Durham mayor, conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly argue about crime on TV special

Durham’s mayor got into a heated exchange about crime with conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly on a cable news show this week.

Mayor Elaine O’Neal traveled to New York on Monday to appear on Chris Cuomo’s show on NewsNation. She and several other politicians and law enforcement officials took questions about crime in a town hall meeting.

O’Neal, who is not running for re-election this fall, said providing affordable housing is central to solving problems with crime.

“It all comes down to really one basic thing, in my mind, that we have to address if we’re going to deal with these issues: housing,” O’Neal said. “There is a housing crisis.”

“When people do not have a place to live that is safe, and where they can begin to have a life, you create a life where you are,” she said.

Later in the show, conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly appeared virtually and rebutted that notion.

“That’s not true,” he said. “The Great Depression was the worst time in our country’s history, and crime was relatively low. It’s a culture change that drives crime in America.”

Cuomo handed the microphone back to O’Neal.

“What do you believe he has wrong about housing?” Cuomo asked.

“Absolutely everything when he says that. He’s not living in my reality,” O’Neal said, as O’Reilly tried to interrupt.

“Yeah, way back then it may have been the case. But it’s not true in Durham, North Carolina, right now,” she continued. “My reality is that housing is an issue and homelessness is an issue, and it feeds into the other issues. So says the middle-class mayor.”

O’Reilly eventually replied.

“The mayor of Durham, North Carolina, just insulted every law-abiding, poor person in this country that has substandard housing,” he said as the camera switched to a split-screen. “Do you think, madam, that the overwhelming majority of the poor commit crimes? They do not. They never have.”

O’Neal, a lifelong Durham resident, replied that she has witnessed criminal records keep people — especially African American men — from finding housing since her early days as a judge.

“I’m not sure what reality you’re living in, but my reality says that a lot of these young people who are committing these crimes — and I saw them firsthand from the bench — don’t have a place to live. Period. Hands down,” O’Neal said.

No cash bail?

The conversation also veered into whether cash bail is appropriate for people trying to get out of jail after an arrest.

“I’ve been around for the Defund the Police movement and I’ve watched the bail argument about no cash bonds. You know, I don’t agree with a lot of those things having sat at the front seat and watched a lot of this play out,” O’Neal said.

On cash bail bonds, O’Neal said she was open to considering a viable alternative, but hadn’t seen one yet.

“You have to have a way to get people to court,” O’Neal said. “At the end of the day, for some of these things, you’re going to have a system that works for the majority, and America moves on money.”

In 2019, Durham judges and District Attorney Satana Deberry implemented a new policy to limit when cash bail is required. Durham didn’t eliminate cash bail, which the state doesn’t allow, but rather de-emphasized it.

“Researchers at the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law studied the Durham jail population before and after these policy changes and did not observe a change in failures to appear in court following the policy changes (or a change in daily arrests),” Sarah Willets, spokesperson for the DA’s Office, said in an email.

A national study released in 2021 found no correlation between progressive prosecutorial reform and local crime rates. The study looked at Durham and 34 other jurisdictions.

“Durham’s non-appearance rates for 2020 and 2021 (the most recent data available) were lower than years prior to the policy chances described above. Most people also do not pick up new charges pretrial, and when they do they are usually traffic and other misdemeanors,” Willets said.

In speaking about broken systems within the criminal justice apparatus, O’Neal said Durham’s drug court had shut down. The District Attorney’s Office said that was not the case.

Other takeaways

O’Neal often votes against annexations for housing developments, especially in rapidly growing Southeast Durham, where residents have raised environmental concerns. But she said on the show that it’s not a supply issue.

“We don’t have a housing crisis in terms of stock. We have an affordability crisis. People have got to realize that,” she said.

Even middle-class folks are struggling to afford a decent place to live, she said.

“There’s a lot of greed going on out there as people are suffering,” she said. “We’re seeing all these houses go up all over the country. It’s no doubt in my mind that if you address housing first, you can deal with a lot of the crime issues.”

Cuomo asked if as a judge, she would release an offender who stole to make his rent payment.

“No. That would be such an easy way to get out of it,” she said. “What I would do is try to find a way to mitigate him or her doing that again.”

She returned to the economic issues in play.

“You always have to look back at where people live. I will tell you as an African-American woman, most African Americans have been housing insecure forever,” O’Neal said. “We’ve never had secure housing from the moment we stepped in this country on a boat.

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