Name as it appears on the ballot: Clarence Birkhead
Campaign website: https://www.birkheadfordurham.com/
Phone number: 919 482-4501
Email: [email protected]
Years lived in Durham County: about 25 years
1. What do you believe are the most important issues facing the Sheriff’s Office? What are your top three priorities in addressing these issues?
The lack of trust between the community and the sheriff’s office is the single most important issue. The community needs to trust law enforcement again. People who interact with law enforcement should feel safe and have confidence in those they call on in times of need. The sheriff’s office has been involved with a number of significant issues during the past four years that has eroded the community’s trust. If elected, I will take immediate steps to rebuild that trust within all our communities. This will begin with a commitment
increased transparency, engagement and accountability from the sheriff’s office to the community, which will include specific ways I will communicate with and listen to the community:
1. Transparency – Respond to concerns in the community in a timely and transparent manner
2. Engagement – Commit to engaging in community conversations no matter how challenging the topic
3. Accountability – Create a meaningful citizens review board that gives the power of accountability to the people
2. What in your record as a public official or other experience demonstrates your ability to be an effective county sheriff? This might include career or community service; be specific about its relevance to this office.
I have dedicated the past 30 years of my life to serving the citizens of North Carolina as a law enforcement professional. My experience includes 17 at Duke University with 7 as chief of police. I also worked for 5 years as chief of the Hillsborough Police Department and 4 years as
sheriff in Randolph County. I hold a master’s degree in organizational management and a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.
Most recently, I have served as an adjunct faculty member at NCCU and Durham Tech and on various Durham boards and committees as an advocate for affordable housing, for our homeless population and for criminal justice reform and re-entry matters. I have worked with the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People (DCABP) and the People’s Alliance (PA) to improve community-police relations. I have also worked on committees that advise the city council on ways we can increase affordable housing, stabilize and revitalize neighborhoods, increase economic opportunities for low- and moderate-income families and homeless persons, and reduce the number of residents detained in our county jail.
3. If you are challenging an incumbent, what decisions has the incumbent made that you most disagree with? If you are an incumbent, what in your record and experience do you believe entitles you to another term?
The sheriff’s office has been involved with a number of significant issues during the past four years that has eroded the community’s trust, including the office’s handling of and communication with the community about ICE detainers, video visitation, deaths in the county jail, and the Confederate statue demonstration. I disagree with:
• The sheriff’s cooperation with ICE. I will make a clear and uncompromising commitment to not cooperate with ICE. As sheriff, I will not honor ICE detainers and we will not participate in ICE roundups.
• The recent decision to implement video visitation. I believe persons incarcerated in our detention facility need to maintain in-person contact with family members, support persons
their legal representatives. This is important to maintaining hope, faith and mental strength to manage being incarcerated.
• The handling of the Confederate statute demonstration and subsequent filing of felony charges.
• The lack of transparency and accountability around multiple deaths in the jail.
• The sheriff’s non-communicative approach with the community which feeds into the distrust and forces the community to draw their own conclusions. As sheriff, I will commit to engaging with community residents no matter how challenging the conversations.
4. On any given day, many residents of the Durham jail are there not because they’ve been convicted of a crime but because they cannot afford their bail. What changes to the cash bail system, if any, do you support? Why? If you don’t support any changes, please explain why you think the current system is successful.
Our current justice system criminalizes poverty, and this must change. Bail reform and alternatives to detention are an important part of the change we must advance. Additionally, we should be as fully committed to assessing the needs of individuals detained in our jail, as we are to assessing the risks. Eliminating cash bail has my full support, and I am committed to thinking outside the box and to
new alternatives to detention that are consistent with maintaining public safety. People should not be detained in our jails because they are poor or have unmet mental health needs. Although the sheriff does not have any direct control on setting bail, having a sheriff who understands and advocates for alternative initiatives could increase the probability of reducing or eliminating cash bail. I would advocate for and encourage our judges to consider every possible alternative to pre-trial detention and incarceration.
5. One intended purpose of the cash bail system is to ensure potentially dangerous people aren’t free to commit new crimes while awaiting trial. Do you think the county would be less safe with non-monetary pretrial-release conditions only?
No, I do not think our county would be less safe using non-monetary pretrial release conditions. A cash bail system does not ensure greater safety. It does ensure that poorer Durham residents will be detained in jails, prior to conviction, longer than wealthier residents who have been charged with similar crimes. Pretrial detention is an important part of ensuring public safety, but let’s not confuse risk and “potentially dangerous people” with a person’s ability to pay. If we really believe someone is dangerous and poses a risk to the community, cash bail is not the answer.
6. Conditions at the jail have been a frequent source of protest, especially when an inmate dies, as has happened at least six times since 2013. In what ways, if any, do you believe conditions at the jail need to improve? What steps would you take to ensure those improvements?
Every person incarcerated in our detention facility is the responsibility of the sheriff. I would take the care and well-being of those persons very seriously and would do all I can to ensure their fair and equitable treatment, to ensure they are safe and that they receive proper medical services. We need to increase resources for mental health services at the jail and not just build mental health pods. We need to get our contract providers to improve services. And the sheriff’s office must increase transparency and accountability where it concerns
the safety of those detained in our county jail. One pledge I make to address this need is to establish a meaningful citizens review board that gives the power of accountability to the people.
7. The Sheriff’s Office has recently launched a pilot video-visitation program with the promise that it will not replace in-person visitation, as some inmate advocates fear. In what ways do you believe video visitation is beneficial to inmates and staff at the jail? Where would you like to see the program go from here?
The concerns around video visitation in our community are well-founded. Evidence from other communities shows that soon after implementing video visitation, in-person visitation is either greatly reduced or eliminated. I am unequivocally committed to maintaining in-person visitation at the Durham jail. I believe having human contact, especially with caring and loving family members, is essential to maintaining a positive attitude and a healthy state of mind.
In theory, video visitation that remains free and in no way reduces in-person visitation, could be beneficial for people in our jail and their loved ones, especially those who may find in-person visitation difficult. At this point, video visitation has been set up at the Durham jail. Given that it is already in place, we would assess whether it can be used to achieve all of the goals stated above. If it at all impedes in-person visitation or would ever come at a financial cost to those in our jail or their families then I would terminate video visitation.
8. Multiple courts have ruled that ICE detainer requests do not meet Fourth Amendment requirements for arrest. Under what circumstances should the Sheriff’s Office honor detainer requests? Please explain your answer.
Currently, local law enforcement can decide whether or not to cooperate with ICE. I will make a clear and uncompromising commitment to not cooperate with ICE. As sheriff, I will not honor ICE detainers and we will not participate in ICE roundups. To be clear, the only detainer requests that I will honor are those that come with a judicial warrant or a Notice to Appear.
Under my leadership, the Durham County Sheriff’s Office will not do checkpoints for immigration purposes. We would use checkpoints as they are designed, which is to gain voluntary compliance with motor vehicle laws and promote safety on our streets and highways. For example, we would continue to conduct “Booze It & Lose It” checkpoints and “Click It or Ticket” campaigns.
If the federal government wants to criticize us for not honoring detainers, I’m OK with that. I think the community at large will be appreciative of that approach and respect my decision. Furthermore, an ICE detainer is merely a request; compliance is voluntary. There’s nothing in the federal law that says I must participate.
9. Under North Carolina law,
footage is not public record. Under what circumstances do you believe the public should be allowed to review body camera footage?
First, I commit to ensuring that the deputies under my supervision would be held accountable, not just to me but to the community they serve, when it comes to
of force.
Second, we must strike the balance between using body camera footage to hold our law enforcement accountable while also honoring the privacy of those residents who appear in the footage and the concerns of residents about increased police surveillance. I do not think you can strike this balance by making all body camera footage available for everyone to see. I believe viewing of such video footage should be decided on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, the footage can be used to bring closure to family members and accountability to law enforcement. Depending on the nature and severity of the case, the decision to release a body camera video should be made after careful consultation with the district attorney and family members along with their representatives.
10. Similarly, police officers’ and sheriff’s deputies’ personnel files, including disciplinary records, are not public documents in North Carolina. Given that law enforcement in some cases literally has the power of life and death, do you believe it is appropriate for members of the public to know whether a law enforcement agent has been disciplined and why?
As an executive, it would be my responsibility to respect the privacy of my employees – just as I am responsible for protecting the privacy of victims. That being said, if elected sheriff, I will create an environment of transparency, engagement
accountability. This would mean that I can meet and engage the public and share some details that pertain to the incident.
11. Do you support the expanded use of citations as an alternative to arrests? Under what circumstances?
I support the expanded use of citations by law enforcement officers. Wherever possible and appropriate citations should be used in lieu of arrests. In most cases, a citation can achieve the same results as an arrest, which is for the person to appear in court and to answer for the violations they have been cited for. By expanding the use of citations, we start to reduce the number of persons being held in the detention facility for minor violations. The goal is to gain voluntary compliance and we should try to achieve that through the expanded use of citations. I fully support the Court Date Notification System that the Criminal Justice Resource Center (CJRC) recently launched to reduce failure to appear. As sheriff, I will work with partners like CJRC to support and strengthen these types of innovative efforts.
12. What policies would you support to reduce recidivism, particularly among youthful offenders?
I am concerned about and committed to reducing recidivism, including recidivism in our county jail. Since 2011, over 1,000 people have re-entered our county jail ten times or more. This is unacceptable. I would work together with service providers, community groups, and residents to break this cycle. Accepting that we are doing everything we can to address this issue is a failure of imagination. Here are three places we can start:
We must expand the strategies that are working. As sheriff, I will support the expansion of the misdemeanor diversion program to all ages, and look for other opportunities to build on this model. This program has been successful in reducing the number of youth with criminal records and the vast majority of youth who have gone through this program have not reoffended. The more we can do to minimize the number of persons with criminal records whose lives are turned upside down, the better.
We must rethink pre-trial detention. A jail can do more than ensure public safety by detaining individuals awaiting trial. We need to do more to assess the needs of individuals in our jail and to connect them to services that can help address those needs, both in detention and upon release.
We must increase economic opportunity for residents with criminal records. If individuals cannot find work, the likelihood of recidivism goes up. We need more employers who are willing to hire our residents with records and more transitional job programs that can get these residents job ready. There are a lot of people working on this in our community, and they would find in me a partner willing to do whatever I can to support their good work.
13. Identify and explain one principled stand you would be willing to take if elected that you suspect might cost you some points with voters.
Based on the current climate of opposing viewpoints related to Confederate statues and protest, I would suspect that my stance on protecting the First Amendment right could bring me considerable criticism. Some people want to stop protests from occurring and some officials want to end spontaneous demonstrations by requiring 48-hour notice. I believe this is wrong.
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