Last month, a tiny town in North Carolina hired a Black woman to manage their city. The celebration of diversity quickly waned; after just two weeks, the police force walked off the job en mass, including all four full-time officers, two town clerks, and the police chief—all of whom are white.
Kenly, population 1,800, is a community that is neither majority Black nor majority white. According to Data USA, the city is made up of 36.1% Black residents and 35.7% white residents. The remainder are white (Hispanic), other (Hispanic), and multiracial (Hispanic).
So when Justine Jones began her role as city manager in June, it wasn’t to diversify the local government. She was approved by the city council after an exhaustive nationwide search. She was chosen because she’d “dedicated her career to public service for over the last 16 years” in “progressively responsible positions with local governments” in multiple states, according to a press release sent after she was hired.
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Although the police force’s resignation letters claim a “hostile” workplace, none cite examples or name Jones—except one.
Only former Chief of Police Josh Gibson called Jones out by name. He recently made a Facebook post private in which he commented that Jones “has created an environment I do not feel we can perform our duties and services to the community.”
CBS-17 in Kenly reports that the town council has asked the town attorney to begin “thorough investigations beginning next week to determine the facts and circumstances relating to the resignations and the allegations of a hostile work environment.”
Kenly resident Brittney Hinnant told CNN that force’s resignation is obviously a “race issue.” She says the entire force is white, and there have been complaints of police harassment of Black residents in the town.
“I feel like they don’t want a Black woman over top of them, basically managing them or telling them what to do,” Hinnant said.
To another longtime Kenly resident, Cynthia Kirby, it’s obvious this is about the fact that Jones is Black and the officers are white.
“They don’t want to be led by anybody Black; that’s Kenly. They’re always harassing Black people. It’s racial. … I hope this doesn’t end in her quitting, because that’s not right. You can’t judge anybody because they make you do your job,” Kirby told The News & Observer.
