u/tiflis

At a meeting filled with speakers criticizing the Greensboro City Manager’s unexplained choice of an external hire for Police Chief, one speaker pointed out the common interests of City Council.

Even new councillors such as Irving Allen and Cecile “CC” Crawford—who ran on progressive platforms, with backgrounds in community organizing against police brutality—refused to dissent from supporting the City Manager’s unpopular choice. Luis Medina noted they have apparently surmounted their differences to achieve a remarkable level of solidarity.

All nine councillors consolidated to support the new police chief, including Tammi Thurm and Mayor Marikay Abuzuaiter.

A lifetime ago, in 2019, Thurm and Abuzuaiter voted to remove their now-colleague Irving Allen from the Police Community Review Board, “for reasons.” Back then, Allen was willing to criticize government abdication and opacity. (See Ian McDowell, I Ain’t Resisting, p.191.)

Medina claimed the recent activities of city council demonstrate a ruling-class solidarity, and called for a working-class solidarity to combat it.

Though speakers are generally granted a few seconds’ grace on their allotted time, Medina’s microphone was cut exactly at the 3-minute mark. The mayor proceeded to demand that he be escorted out, though he was already walking away. It seems the mayor realized her demand was excessive, as she immediately began justifying it to council members:

“He hit the podium,” Abuzuaiter claimed. “I’m not gonna put up with it.”

Whether “it” referred to threats to the safety of the podium, or something else, remained unspecified.

source: Battleground

Concern over data centers continues to dominate local government forums.

Data centers use increasing amounts of land, electricity, and water. Residents are seeing unprecedented electricity rate hikes and levels of drought in North Carolina, at the same time data centers are proliferating. Governor Josh Stein has said data centers are partially to blame for rising energy prices, stating they account for 80 percent of additional demand Duke Energy expects. Data centers also pollute environments with toxic waste, light, noise, and heat. Research shows data centers raise surrounding temperatures by 4 degrees, and use as much water as entire towns.

In North Carolina, half a dozen towns along with six counties have declared moratoria on data center construction. Greensboro has not, and the position of city councillors on data centers is unclear.

In response to speaker Del Stone at the last city council meeting, five councillors commented on the concerns raised. Read their responses here: https://battlegrounddrafts.substack.com/p/city-councillors-respond-to-request

Speakers packed city hall this Monday to denounce the selection of out-of-town Police Chief Kamran Afzal to head the Greensboro Police Department, just over a week before he is set to start the job.

Speakers were united in their demand that City Council rescind the decision. 

Many expressed feelings of betrayal from city councillors who won last November’s elections on promises of “people-centered action,” “prevention instead of over-policing,” and “people-powered leadership that builds from the ground up.” Though many of the freshly elected city councillors have backgrounds in community organizing and activism against police brutality, the whole of City Council has either tacitly or explicitly approved of City Manager Trey Davis’s choice to hire a four-time police chief from out of town, with a dismal record on public safety. 

For instance: data on Dayton’s traffic stops in 2025 under Chief Afzal shows significant racial disparities. Black drivers—despite making up 40% of the population—were stopped more than twice as often as white drivers, who constitute half the population.

And, just two months ago, Chief Afzal’s police killed a Dayton resident who was homeless, Reginald Thomas, after detaining him during a regulatory stop for not having a bike light. Speakers connected Thomas’s killing to victims of GPD violence including Marcus Deon Smith, Joseph Lopez, and Duke Crenshaw. 

Others mentioned that City Council has authority over the City Manager, making their deference to his selection of Chief Afzal unacceptable in the face of mass public disapproval. 

The meeting concluded with councillors saying they heard the concerns and they appreciated people expressing themselves, while speaking as if the decision for the new chief of police was solidified. As the session adjourned, chants of “rescind the offer now” filled the hall. 

Source: Battleground

⁨⁨Greensboro City Manager Trey Davis has replied to the letter from the Justice Advisory Commission, which requested a pause, if not a full rescission, of the offer to external police chief hire Kamran Afzal.

The decision to hire Afzal—a four-time chief most recently from Ohio—came as a shock to residents and the Commission. Many note that the city has provided no justification for hiring Afzal over an internal candidate—nothing more specific than to say he is “the most qualified.”

Davis’s letter is notable for a few reasons.

1. Davis’s pushback to criticism relies on procedural rather than substantive claims. Rather than explaining why he chose Afzal, the city manager explains repeatedly that the decision is his to make: “The process was followed, the authority was properly exercised, and we are confident in that.”

2. Davis claims the unilateral power to make this decision, but none of the responsibility for the resulting dissatisfaction, instead blaming the public for their refusal to fall in line: “public pressure is not fair to the incoming Chief.”

3. Davis invokes the potential legal problems with rescinding or delaying the decision as more significant than public disapproval: “The legal exposure of reopening it outweighs any benefit.”

4. Yet Davis also says public opinion would not matter regardless of legal exposure: “even if there were no legal consequences, the City stands on this hiring decision.”

5. Nowhere does Davis or any other city official list any of the qualifications they reviewed, nor the details of the process followed to choose this police chief.⁩

Source: Battleground