her the job back.

“My attorney and I will not take anything off the table,” said Brackney. “The city’s got the next move.”

By Brielle Entzminger and Ben Hitchcock

Three weeks ago, Charlottesville City Manager Chip Boyles announced that he had decided to fire Police Chief RaShall Brackney. The city will open a national search for the next chief of police, though community members and city councilors alike feel the reasons for Brackney’s dismissal remain murky. And for a city beset with organizational turmoil—and a police department that’s proven itself resistant to reform—the path forward is anything but clear. 

Questions remain 

Brackney, the first Black woman to serve as Charlottesville’s police chief, was hired in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally and relieved of duty after less than three years in charge. Shortly before her departure, the area Police Benevolent Association released an anonymous survey of 66 police officers, in which they expressed their dislike for Brackney and a lack of faith in her leadership. After that, the city made public multiple documents detailing police officers’ bad behavior, and implying that Brackney’s unpopularity was a result of her attempts to change the department’s racist and sexist culture. 

Boyles has not taken media questions about Brackney’s firing, though he has penned two press releases and a Daily Progress op-ed explaining his decision. 

The survey of officers “revealed substantial concerns of trust and confidence in the leadership,” wrote Boyles in the Progress last Sunday. “While great strides were made during Chief Brackney’s time with the department in areas of racial equity and addressing officer conduct, many of these changes came about at the expense of leadership mistrust among many of the officers we depend on to protect and serve our city.”

Boyles claimed that he wished he could have involved City Council more in his decision and worked with Brackney to develop an “improvement plan,” but felt that he needed to act quickly before the department became “gripped in chaos.”

“I took decisive action to prevent key leadership positions—which were in jeopardy of becoming vacant—from erupting into deeper divides within the department,” he explained. “I did not expect to be confronted with such anger and vitriol…I felt the larger community would respect my intentions.”

Mayor Nikuyah Walker, who criticized Brackney’s firing, said it was the last straw in a decision to cancel her own November re-election campaign. At Monday night’s City Council meeting, she pressed Boyles for answers about his decision-making process.

Boyles said he spoke with half a dozen police officers, met with the Police Benevolent Association twice, and consulted other law enforcement agencies including the UVA Police Department, the Albemarle County Police Department, and the Emergency Communications Center. The city manager said he couldn’t go into more detail because he felt the officers and leaders he’d consulted had a “confidentiality right” when they spoke with him about the chief. 

“You have said in the past that the reforms that were taking place were necessary,” Walker told Boyles. “I think you should be able to give us a general understanding of what the complaints were, and how you made a decision that those complaints were more important than reforming racist policing practices that have devastated the Black community in this city.” 

Walker reiterated that she felt her fellow city councilors were not concerned enough about the circumstances surrounding the firing. “The rest of you just sit there and don’t say anything,” Walker said. She specifically addressed Lloyd Snook, a defense attorney: “Unless you’re motivated by getting more clients for you to provide inept defense for, you should be concerned about how police treat citizens in this community.”

“I certainly want greater clarity on motivations of the decision, and what the plan is for the future direction of the department, as well as criminal justice reform efforts that the department was involved in,” Councilor Michael Payne said to Boyles. Payne felt that the timing of the firing suggested the decision was a “direct response to the PBA.” 

“Regardless of intent,” Payne said, “it sends a message that reform had gone too far.”

Brackney in hindsight 

Charlottesville leaders who have followed the police department closely in recent years say the city has to learn from this saga in order to move toward its stated police reform goals. 

Local activists Don Gathers and Rosia Parker appreciated Brackney’s efforts to modernize the department and address longstanding racial issues. They praised her for ending the department’s relationship with the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force and dissolving the CPD SWAT team after reports of misconduct surfaced. Brackney also was supportive of the Obama administration’s report on 21st-century policing, which emphasized police transparency and accountability, outlined specific use-of-force policies, and detailed critical steps toward police reform.

Gathers also understands the immense pressure Brackney faced. 

“Coming in on the heels of the Unite the Right rally, any chief was going to have issues,” says Gathers. “I’m not sure if she ever fully embraced the community as some would have hoped she would have, but I’m certain there was at least a popular segment of the community who never embraced her.”

Albemarle County detective and Central Virginia Police Benevolent Association president Mike Wells worked to push the survey into the public eye, and has praised the decision to fire Brackney. Wells did not respond to a request for comment.

Parker had issues with the former chief’s communication—she says that Brackney lied to the community about her actions multiple times, and spoke publicly against her and other community members. She wishes that Brackney had established a memorandum of understanding with the city’s public housing communities, too, in order to keep “out of control” officers in check. 

Local civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel supported Brackney’s efforts to eradicate the department’s outdated “warrior mentality.” He thinks Brackney shouldn’t have hesitated to alert the public of the changes she made.

“I’m sorry she didn’t talk more about some of the things she had done inside of the police department that got some of these officers rattled,” says Fogel. “The community would have supported her in those endeavors, instead of being critical of her in certain other endeavors.”

Job description 

To successfully implement the crucial reforms many in the community have called for, the new police chief must understand Charlottesville’s complicated history and politics, and be committed to 21st-century policing, the activists say. They should also be strong-willed and have thick skin, but be able to listen to the entire community and find common ground.

A new chief should “at least have some type of knowledge of what it is that you’re going to do when you come here to Charlottesville,” says Parker, who was a key part of the creation of Charlottesville’s Police Civilian Review Board. “You’re coming in behind so many different things that have taken place within the department. And have an understanding of what is the meaning for what Black people are going through today.”

Parker emphasizes that the chief should have a “no-nonsense” attitude, and not hesitate to hold officers accountable and discipline them when they are out of line. They should also prioritize building strong, transparent relationships with the community and the Police Civilian Review Board. 

Gathers wants the new chief to be a person of color. At the same time, Charlottesville must drastically improve its treatment of Black leadership, he says. Since the Unite the Right rally in 2017, two Black police chiefs and two Black city managers have either resigned or been fired, and the Black mayor has decided not to seek re-election.  

“The person who was next in command [to Brackney] was a Black man with over 30 years of service to the community,” says Gathers, referring to Captain Tito Durrette. “Instead of giving [the position] to him, we asked Mr. Mooney to un-retire and lead the charge…that truly was a slap in the face to the Black community.”

Fogel believes the city needs to do more than hire a new chief to solve its policing issues—it needs to completely overhaul the department. The new chief must recruit new officers who are committed to progressive policing, and fire everyone who is not, he says.

“We have to start sweeping up that department from the bottom up,” says Fogel. “And if Chip Boyles expects somebody to come in and clean out that department without having some upset police officers, he’s got his head buried in the sand.”  

“Overall, we’re going to have a hard time replacing [Brackney]—there aren’t that many police chiefs who have a progressive view of the role of police,” he adds. 

In the meantime, Fogel remains concerned about the department’s current leadership, and fears that officers will retaliate against local residents, pointing to the survey participants who expressed disdain for the community. 

“They don’t trust this community. They are making demands to trust [them], yet have not shown any reason why the community should trust them,” he says. 

No matter who takes charge of the department next, activist Ang Conn of Charlottesville Beyond Policing does not expect much to change. 

“We’re speaking about trying to reform an institution created by white men in order to inflict harm and even death, at will, upon Black and Indigenous people to benefit white property—structural and human beings—owners,” says Conn. “These same ideals and practices have been transformed over time to fit in with social norms.”

“There’s no reforming that,” she adds.

Now hiring  

At the end of Monday’s council meeting, city leadership discussed the process for hiring a new chief. Boyles said the city will first have to hire an interim chief, and that person would ideally be someone from within Virginia who could start almost immediately. Then the city will conduct a national search for a permanent candidate. The search process will require retaining a firm and consulting with community groups. 

The last time Charlottesville had to retain a search firm to select a candidate for a major position was in January, when Tarron Richardson’s resignation left the city without a city manager. That hiring firm wound up calling off their contract when the firm’s boss told Snook that he had “never seen a level of dysfunction as profound as what he was seeing here.”

Both Walker and Payne said they were concerned that the applicant pool of potential chiefs wouldn’t exactly be brimming with reform-minded progressives. Boyles agreed with the councilors that it was vital for the new chief to arrive with a desire to change the department.

Walker suggested amending the city’s charter to allow City Council to have approval on high-ranking city appointments such as police chief. Currently, the hiring power lies with the city manager.

“This may be a very difficult position to fill,” Boyles said of the vacancy he created. 

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.