Threatening Letter Sent to Durham Police Chief

By Cash Michaels –

Investigators are probing who sent a “threatening letter” that contained racial slurs and a white powder, which ultimately was tested as not harmful, to Durham Police Chief Patrice Andrews.

This startling episode comes on the heels of the controversy surrounding Chief Andrews’s now-deleted Facebook post several weeks ago criticizing racist statements attributed to assassinated conservative Turning Point USA leader and activist Charlie Kirk about accomplished Black women, like herself, “not having the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.”

After his death, many of Kirk’s previous divisive remarks on his various podcasts and videos became better known, especially his negative views about black women (“If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I don’t—I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?”); Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., (“MLK was awful. He’s not a good person”); and the 1964 Civil Rights Act (“We” created a beast, and that beast has now turned into an anti-white weapon”).

In her now-deleted post on her personal Facebook page, Chief Andrews wrote, regarding Kirk’s purported racial statements, ”I won’t stop being outraged at the way this man is being honored by people that I thought I knew. This man, who disguised himself as a Christian, shamed Black women like me, believed that gun violence was necessary to preserve the 2nd amendment, and created a culture of divisiveness through hate speech.”

Members of Durham’s conservative Republican community were outraged by Chief Andrews’s posted remarks and demanded that she be fired. In fact, a petition with over 2,000 signatures was circulated seeking her removal. But Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams and the rest of the Durham City Council refused, saying that Chief Andrews had the right to express her own personal opinions on her personal social media page on her own time, per city of Durham employee policy.

The Durham City Manager was also supposed to look into the matter, but apparently someone was not satisfied that Chief Andrews would not face any official punishment for her remarks.

It was 7:15 a.m. on Sept. 30th when Chief Andrews opened an envelope containing the threatening letter with racial slurs and an unknown sandy and granular substance in her office suite. She immediately radioed for assistance. A unit of the Durham City Fire Department arrived to confiscate the envelope to check to see if Chief Andrews had been exposed to a toxic substance.

All tests proved negative for harmful toxins.

That left Durham Police investigators with the task of tracking down who sent the letter to Chief Andrews.

“At this time, there is no known threat to the safety of staff or the public,” the Durham Police Dept. said afterwards in a press release.

Chief Andrews has led the Durham Police Dept since 2021. She is the second Black woman ever to lead that department.