Standing between a Starbucks and a shoe store, two Prince William County Police officers staffed a booth last week recruiting for “Northern Virginia’s Finest.” Most mall shoppers walked past them, but 24-year-old Tamani Truelove stopped to learn about entry requirements.

“You got to do like 13 pushups in one minute, a 12-inch vertical jump from a standing position. Seems pretty easy stuff,” said Truelove, of Lorton, Va.

If he joins, Truelove, who is African American, will help solve a problem that has faced the Prince William County Police Department for years: Fewer than 10% of its officers are African American, even though 22% of county residents are. A quarter of the county’s residents are Latino, but they comprise just 11% of its police force. The imbalance has persisted as the county doubled in population over the last 25 years to nearly half a million residents, and became a “minority-majority” community as of 2010.  In a sign of its dedication to addressing the issue, the police contracted with an external consultant last January to improve diversity in recruiting and hiring.  

County Board of Supervisors Chair Ann Wheeler, a Democrat, says she had that goal in mind when she voted with most of her board in November to hire D.C. Police chief Peter Newsham as the agency’s next leader. He takes over in February.

“Chief Newsham’s experience in D.C. and the fact that the D.C. police force represents the demographic of the District of Columbia was really a highlight for me,” Wheeler said. “I know that it’s something that’s a priority for the county.”

Police backers say the booming county will benefit from Newsham’s experience presiding over D.C.’s officers, where Black, Asian, Hispanic and Native American officers make up two thirds of the ranks. Civil rights activists in Prince William say diversity is not enough: They believe Newsham’s record indicates he may stall their efforts to end systemic discrimination in policing.

Newsham’s mixed reception serves as a portent of debates to come, as nearly half a dozen police departments in the D.C. region also seek to replace chiefs who stepped down this year.

The search for a new police chief in Prince William County began after Chief Barry Barnard announced on May 13 that, after four years leading the force, he would leave the department by July. He was replaced temporarily by Deputy Chief Jarad Phelps. 

Within weeks of the announcement, the two would be at the center of explosive protests that rattled the relationship between police and the community.

Hundreds of demonstrators in Manassas filled the streets on May 30 to demand justice for George Floyd, the Black man killed at the hands of Minneapolis police. Prince William County Police said protesters blocked traffic, stood on stopped cars, and hurled rocks and bottles at officers, prompting police to declare an unlawful assembly and call in backup from four neighboring departments and state troopers. Four county officers were injured, according to the police, and six people were arrested. Prince William County spokesman First Sergeant Jonathan Perok said Virginia State Police officers fired chemical irritants at the crowd.  

The next day, the Prince William County Police Department called a meeting with the county’s Citizen’s Advisory Board, a panel formed in 2017 to advise the police on community relations.

Prince William NAACP President Rev. Cozy Bailey chairs that board, and he told DCist/WAMU he felt the dynamic of protests change after the meeting. On June 1, protesters returned to the streets in Gainesville. This time, Bailey said Barnard and Phelps appeared in uniform. Bailey said the two flanked him at the protests, and took a knee alongside demonstrators with the group when they stopped on a highway overpass.

“It looked like the leadership of this department was enlightened to the issues,” Bailey said.

That moment was part of a broader realignment of policing in the county. In 2017, the police implemented a body-worn camera program; officers now must tape their encounters with the public. In September, the county announced a new co-responder program to dispatch clinicians alongside police for mental health emergencies.

Criminal defense attorney Tracey Lenox is still building a team of 24 lawyers and 11 administrative staff after she was hired in June by the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission as as the county’s first public defender. The General Assembly approved funding for the position, which survived new limits on spending imposed in the pandemic.

“We were the largest county in the state of Virginia that did not have a public defender,” Lenox told DCist/WAMU. “It was an obvious lack.” 

Lenox credited grassroots organizers for demanding the office, overcoming years of local opposition when the county was run by Republicans. 

Still, Lenox said that after more than 27 years of practicing criminal law, she still sees the criminal justice system affecting people differently. African Americans are disproportionately charged with marijuana offenses, and children of color were charged with disorderly conduct in numbers out of step with their share of the population. According to the Prince William County Police Department, 40% of people arrested in 2019 were African Americans.

Lenox said she doubts whether Newsham is capable of fixing those disparities.

“He’s not a guy that has a track record, frankly, of being interested in thinking more broadly about how the police ought to be serving the communities they’re in,” she said. (MPD declined DCist/WAMU’s request for an interview with Newsham.)

Bailey of the NAACP said hiring Newsham was a missed opportunity to continue driving change. 

“It would have been a great boon to the community — the various people of color here —  to see someone other than an older caucausian man once again lead this police department,” he said, adding, “it appears that he may not be of the same mind as our previous leadership.”

Chair Wheeler contends that Newsham, who joined the Metropolitan Police Department in 1989, was instrumental in implementing changes mandated by a 2001 Memorandum of Agreement with the U.S. Justice Department that led to fewer use-of-force incidents.

“He was part of those changes and so I see him as reform-minded,” Wheeler said.

More recently, Newsham has come under increasing scrutiny. At protests for racial justice in D.C. this summer, the MPD fired pepper spray at crowds, prompting the D.C. Council to draft emergency legislation to curb the practice. Newsham later accused lawmakers of “completely abandoning” officers.

Ravi Perry, chair of Howard University’s political science department, said an analysis of 62,000 police stops in the District last year showed  that Newsham did not lead an equitable agency: Black people composed 72% of those stopped, although they comprise fewer than half the city’s residents. Perry also pointed to two Black people killed in encounters with police this year: 18-year-old Deon Kay and 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown. (Newsham has taken steps to discipline misconduct: two years ago he fired an officer for fatally shooting 31-year-old Terrence Sterling during an unauthorized pursuit.)

“It certainly seems to suggest that the anti-bias effort in the Metropolitan Police Department under Newsham’s watch has been largely unsuccessful,” said Perry, who has conducted anti-bias trainings in Richmond and Providence, R.I. “The engagement of Black people with the MPD has not gotten better simply because the officers may be a little more Black.”

Newsham was up for review by the D.C. Council next year, a new check on the chief that lawmakers imposed as part of this summer’s emergency legislation. The 13-member council shifted left in this year’s election, which could have made that review more challenging. In statement on his departure, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser praised Newsham. 

“During his time as Chief, he led the department through a time of great change and challenge for our city and our nation,” she said. 

Some in Prince William County hailed the decision to hire Newsham.

Eric Beard, the head of the county’s police union, told WUSA9 that Newsham, “really wasn’t one that was on our radar, but we saw the announcement … and we’re excited to welcome him to our police family and move forward with the new chief.”

Others urged the council to reconsider its choice. As of Friday, more than 1,800 people signed a petition calling on the Prince William Board of County Supervisors to terminate its hiring agreement with Newsham.

Wheeler, the county’s chair, said she was unlikely to agree to activists’ demands.

“We’re going to work really hard to make sure that our police is a community-friendly police, that our police force continues on the path that they’ve been going, so I don’t share the same concerns that they do – though I do hear them,” she said.

Newsham will receive $215,000 a year, a pay cut from the $282,716.46 he earned in D.C. Perry at Howard University said the lower profile has its own benefit.

“County chiefs on average face far less scrutiny than urban chiefs from activist groups engaged in criminal justice reform efforts,” he wrote in an email. “The breadth of police jurisdictions and the multiple cities and towns creates more challenges for groups to coalesce around a common goal.”

Whoever is at the helm, police work in Prince William County still holds appeal. Truelove, the potential recruit, said he was taking a gap year from college courses in business marketing and looking for a change from his current job selling shoes. He thought about working as a beat cop or a sketch artist. 

“I think it would be exciting, you know. Help people. It beats working at a mall,” he said.

He said he could imagine serving as a bridge between his own African American community and law enforcement. The police and the county are hoping for more recruits like Truelove – but activists say that’s only the tip of what has to change under Newsham’s leadership.