Open letter to the Carrboro, NC Town Council

November 4, 2026

Dear gentlepeople,

Rather than follow tonight’s election results, I watched the video from the October 29 community meeting at the Drakeford library, jaw agape, and now I’m writing you.

What has unfolded around Patrice Toney’s proposed police department transfer-merge from Carrboro to Chapel Hill is quite frankly astonishing and quite simply unacceptable. Providing just a few days’ notice for what may be the only community meeting about such a major proposal in our essential town services? What the actual? Moreover, people didn’t have much opportunity to speak or be heard with the very limited time and space.

I’ve lived in Richmond, Roanoke, Raleigh, Birmingham, Charlotte, Durham, Atlanta, and now on Lindsay Street in Carrboro. For twenty-six years, Carrboro has been my home, and of all the places I’ve lived, it’s been the best example of local policing that seems to work well for many if not most. Is it perfect? No, but of course nothing is.

Though I’m not a fan of policing departments throughout the country (because of the negative effects of entrenched structural racism and especially in larger towns and cities that use heavy duty militarized gear), my interactions with Carrboro police have largely been positive or at least neutral. For example, I’ve witnessed CPD officers protecting my neighbors during local protest marches and respectfully treating people who use the Inter-Faith Council shelter on West Main Street. I’ve seen them consistently reach out to the community and prioritize building relationships with us.

I encountered a team of CPD officers with a K-9 unit at my home one Saturday night many years ago as they arrested an armed, yet somehow also pants-less man in my elderly next-door neighbor’s driveway. The man had been on the run from Virginia when he zoomed onto the bike path from Estes Drive, got stuck, abandoned his car, and took off on foot through our back yards until the Carrboro police caught him in my neighbor’s driveway. One of the officers shouted at me to shut our door because the suspect was armed, but he checked on us later and apologized for the K-9 searching our garden for the weapon. What a night.

On the other hand, the Chapel Hill Police Department has hired at least one officer with a far-right Three Percenters tattoo (https://dailytarheel.com/377519/uncategorized/chapel-hill-police-tattoo/, https://chapelboro.com/news/safety/chapel-hill-police-officer-with-3-percenter-tattoo-resigns). People at the Drakeford meeting raised concerns about how they’ve seen Chapel Hill officers acting disrespectfully with folks who use the shelters. And a few years ago, Chapel Hill police showed up at our across-the-street neighbor’s home, guns drawn, looking for a suspect because they thought they were on Lindsay Street in Chapel Hill. The responding officers didn’t even know they were in the wrong town, and they were aggressive with my neighbor when he asked them why they were there.

At first glance, Ms. Toney’s proposal seems like a bad idea on many levels, and I’m not sure why it’s being rammed through. Unfortunately we’ve only had time for a quick glance before you all meet next week to discuss it.

During the October 29 meeting, Ms. Toney said (quoting here from the video transcript): “So we want to hear all the the the um input and I know we need to rebuild trust around this uh the way it got out.”

I’m glad she knows she needs to rebuild trust, but she needs to move well beyond how the information got out. This reminds me of something I’ve been pondering about trust and governance. Before Ms. Toney’s proposal emerged on our town’s general radar, I’d squirreled aside a quote thinking I’d share it with you, our town council:

“If politics cannot deliver on the block where you live, why would you trust it to deliver anywhere?” Mamdani asked a gathering of mayors from big cities across the world, explaining his obsession with potholes, more than 200,000 of which have been filled across the city since he took office. “If you are making a New Yorker’s life a little smoother, so too you are making their journey to believe in government’s ability to deliver for them.” Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/opinion/zohran-mamdani-united-nations.html?unlocked_article_code=1.N1E.D7UU.RPdBDNpLH-OU&smid=url-share

I’d emailed the quote and article to myself with the subject line “More of this in Carrboro, please.” Lately I’ve been questioning our town government’s ability to deliver essential, ordinary services like picking up waste, preserving expensive town equipment, and exercising good care and judgment about where to park said equipment.

When essential, ordinary town services aren’t working or reliable, that’s where we should focus, even if it’s boring. Instead, week after week for many months, we’ve been receiving razzle-dazzle TOC email newsletters featuring town awards and shiny, expensive new buildings and projects, with more on the way. All nice-to-haves, sure. But when the trash builds up, budgets are tight, and we need to replace ruined equipment?

Please prioritize the have-to-haves, not the nice-to-haves. Deliver on the block where we live first. As Mamdani noted, that’s how you build trust.

During the October 29 meeting, someone asked Ms. Toney how the CPD had responded to her proposal. She noted that she’d met with CPD leadership to share her ideas after they’d heard rumors. She said, “So they were very respectful, honestly, and just had questions about how it would work....” I thought it was a bit of a strange answer because of course our police department leadership would be respectful during the conversation, regardless of how they personally felt about the idea.

I wish Ms. Toney had been equally respectful with them and with us, the Carrboro community, by communicating openly about her idea, revealing her work, and appropriately timing her proposal so that our whole community could have ample time to consider, discuss, respond to it. Consider, discuss, and respond—not just ask questions and not just accept what comes after a rubber stamp. No. Consent of the governed matters.

Consent matters.

And as Ms. Toney noted at the October 29 meeting, “Morale matters.”

I’d wager we’re rather low on morale as a community after being blindsided by this secret, sudden, major reveal. People are discussing it with each other in local businesses and in our neighborhoods and not in good ways. This is serious, y’all. Please make time for us; please hear us. Stop treating us as “input” to be waved away with a pat on the head, a pat answer, and a box checked. We are the townspeople who elected you to serve on our behalf. Our high taxes pay for our town’s services and salaries.

We’re moving too fast, too secretly, with very poor communication and not nearly enough mutual regard, respect, discernment, or trust. Take a breath and slow your roll on this proposal, please.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,

Angela Winter