The Durham County Commissioners approved a $16.5 million renovation to the sheriff’s office training facility Jan. 13 in a contentious 3-2 vote.
The training facility will provide an upgraded outdoor firing range and a new 10,000-square-foot classroom building with showers and gun magazine storage. The facility’s approval prompted community pushback, with some citizens advocating for the funds to instead be used on community initiatives and questioning whether the training would include deescalation practices.
“I advocate moving forward [with the facility] quickly so we can be in a better place to keep improving how we recruit, train and prepare our deputies to protect and serve our residents,” wrote Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead in a January open letter.
Birkhead served as the chief of police for the Duke University Public Safety Department from 1998 to 2005.
Some community members unfavorably compared the renovations to a large $115 million training facility being built in Atlanta — described by some as “Cop City” — including one recently-formed organization "Durham Stop Cop City."
“I am aware of rhetoric using this derogatory phrase relating to the City of Atlanta and their police department,” Birkhead wrote. “Language being used in this way is inaccurate, dangerous and diverts attention to this serious matter to help upgrade the Durham County Sheriff’s Office.”
A November vote on the facility was postponed by Nida Allam, chair of the Board of County Commissioners, in response to community concerns. Birkhead shared disappointment with this delay, noting that meetings about the facility have dated back to 2016 and engaged a variety of stakeholders.
The project was added to the county’s capital improvement plan in 2019. In addition to the new amenities, the upgrades would also address concerns about compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Marcia Owen, Trinity ‘78, former co-chair of the Durham Community Safety and Wellness Task Force and former executive director of the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham, shared concerns that the funding could have been used in more effective ways.
Owen criticized the fact that resources are being allocated to build the training center, while she believes foundational services like mental health care remain unaddressed.
“Sixty-seven percent of people in [Durham County Detention Center] have mental health diagnoses,” Owen said. “… The jail is really our public mental health hospital.”
To Owen, a system which incarcerates “vulnerable” people with “mental health conditions” is “creating crime.”
She believes that future funding should focus on expanding the Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team (HEART), a program launched by the Durham Community Safety Department that aims to connect people experiencing non-violent mental health episodes with the appropriate care that matches their specific needs.
According to Owen, Birkhead has “not welcomed HEART into the county,” suggesting that “he has refused to have HEART deliver services without a co-responder.”
In a co-response, clinicians are dispatched alongside police officers in response to 911 calls.
“[HEART] is an approach I have advocated and worked for as a law enforcement professional and as sheriff,” Birkhead wrote in a Jan. 17 statement shared with The Chronicle. “… My record demonstrates my belief in alternate response models. For more than six years, I helped lead the efforts to implement alternative responses to mental health crises.”
Birkhead pointed to his service on the Governor’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice, which he claims distributed information to law enforcement agencies “about reimagining emergency response, diversion and restorative justice best practices.” He added that he has met regularly with HEART and “stand[s] ready to review and evaluate any proposals from HEART for county-wide expansion, as a co-responder model.”
Owens also described “low staffing levels” in the sheriff’s office and questioned whom the facility is meant to train.
In 2023, WRAL reported that more than one-fourth of positions in the Durham County Sheriff’s Office were vacant — meanwhile, the office paid $2.7 million in overtime in a single year. At the time, North Carolina Sheriffs Association Executive Vice President and General Counsel Eddie Caldwell described the shortage as “a major concern.”
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Vikram Sambasivan is a Trinity first-year and a staff reporter for the news department.