The Ugly War Between a White Police Chief and a Black Mayor in the Deep South
When Wayman Newton found out last week about the warrant for his arrest in the town that elected him its first Black mayor, he wasn’t surprised.
Ever since Newton, 40, took office after winning his election in Tarrant, Alabama—population 7,000—by nearly 40 percentage points last year, a small minority of mostly white residents and city leaders have had it out for him, he told The Daily Beast.
They’ve blocked him from making what he and some locals describe as needed changes to the police department in a city mostly comprised of Black and Latino residents, he said.
Newton said the opposition reached its apex last week, when Dennis Reno, the white former chief of police in Tarrant, accused the mayor of assaulting him during a conversation in Newton’s office a day after his swearing-in back in November.
During the meeting, Newton said, he confronted Reno—who was still chief at the time—over what the mayor claimed was a longstanding practice of not hiring Black police officers in the city. He said Reno told him he hadn’t hired Black officers because they weren’t qualified, and couldn’t be trusted to police their own. The conversation evolved into a shouting match, Newton said.
“At a certain point, I had to remind him that I was the mayor and kicked him out of my office,” he told The Daily Beast.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/ugly-war-between-white-police-090507290.html
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