In Sanford, the face of authority is increasingly black

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Despite the overall positive reception, Smith said he has also seen the dark side of people’s attitudes toward race. When his hiring was announced in March, he said his 16-year-old daughter (he has two older children: a 22-year-old son who plays semi-professional football and a 19-year-old son who is studying international relations) began noticing derogatory, even racist, remarks on local news websites carrying the story, though it’s impossible to know whether the comments came from Sanford residents.

“She was like dad, why are these people saying this? They don’t even know you,” he said. “But they’re saying horrible things about you; they don’t know you, they haven’t even given you a chance.”

Even within the police force, Smith said he met some resistance. “I had command officers who said they didn’t want to work for a black chief, and [who] frankly put it on the floor,” he said. “And I said to them, if you don’t choose to work for me, there’s the door. I’ll happily have a great retirement party for you, cause I’m not going anywhere.”

Smith said some of the ugliness gave him pause.

“It was to the point where I was gonna say, ‘no, I’m not gonna do it,'” he said. “But you know, I believe in God, I get on my knees and pray every morning. …. [And] know what, He puts us in places and he guides our feet and he tells us where we’re gonna go. There [were] a whole lot of times when I said this is not for me. But I don’t think He’ll give me anything that I can’t accomplish with him.”

Smith said his first act on the job was to signal to his police force that change was coming to Sanford, in terms of the police department’s relationship to its black residents.

“I won’t tolerate any racism,” he says he told his officers right out of the gate. “And I won’t tolerate the fact that you treat people differently, period. And if it comes to a point where I find that you’re doing that, that you’re making racial statements, that you’re doing things that are profiling, then we’re going to take appropriate action against you. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a command officer or just a basic street officer on the street.”

Skepticism on 13th Street

Goldsboro’s main drag, 13th Street, is lined with rundown, old buildings, modest restaurants and makeshift bars. The street, renamed Historic Goldsboro Boulevard after a city commission vote, designed to spark a revival in the city’s oldest neighborhood, is quiet on a Tuesday afternoon. Two men smoke a cigarette outside Mama Coot’s Place. A few young men ride by on bikes. Two more sit on crates outside the Goldsboro Food Mart, which along with the next door bar, The Spot, has become a local hub for residents and for police.

Brenda Hartsfield, who owns the Food Mart, says members of a ten-member police task force constantly pull up in front of her store, demanding that people not stand on the sidewalk. She said the scrutiny gets worse on weekend nights, when the locals congregate in front of the stores and bars after the clubs in the city shut down.

“It feels like they’re out here every ten minutes,” Hartsfield said. “We feel like we’re in a choke hold. As soon as they see four or five of us together, it’s ‘break it up, break it up.'”

She said police have taken a longstanding loitering law, “and they enforce it to the fullest.”