“Every day is training day.”
That’s a popular maxim in public safety, and one that’s served Gina Hawkins well.
Hawkins — assistant chief deputy for Georgia’s Cobb County Sheriff’s Office and previously chief of police in Fayetteville, N.C., — spoke on managing major events for attendees of the Motorola Solutions Summit May 13 in Grapevine, Texas.
It’s an area where Hawkins is well-experienced. She was an assistant zone commander with the Atlanta Police Department in 1992 during unrest that followed the Rodney King verdict and through the mid-1990s when the city’s Freaknik street party began spiraling out of control. In 2020, she led Fayetteville officers throughout the violence that followed the death of George Floyd.
That’s a “lot of bad experiences,” Hawkins noted, but they helped her hone a decision-making approach that’s now benefiting her and her colleagues as they prepare for an eventful sporting summer in the Atlanta area.
Consider these aspects
These are the major variables experiences have taught Hawkins to consider:
- Is there law to guide us?
- Is there policy that restricts us?
- What’s the internal impact to personnel?
- What’s the external impact to the public?
- What’s the budgetary impact in terms of equipment and personnel?
- Does the community have input?
- What’s the political impact?
- What’s the personal impact?
Leaders in Cobb County are certainly considering them in 2025, when metro Atlanta will host the Major League Baseball All-Star Game and multiple FIFA Club World Cup soccer matches. As part of preparing for those, Hawkins went to last year’s MLB All-Star Game in Arlington, Texas, to study how colleagues there had prepared — but, she notes, you can’t just duplicate someone else’s measures; they must be tailored to your own circumstances.
Underlying the process at all stages is communication: Large or small, departments must communicate, cooperate and coordinate with their neighbors, Hawkins said, for those times when big needs outstrip available resources. It’s true universally, but most acute for smaller departments — Uvalde, Texas, being one recent example, and the new police department in Sandy Springs, Georgia that Hawkins led from 2006-2013 being another. “We depended on our surrounding jurisdictions,” she emphasized.
While challenging, major events can also provide major opportunities. They help improve awareness and strategic planning for future responses, which in turn can inform refined tactics that save lives and improve safety. As in the rest of America, Fayetteville’s experiences in the summer of 2020 yielded some important insights.
The 2020 protests
Like they did in many other cities, protests in Fayetteville on May 30, 2020, began peacefully but escalated. Protesters collected around the historic downtown Market House, where slaves had once been auctioned, and two tried to set it on fire. Looting and property damage also occurred.
Two days earlier, rioters had set a Minneapolis precinct house on fire — this obviously got the attention of police leaders in Fayetteville and everywhere. Preceding the Market House arson, Hawkins had directed the department’s new vehicles to be securely garaged and officers to remain on streets parallel to protesters to avoid inflaming anger. Cameras in the downtown area helped identify weapons among some protesters, but police — greatly outnumbered — responded cautiously, as city leaders preferred a conciliatory approach.
Everyone’s first consideration, appropriately, was how to respond legally and effectively. This included standard measures like tear gas and forming lines to hold protesters at bay, but “We couldn’t just stop people walking,” Hawkins noted. “They had to violate a law.”
The arson at the Market House and related looting triggered a shift to more assertive crowd-control tactics. Some protesters took this as a betrayal of the city’s earlier gentler stance, and tensions grew. Ultimately, a protester who was also a corrections officer, reached out to an officer he played basketball with and asked if police would take a symbolic knee in recognition of protesters’ concerns. On June 1, they did, noting it was a “show of understanding the pain that is in our community and our nation regarding equality.”
While this was initially praised as a gesture of de-escalation and empathy, it didn’t placate everyone, and emotions remained high within the community, especially as video spread in subsequent days of the arrest of a protester witnesses said had done nothing wrong.
The day after the Market House incident, Fayetteville implemented a nightly curfew. This remained in place for several days and helped keep things under control. Protests continued into June but were smaller and mostly peaceful, and by the end of the month they’d tapered off.
Did it work?
Unlike many other places, Fayetteville didn’t suffer any deaths or severe injuries during its 2020 protests, and while the tactics and actions of officers didn’t satisfy everyone, they were generally regarded as successful at preventing injury and more extensive damage. Leaders in those first few days had to balance free speech rights, public order, officer safety, community safety and property protection — all things that could be considered within Hawkins’ framework.
The curfew gave police legal leverage to keep streets clear overnight. A low-key initial approach limited officers’ responses, at least until the arson, but helped keep things from escalating. Department strategies helped prevent any serious injuries to police. Efforts such as the kneeling, generally peaceful engagement and a focus on transparency produced a mostly positive public response. “It takes thought, planning and conversation,” Hawkins said.
Today the Fayetteville Police Department’s handling of the protests is often cited as a case where law enforcement contributed positively to community relations, and many residents saw the department’s response as a model of respectful policing during a period of crisis.
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