On Monday night, the Durham County Board of County Commissioners voted 3-2 to approve funding for a new Durham Sheriff’s Office training facility on Electra Road.
The proposal was originally scheduled for a vote at the November 12 county board meeting, where nearly 30 residents spoke in opposition to the project. The item was pushed to the January 6 work session at the behest of board chair Nida Allam to allow concerned community members, as well as the incoming slate of county commissioners, more time to weigh in before Monday night’s vote.
Like in past meetings, speakers lined up to voice their opinions about investing $18 million more in a department that received roughly $50 million in the 2024-2025 budget, the second-highest funding obligation after Durham Public Schools. Comments frequently came back to a different initiative, the HEART program. Several speakers urged commissioners to expand HEART countywide rather than build the training facility.
Since 2022, HEART has been a part of the city’s Community Safety Department, working in tandem with the police. After initial hesitation, Durham Police Chief Patrice Andrews has been publicly vocal about her support for the program, but several at the meeting said Sheriff Clarence Birkhead has been slow to come to the table about county-wide expansion.
“The time for action is now,” Commissioner Wendy Jacobs said at Monday’s meeting. “We cannot continue to pay just lip service to implementing best practices to serve our community.”
Jennifer Carroll, a member of the Durham Community Safety and Wellness Task Force, said that the top priority identified by the task force in 2023 was the expansion of the HEART program. The task force, along with other community leaders, have attempted to meet with Birkhead as far back as 2021, said Carroll, but have been met with “mischaracterizations and with absolute non-response.”
“The legitimacy of the sheriff’s office is established not only in state law, but also through a social contract between that office and the community it serves,” Carroll said during public comment before the vote. “We urge you to vote no on all expenditures, even capital improvement expenditures requested by the Sheriff’s Office until such time as all parties are willing to participate in that partnership.”
County staff will present at the March 3 commissioners’ meeting about how to evaluate potential expansion of HEART county-wide, according to the night’s agenda.
Public comments—like the vote—were split.
Paul Wilson, a Durham resident of seven years who lives in the Carolina Arbors neighborhood on the outskirts of Durham County, said a new facility would give the sheriff’s office the resources to properly train deputies, satisfying some complaints made by protestors about the department.
“It’s difficult to look at the problems we have in the city and the county and blame the police or the sheriff for not being trained properly when the training facility we have is so out-of-date and inadequate,” Wilson said.
A surprising voice in the conversation Monday was former state senator and current utilities commissioner Floyd McKissick Jr. The longtime Durham civil rights leader said county commissioners should not limit themselves to choosing one option for the community’s public safety needs over another.
“The training center that’s being proposed is something that we need. It’s something that is absolutely necessary,” McKissick said. “It’s a false narrative to say we can’t have all of these things. We can have 911 consolidated. We can have HEART expansion. And we can have excellent trained law enforcement officers that come out of that facility.”
In the end, the 3-2 vote split came down to newly elected commissioners Michelle Burton, Mike Lee and Stephen Valentine voting in favor of the training facility, and Jacobs and Allam voting no. But the decision was not a resounding declaration of support. Commissioners who voted yes still held reservations about the Sheriff’s engagement with the community. Lee said residents in attendance could take their frustrations with the sheriff to the ballot box.
“The sheriff is an elected official. If you don’t like what the sheriff is doing, his evaluation happens every four years,” Lee said. “I think our job here is to provide the resources that he explains that he needs in order to do the job he was elected to do and the deputies were hired to do.”
Support independent local journalism. Join the INDY Press Club to help us keep fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle.
Follow Reporter Justin Laidlaw on X or send an email to jlaidlaw@indyweek.com. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.