There’s only one contested local race in Durham this November. Here’s who’s running.
When Durham County voters go to the polls this fall, most will find only one contested local race on the ballot: the county sheriff.
Clarence Birkhead, a Democrat completing his first term, is squaring off against Maria Jocys, a retired FBI agent who is running as an unaffiliated candidate.
In-person early voting started Thursday and will run until Nov. 5, the Saturday before Election Day.
The News & Observer interviewed the candidates on critical public safety issues in Durham County.
Combating gangs and guns
Jocys, 55, retired from the FBI in December to run for office. She spent 24 years with the agency, the last five in Durham on the Violent Gang Task Force. Before that, she was a Greenville police officer for eight years.
Jocys worked the case of Z’yon Person, a 9-year-old boy mistakenly killed in a gang-related shooting three years ago. She believes her expertise with gangs will serve Durham well.
“Since 2016, we have seen — especially with Eight Trey Gangster Crips and now the non-traditional neighborhood gangs that have flourished and popped up — younger and younger members that are being used by the older gang leaders to go out and do acts of violence and crime, because they feel that they won’t be held to the same level of accountability that an adult would,” Jocys told The N&O. “These gang influencers really hone in on the emotional aspect of, ’Hey, I love you, but you gotta go do this.’”
Birkhead, 61, coasted to victory with 90% of the vote in the primary this year, though his opponent, former Durham County Sheriff’s Maj. Paul Martin, did not report any fundraising during the campaign.
Reported crime is down since this time last year, Birkhead noted. The city also reports that violent crime is down 8.3% as of this month.
“Our third-quarter numbers show an overall crime reduction of 8%,” Birkhead said. “So we’re doing pretty good.”
The Sheriff’s Office is working closely with James Stuit, the city’s gang reduction strategy manager, and supporting programs like Project BUILD and Bull City United, Birkhead said.
The programs, under the health department, aim to keep young people out of gangs. Project BUILD helps youth and young adults finish school, find work and navigate mental health issues and substance abuse. Bull City United sends trusted community members called “violence interrupters” into certain neighborhoods to mediate conflicts and reshape social norms around gun violence.
“Our collective efforts to combat this gang crime is right on target, and we have more to come as we move forward in my second term,” the sheriff said. “We’ll be expanding our efforts.”
1st African American sheriff faces unaffiliated challenger
Birkhead has spent 38 years in law enforcement, most at the Duke University Public Safety Department, where he eventually became chief. He was Hillsborough’s police chief for five years before moving back to Durham.
Birkhead bested incumbent Mike Andrews in 2018 and later became the first African-American sheriff in Durham County. That year, seven of North Carolina’s largest counties elected Black sheriffs, five of them for the first time, The N&O reported.
Jocys is a registered Democrat who voted in the Democratic primaries both this year and in 2018, according to the State Board of Elections. In an interview, she described herself as “middle of the road.”
“I don’t believe politics should have a play in law enforcement,” she said. “The sheriff should be a nonpartisan race.”
In North Carolina, the sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer in the county. Deputies in Durham County primarily police areas outside of the city limits, but have jurisdiction everywhere in the county, including land in the city limits of Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Cary.
Sheriffs also are tasked with running county jails, serving warrants and providing security for courts.
Birkhead’s slogan remains the same this time around: “One Durham. One community.”
“It is incumbent upon me to work alongside (Durham Police Chief Patrice) Andrews and the men and women of the Durham Police Department, and we do every single day,” he said.
Jocys, a Durham native, has challenged him on that. Her campaign took out two billboards that quote remarks Birkhead made in a candidates forum ahead of the primary: “I am not responsible for the violent crime that occurs inside the Durham City.”
“The sheriff is a top law enforcement official in Durham, city and county. Most Durham County voters live in the city. City residents pay county taxes that fund sheriff’s protection,” Jocys said. “If you walk away from having a shared responsibility with the chief of police, you’re walking away from having shared responsibility with solving the problems.”
The billboards are on N.C. 147 (the Durham Freeway) at Alston Avenue and on Hillsborough Road near Interstate 85.
“I would say my first reaction was, ‘Wow, that’s a nice picture of me,’” Birkhead said and chuckled when asked about the signs. “So I appreciate the picture being up there. But as it relates to the quote, it was completely taken out of context.”
He said he was specifically referring to the reporting of crime statistics.
“When I say responsibility, we as law enforcement agencies are required to report these stats to the FBI. And so I have to report the crime stats that occur inside Durham County,” Birkhead said. “I don’t think Chief Andrews wants me to report her crime data. That would be inappropriate for me to do that.”
Does Durham do no-knock warrants?
Jocys said she would ban no-knock warrants on day one. The 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor by a Lousiville police officer during a no-knock raid sparked a nationwide reckoning around the practice.
“They’re so inherently risky,” Jocys said.
Birkhead said the last no-knock warrant served in the county was by a federal agency in 2014.
“North Carolina law banned no-knock warrants years ago. And the policy here at the Durham County Sheriff’s Office is that we don’t use no-knock warrants,” Birkhead said. “Only in very strict defined situations, exigent circumstances: we have knowledge that the life of either a person inside the residence or an officer will be jeopardized. And we have to spell that out and submit that to a judicial official.”
The statute does not ban the practice, but requires an officer announce their “identity and purpose” unless they have probable cause to believe giving notice would “endanger the life or safety of any person.”
The governor’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice, which Birkhead was appointed to last year, recommended in 2020 that the statute be strengthened.
Vacancies and questionable hires
The Sheriff’s Office is down 122 employees, a quarter of its staff, and Birkhead said it’s taking a toll. The jail has taken the biggest hit, with 96 vacancies.
“We’re all suffering from burnout,” he said. “We now have deputies working in the jail to provide some additional coverage. And so we rotate those those shifts around.”
Recruiting is a top priority, he said. Detention officers start at $44,575 and deputies at $47,696. The county is offering $6,000 sign-on bonuses for entry-level positions.
“Unfortunately, here at the Sheriff’s Office, they’ve been working mandatory overtime for the last 15 years. That strategy predates me. So we obviously have had to continue it because of COVID and resignations and retirements and things like that,” Birkhead said. “I don’t think we’ll ever eliminate the need for overtime. But we certainly should be able to scale it back.”
The Durham Police Department is about 80% staffed. The police chief announced in December she and her command staff would temporarily be taking patrol shifts to ease the burden.
That’s something Jocys said makes a difference.
“She’s there as part of the team helping, and the detention center and the deputies don’t see that same reflective leadership in what currently is in the Sheriff’s Office,” Jocys said.
“I get elected sheriff, I’ll be doing a shift in the detention center. My command staff will be doing a shift in the detention center, because we’re going to lead by example, and I will never ask someone to do something that I wouldn’t do myself.”
Jocys also criticized the sheriff over who he has hired. The N&O reported earlier this year that some of Birkhead’s command staff were political allies, some of whom had been fired from other agencies.
“It’s not true,” Birkhead said. “I didn’t hire buddies. I did hire five qualified individuals when I became the sheriff. That’s five out of 486 (full-time employees). And I think any sheriff, any CEO, any president of the United States would want to bring in at a minimum five people to be in those quote-unquote cabinet positions. ... Everybody I hired was qualified to do the job that I have asked them to do.”
Holding deputies accountable
The candidates clashed over the concept of a citizen’s review board.
“One of his 2018 platform promises he ran on was to create this review board, and it never materialized,” Jocys said.
Birkhead did create a Community Advisory Board to meet quarterly and share residents’ concerns and suggest solutions and policies. The work is confidential.
Jocys said that’s not what most people had in mind.
The city’s Civilian Police Review Board hears appeals of complaints against officers. They don’t review the actions that prompt a complaint, but analyze the investigation that police undertake in response. Findings are submitted to the city manager and police chief, who can take disciplinary actions if they choose.
Body and dash cameras
Birkhead said the Sheriff’s Office has 178 body-worn cameras. A Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said 116 had been issued since January.
“We are not 100% in the detention center,” Birkhead said of the rollout.
Not all sheriff’s vehicles have dash cams, though 102 have been purchased, the Sheriff’s Office reports. Of those, 81 are in use.
Jocys said 178 body cams isn’t near enough.
“He doesn’t have body-worn cameras for all deputies. He was only able to fund half the deputies. It isn’t a good practice to be sharing body-worn cameras, and it only came after the shooting earlier this year,” she said.
In January, deputies shot and killed 28-year-old Stephanie Monique Wilson at her Bahama home. They said she had pointed a shotgun at deputies multiple times and was behaving erratically. No body or dashboard cameras recorded the fatal encounter and deputies were cleared by the district attorney this summer.
Endorsements and campaign cash
Birkhead won endorsements from the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, the People’s Alliance, the Progressive Caucus of the NC Democratic Party, Friends of Durham and Indy Week.
He collected over $48,000 this election cycle and spent 76% of it, according to the most recent disclosure filed in July.
Jocys, meanwhile, raised over $100,000 and loaned her campaign $50,000 more this summer. She had spent $103,591 at the time of the July filing.
ICE detainers
At the beginning of his first term, Birkhead stopped honoring ICE detainers, requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold people in jail if they’re in the country illegally.
“We do not participate and will not participate in any ICE-related activities. And I made that very clear,” Birkhead said.
An ICE detainer gives local authorities permission to hold someone for up to 48 hours (excluding weekends and holidays) past when they would normally be released, such as by posting bail. This gives immigration authorities time to take them into custody if they have probable cause the person is not a citizen and can be deported.
Both candidates said they would honor an ICE detainer if accompanied by a federal arrest warrant.
The DA’s office
Jocys said it’s important for the District Attorney’s Office to prioritize low-level crimes when gang members are involved. She pointed to car break-ins as an example, saying gangs are known to break into cars searching for guns they can use or sell.
“It’s not just a car break, but it’s related to other activities that threaten the safety of the community,” Jocys said. “There has to be a level of accountability. Durham has over 500 shootings this year, over 170 people shot, 31 homicides. We shouldn’t be putting people who are repeatedly reoffending with gun offenses back in the streets.”
Birkhead said the role of his office is to investigate, not prosecute, crime.
“My 38 years of experience, I know how to teach the men and women of the Durham County Sheriff’s Office to investigate a crime,” he said. “And I think whatever decisions the district attorney makes, we live with it. I mean, that’s just the way the system works. And so I don’t have an opinion as to whether it should be more or less.”
In-person early voting in Durham County
Until Nov. 5, Durham County residents can cast their votes any day of the week at eight libraries, university buildings and places of worship scattered around the county. For a complete list, visit dcovotes.com.
Same-day registration is allowed during early voting.
Polls will open 6:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 8.
Curious about the bonds on the ballot? Find out more here. For state and federal races, check out The N&O’s 2022 Voter Guide.
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