“Tone deaf.”

“Unfit.”

“A poster child for the bad cop.”

This is how some residents of Prince William County described their incoming police chief, the current head of Metropolitan Police Department Peter Newsham. In comments at a Tuesday county board meeting, residents split largely along racial and generational lines to pass judgment on their new top cop. Critics said  Newsham’s record in D.C. proves he is out of step with the needs of a diverse and growing part of Virginia. Supporters said he was a steady and experienced hand who would fend off dangerous demands to defund the police.

The first speakers at Tuesday’s County Board meeting were mostly older and white. They praised the county board for voting 8-1 last week to hire Newsham.

“Some cities and counties struggle with police forces that have corruption, racism and other issues, but we have an outstanding police force,” said Richard Moore of the Neabsco district. “Your own initiative to hire Chief Newsham shows that you understand that good leadership is essential to a good police force.”

One white woman said the summer’s racial justice protests made her feel “terrorized” that protesters would “come in and destroy our neighborhoods.”

Then, critics of police took to the microphone in person and online. They pointed to Newsham’s record in D.C., in particular, MPD officers who used tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters in demonstrations for racial justice. Critics also pointed to two people who died this year in encounters with police: Deon Kay, 18, shot by police in Congress Heights, and Karon Hylton-Brown, 20, who died in a crash when police chased him as he rode a rented moped in what may have been an illegal pursuit.

Jordan Emison  recounted the details of Kay’s and Hylton-Brown’s deaths, comparing them to his own experience getting arrested and harassed by police.

“Police have always been concerned with terrorizing me,” said Emison, who is Black. “It is evident that police chief Newsham’s culture of policing does not care about Black and brown lives.”

Newsham will take over a force in a county that is growing rapidly, adding about 70,000 new residents in the last decade to reach a population of nearly half a million. The county is 22% Black or African American and 64% white. About a quarter of all residents identify as Latino or Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census.

Demographic change has ushered in a political shift. In 2019, voters flipped the county board, installing Democrat Ann Wheeler as chair-at-large to replace firebrand Republican Corey Stewart. The county voted for Joe Biden with a landslide 27-point margin in the 2020 elections, six points more than Hillary Clinton garnered in 2016.

Critics of police said hiring Newsham was a step backward.

“Corey Stewart is no longer here,” said Ivania Castillo, a Prince William County board member of the immigrant advocacy group CASA. “We want to live in a place where we live in peace, where families are treated with respect, where we have a new chief of police who represents our community: African American community, Spanish community. Where is that chief of police?”

Newsham’s hiring is the latest development in a pitched public battle over policing in Prince William County that echoes debates underway in D.C. and across the region. The county is drafting a four-year strategic plan, which is expected to be finalized in February 2021. Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, Republican Supervisor Peter Candland (R-Gainesville) proposed a resolution that would “strike all language, references, and consideration to defunding the police” from the plan.

He said he was moved to act when the team working on the strategic plan presented an October update that suggested that the county “consider reallocation of some Police funding to other social services.”

“It’s important that when some communities across the U.S. are threatening police departments with defunding, we rise to stand with ours,” Candland told his fellow supervisors Tuesday.

The motion failed 3-5 on party lines.

Supervisor Victor Angry (D-Neabsco), who is African American, said he voted no because he thought it stifled debate.

“The language is striking people’s first amendment right to speak,” he said.

Supervisor Yesli Vega (R-Coles) voted for the resolution. She said she and fellow Republican supervisor Jeanine Lawson of Brentsville cooked Thanksgiving dinner for police officers and she thanked police for “patrolling the streets, caring for people who don’t respect you.”

“That is the true definition of selfless love,” Vega said.

Newsham will replace Chief Barry Barnard, who retired this summer. Chiefs in Fairfax, Arlington, Prince George’s, and Anne Arundel counties have also stepped down in recent months.

Rev. Cozy Bailey, the president of the Prince William County branch of the NAACP, said Newsham was not his choice for chief.  He said he wanted a chief who would help bring more people of color onto the police force. He also pointed to reports that Newsham had resisted efforts in Washington to increase citizen oversight.

“It appears that it will be more of the same here,” Bailey told DCist/WAMU. “As opposed to what we believe is a need for a cultural shift in how policing is done in Prince William.”

Several speakers on Tuesday urged the county board to reverse its decision and rescind its offer to Newsham. Chair Wheeler did not respond to questions about a possible reconsideration at the time this report was published.

Newsham is set to take office in February 2021.