Durham residents chafe at more aggressive policing after community unit disappears

Many residents of McDougald Terrace in Durham expect and need police in their neighborhood, a place more burdened than most with shootings and other crimes.

But policing has changed there since January. And not for the better, residents say.

Gone are officers from the city’s Community Engagement Unit, who were always talking to the kids and parents and were known to turn on a grill and load it up with hot dogs if one kid said he was hungry.

At the end of January different officers were patrolling Durham’s oldest and largest public housing complex, home to more than 300 families.

In interviews and on social media, residents are complaining that officers policing McDougald now are more aggressive and oppressive.

The latest example cited occurred at 1 p.m. the third Tuesday of March, a sunny but cold afternoon. Four uniformed police officers wearing bulletproof vests were questioning a 12-year-old and his mother near the basketball court on Ridgeway Avenue.

Officers were dispatched to the area after a call about a disturbance with a knife and someone throwing rocks, police officials later wrote in an email.

“It really doesn’t take that many,” the boy’s mother, Areda Trice, said as she walked away from the situation frustrated and confused.

“This is all the time with these police,” said Ashley Canady, president of McDougald Terrace’s resident council.

She added: “Now all they want to do is run up on people and chase these kids.”

Community police unit reassigned

Durham police confirmed that the Community Engagement Unit, which was established about seven years ago and placed in communities across the city, was reassigned early this year.

The engagement unit was not as effective as envisioned and “created unequal engagement with priority given to the McDougald Terrace community residents,” Durham Police Department officials wrote in an email in response to The News & Observer’s questions about the change.

The unit’s officers were reassigned to other police community programs in an effort to increase youth engagement amid an increase in youth violent crime, the response stated.

The change means more officers are available to work in summer camps, mentoring programs and other events, the email states.

As a result, Canady said, the community now more often sees officers pulling over people in the community, including the Crime Area Target Team, a specialized unit the city police department reestablished about a year ago to help address violent crime.

Canady fought many years ago to decrease responses by tactical police teams in her community, she said.

The police department wrote in an email that the team, often referred to as CATT, didn’t replace the community policing unit but is part of a citywide effort to fight violent crime.

The CATT unit was reestablished in April 2022 after six kids, ages 12 to 19, were shot on Mathison Street the December before, Durham Police Chief Patrice Andrews told the City Council at a meeting last month.

CATT patrols areas where violent events occur and it helps other units, Andrews said.

The eight officers on the team were selected after officials reviewed their backgrounds and any complaints filed against them. Their performance is reviewed weekly, Andrews said.

“We actually look at their body-worn camera footage,” she said. Supervisors also evaluate how the unit is interacting with the community, and whether it is effective in helping other officers, deterring shootings and making contacts in the community.

‘I get anxiety’

Since the engagement unit left, city police officers are frequently pulling people over for minor violations at McDougald Terrace, sometimes jumping out of their cars with their hands already on their guns, Canady and others said.

When Canady, a resident leader at McDougald Terrace since 2016, sees it happening, she makes a point to stick around, she said.

“I don’t even get in trouble, and I get anxiety,” Canady said about the new tone with police interactions.

“I am like ‘Oh lord, what is about to happen,’ so I just start recording, or I just stay outside because in a blink of an eye somebody can be gone,” she said.

When officers pull up of late, it’s not just one or two cars, but three to six, Canady said.

Canady’s daughter and boyfriend were pulled over multiple times for minor or no violations, she said.

“One of these kids is going to get shot by the police or killed by the police because they are scared,” Canady said.

Stopped for driving?

Anthony McLendon, who also lives at the public housing complex and sits on the resident council, said he has been stopped by police multiple times in recent weeks.

One time an officer said the tint on his license plate was too dark. Another time, it was the tint on his windows. The third time, an officer pulled up to him after he had run back and forth to the store a few times.

The officer warned McLendon, he said, that if he came and left again, he was going to pull him over. McLendon asked why.

Suspicion, the cop told him, McLendon said.

“Suspicion of what?” McLendon said he responded. “We live over here.”

Another time McLendon was pulled over, and the cop jumped out of his car with his hand on his gun.

“He made me real nervous,” McLendon said.

The officer said McLendon’s car looked similar to a suspect that he was looking for, before soon taking off in response to some chatter on the officer’s radio, the resident said.

McLendon hasn’t been arrested or cited, but the interactions have left him feeling targeted and even more skeptical of police.

“I will call the police if I have to, but I don’t want to because most of the time when they get there they tell you to shut up, get the hell out of the way,” he said.

Praise, concern for CATT

While such incidents individually are relatively minor, they are eroding the community’s trust one interaction at a time, McLendon and Canady said.

That’s a problem because the relationship between police and residents is vital to keeping peace in a community frequented by gunshots and shootings. Residents need police and police need residents to report crime and related tips, Canady said.

“I know they have a job to do,” Canady said. “We all have to work together.”

The Durham Police Department says the CATT unit is getting vital work done. In 2022 the unit seized 179 firearms, 20 of which were stolen, according to police quarterly reports. They issued 213 firearm related charges.

But it’s drawn criticism too. In 2022 the unit made 1,963 traffic stops, most of which were for minor equipment violations, according to a December city memorandum on the CATT team. Arrests or citations took place in about 9% of those incidents.

About 81% of those pulled over were Black. Only 17% were white. Census estimates indicate Durham’s population is about 47% white and 37% Black.

Andrews told The News & Observer last month that it’s not a matter of profiling.

“The CAT Team patrols in areas where there may be more African American community members than there are white community members,” she said. “It certainly does not equate to biased policing.”

But City Council Member Jillian Johnson expressed concern about these and other stats during that meeting.

For years, Johnson said, the city has been focusing on individuals responsible for violent crime and moving away from pulling people over for minor violations, like window tint and busted tail lights.

“I feel like that direction is the right direction, and that we need to be focusing on the people who are causing the most harm in our communities. And I feel like this is taking us away from that,” she said.

Mayor Elaine O’Neal, however, spoke in defense of the CAT Team.

“CAT Teams have been around for a long time, some version thereof here in Durham,” O’Neal said, according to previous News & Observer reporting. “It is necessary for officers to stop cars.”

O’Neal didn’t return requests for comment for this story. Neither did Johnson or Mayor Pro Tempore Mark-Anthony Middleton.

Since April, police have investigated two complaints against CATT after a Facebook live video and a conversation with a community member, a Durham police official wrote. A third complaint from a community member is being investigated, they wrote.

If community members are concerned about interactions with police, they should report it using the online form or reaching out to the district commander, a police spokesperson wrote in an email.

B.J. Council, a retired deputy Durham chief who holds You & Five-O workshops that aim to educate about how to safely interact with police, said filing complaints is essential to holding officers accountable because it flags bad behavior for supervisors.

Canady, however, said people in her community don’t file formal complaints because they fear they will be targeted by officers or there will be retribution. Instead, they often come to her, and she complains on social media or to city officials.

Missing community engagement

The community engagement unit would have handled the situation with the 12-year-old on Tuesday differently, Canady said.

A community engagement officer likely would have known the boy, she said, and an older youth who a News & Observer reporter did not speak with before he left the scene.

Instead of four officers questioning the 12-year-old, one probably would have brought him to his mother’s apartment, the more appropriate action, Canady said.

Canady said she thought at least one of the officers who responded to the 12-year-old on Tuesday was part of the CAT Team. But Durham Police Department said that is not so.

A review of the officers’ body cameras confirmed that families were notified and present when officers told the young men about the dangers of their actions, police officials wrote.

The 12-year-old and others who were present told a reporter a different story.

The boy said he sold a knife to a man a few months ago who paid with a fake $20 bill. He saw the man on Tuesday and tried to talk to him, but he ran. The 12-year-old said he threw a small rock at the man, but he and others said no knife was involved.

When multiple police cars pulled up, the 12-year-old said he was scared and didn’t know what to think. He tried to call his mother, but her phone had died.

Canady said a younger boy on a bike went to get the parents of the two young men.

Trice, the 12-year-old’s mother, said she was surprised by the fast and robust response.

“When we have people fighting and shooting, it takes them forever,” she said.

Trice isn’t bitter, she said, but she doesn’t understand why police handled it like they did. It seems that officers pull up at McDougald now expecting the worst.

“It just makes me look at them differently,” Trice said.

News & Observer reporter Mary Helen Moore contributed to this story.

Virginia Bridges covers criminal justice in the Triangle and across North Carolina for The News & Observer. Her work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The N&O maintains full editorial control of its journalism.