Free Speech and Durham Police Chief

Durham Police Chief Patrice Andrews speaks at a press conference. Source: WRAL.

At a meeting on September 15th, the Durham City Council and Mayor voiced support for Chief of Police Patrice Andrews following online backlash against a Facebook post she made. 

In the since-deleted post, originally published on September 10th on her personal account, Andrews expressed her anger at those honoring conservative activist Charlie Kirk following his assassination. Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, was known for his tours of college campuses to host divisive debates against students.

Andrews wrote that Kirk “created a culture of divisiveness through hate speech,” adding, “at the time of his death, I chose to give him the empathy that he didn’t believe in.”

Online reactions were polarized following Andrews’ post. A screenshot posted to the Durham Downtown Facebook page garnered 1,900 comments, with some users calling on Andrews to resign and many saying they saw nothing wrong with her post. A Change.org petition calling for Andrews’ resignation has garnered over 2,000 signatures at the time of writing, with the description claiming her “actions are indicative of a bias that calls into question her ability to serve...impartially.”

The petition and online comments drew enough attention to the incident to warrant responses from city officials. At the September 15th city council meeting, Councilman Nate Baker said that Andrews’ values reflect Durham and voiced “100%” support for her.

Mayor Leo Williams emphasized that Andrews was exercising her right to free speech in her post, adding that her disagreement with the portrayal of Kirk’s legacy does not amount to condoning his murder.

City officials clearly took seriously the quantity of online comments about Andrews’ post, but they thought that the arguments against it were not in good faith. Mayor Williams expressed that serving the public does not mean that officials need to “shut up and do your job” and denounced online commenters trying to dictate his speech.

Social media played a key role in raising the profile of this incident. Compared to Durham’s population of over 300,000, the citizens commenting online or signing the petition represent a small proportion of the city. Further, it’s impossible to know how many online accounts on either side of the online controversy belong to actual Durham residents and which represent people commenting from afar. 

The few thousand people who commented online or signed the petition were able to draw significant attention to the incident, potentially a disproportionate amount. Though it’s difficult to know what Durham residents overall (those who didn’t post online) think about Chief Andrews’ post, it’s notable how a small and potentially nonrepresentative group was able to elevate the incident.

National actors also participated in elevating the incident’s profile. For example, the screenshot of her post was reposted by Kyle Reyes (owner of Law Enforcement Today, a right-wing publication focused on policing) to his 129,000 Facebook followers several days after the original controversy.

Elements of these events mirror strategies employed by right-leaning influencers to create online controversies. Accounts like Libs of TikTok on X screenshot or clip posts from left-leaning accounts, frequently misrepresented or taken out of context. Charlie Kirk, through Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist, also drew disproportionate attention to academics who supposedly discriminated against conservatives or promoted leftist propaganda. These reposts often spawn harassment, hate messages, or even death threats.

While Andrews’ post drew relatively limited outside attention, it exists in an environment where online arguments and influencer boosting can dramatically escalate local issues. Torrents of criticism and threats can endanger people’s safety and hinder public officials’ ability to perform their duties.

People commenting online about Andrews’ post had the power to elevate a private post to a citywide issue. Influencers specializing in targeting the rhetoric of left-leaning figures can have an enormous impact in raising local or regional issues to a national scale. It’s likely a matter of chance that Andrews’ post wasn’t seized on by more of these influencers and that Durham avoided a larger controversy.

That lack of a larger controversy is important when considering the legal issues involved in public employees’ free speech rights. While the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 the First Amendment does not protect private speech unless its importance outweighs its impact on government functions. So, had the controversy been more widespread and negatively impacted the operations of the Durham Police, Andrews’ speech may not have been legally protected.

However, in the current environment, legality is not always a primary concern. Around the country, professors and teachers have been fired for comments about Charlie Kirk. The First Amendment affords them the recourse to sue for unlawful termination; however, lawsuits are time-consuming, expensive, and not an option for all. This leaves local leadership — whether it be school boards, city managers, or university trustees — with discretion to determine what speech is acceptable.

The Durham Police’s social media policy does not contain any difficult guidelines on political speech, except for a restriction on disparaging the city of Durham and its communities. The relative leniency of the policy is beneficial for employees’ free speech, but there is still room for leadership to interpret it as they see fit. Who decides what’s disparaging of communities within Durham? Anti-Andrews commenters certainly think that it is, though they’re conflating her post with a supposed anti-conservative bias.

Durham’s progressive city council stood behind its progressive police chief, but under different leadership, things could have proceeded differently, even with the same official policies in place. The nationwide crackdown on speech following Charlie Kirk’s assassination reveals how much of the First Amendment is tied up in norms and interpretations, at least while lawsuits make their way through the courts.

These cases may eventually result in clearer rulings on public employees’ private speech rights. Still, for now, many incidents are unfolding on a case-by-case basis, vulnerable to coordinated efforts to stoke online fervor. This unpredictability seems likely to chill speech around the country. However, the Durham leadership’s strong stance in support of Andrews sets a positive precedent for free speech in the city amid a heated political climate.