More than six months after the Fayetteville City Council voted to establish a review process for unanticipated events involving city employees that result in the loss of life or serious harm to individuals, including deadly police use-of-force incidents, the council has stepped back from implementing such a process.
The process, known as a sentinel event review, is a public examination of a serious, or “sentinel” event, in which an organization — in this case, the city — analyzes the event to understand its root causes and develop preventative recommendations moving forward. SERs are commonly used in the health care and aviation industries, but they have also been used by city police departments responding to critical incidents in recent years, such as in Seattle, Tucson, Arizona and Madison, Wisconsin.
The Fayetteville City Council initially voted 7-3 to establish a sentinel event review process last June. At the time, the council also voted to provide legal representation to the FPD officers who detained and fatally shot Jada Johnson in her home in 2022. Josh Stein, then the N.C. attorney general, formally recommended in 2023 that the City of Fayetteville complete an SER of the incident and the results be released to the public.
At the Jan. 6 work session, the council received a report from the City Attorney’s Office about SERs as a follow-up to its direction last June. Moses Brown, with the city attorney’s office, emphasized that the process was not a “blame game,” but rather a “review of the system” to understand where things went wrong along the way and how they could be improved.
“It’s not here for finger-pointing or anything to that nature,” Brown said.
Following a 45-minute discussion that was at times heated, the council voted 8-2 against moving forward with an SER at Monday’s meeting. Council Members Mario Benavente and Deno Hondros voted in favor. Benavente had proposed the motion.
The council’s decision represents a blow to local activists who have repeatedly called on the city council to implement an SER protocol amid fatal police shootings of Fayetteville residents in recent years with cases such as Justin Livesay, Jason Walker and DeMarcus Brodie.
Most recently, activists urged the council to pursue an SER in regard to the 2023 death of Lawrence Artis while in police custody.
Mayor Mitch Colvin, who repeatedly argued against establishing the process on Monday, said while he wasn’t against the idea of an SER, he didn’t think it was necessary given the steps the city has already taken to develop a holistic approach to public safety with the new Office of Community Safety.
The OCS is designed to prioritize community safety over policing by addressing underlying causes of violence, such as mental health, homelessness and youth disengagement.
“I think when Attorney General Stein said that [the recommendation for an SER] he had no idea we were already one of the communities leaning into the [community safety] space,” Colvin said.
“So I think we’re on the right path. Let’s not complicate or get in our way to trip it up before we hire the people that we’re going to trust to build this out that may include all of this. That can bring those partnerships that won’t be political-related partnerships — they’ll be real because those are the people that’s got to do the work.”
The city council earmarked $2.3 million in funding for the OCS when it approved the 2024-2025 fiscal year budget last summer. Despite multiple searches, the city has had difficulty filling the OCS director position since beginning the search in the summer of 2023.
According to the latest update, provided by city staff at the Dec. 12 council meeting, the city is now aiming to hire two people for initial program management and looking to explore partnerships through contracts for alternative response service providers.
Alternative response teams typically involve social workers, peer support specialists and mental health professionals responding to non-violent 911 calls, like for mental health support, that have historically been handled by police.

(Photo courtesy of Fayetteville City Council's Facebook Page)