Why Should Delaware Care?
Police department reform has been a widely debated topic in Delaware, particularly since the passage of reform bills by the legislature in 2023 left many activists unsatisfied. Now, the Dover Police Department faces criticism from all sides, as the police union questions the chief’s leadership and citizen activists call for better conduct by officers.
The Dover Police Department has faced competing controversies in recent months, including a mutiny against the chief from his officers’ union and accusations from activists of excessive police violence.
Those controversies have spilled into daily life, with yard signs and billboards calling for the police chief to resign, and a tip line set up by an activist group for city residents to report claims of police abuse.
It is not clear whether the two controversies are directly related, but the course of events shows a series of escalating outrage that occurred in quick succession over the summer.
It began in early July with Neighbors Organized for Credibility and Accountability in Policing (NOCAP) launching an online form for Dover residents to submit their experiences with local police. Then, Dover City Council President Fred Neil wrote an op-ed on July 8 in the Daily State News describing the police department as “under siege” by activists like NOCAP.
Five weeks later, Dover Police Chief Thomas Johnson released a statement defending his officers from misconduct allegations. The next day, the Fraternal Order of Police – the police officers’ union – called for the chief to resign, citing a 93% vote of no confidence in his leadership that the group took at the end of July.
In the wake of it all, the police chief has not commented publicly, though Dover Mayor Robin Christiansen expressed “full confidence” in the chief in a Sept. 2 statement.
“I think what’s happening now politically is making it a lot more fraught, and frankly, more dangerous,” NOCAP leader Rob Vanella said.
Vanella added that he finds it to be a “curious coincidence” that the union began broadcasting its vote of no confidence right after police reform advocates started talking more about misconduct in Dover.
“The connection of those two things did not escape my attention,” he said.
‘No confidence’ in chief
The police union broke its four-year silence on social media in mid-August with a post calling for the chief’s resignation. Since then, the group has posted numerous letters and responses on Instagram and Facebook describing the chief’s alleged misconduct and the investigations into his behavior.
“Chief Johnson has shown no desire to build a connection with his officers and unfortunately is only concerned with matters outside of our building and not the well-being of the men and women who put their lives on the line on a daily basis for its community,” the union wrote on Aug. 15.
The union has received dozens of comments from users on subsequent Facebook posts, largely expressing their disappointment in the chief and mayor.
The union did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s numerous requests for comment on the situation.
The group has installed a number of billboards and yard signs around Dover and the Philadelphia area, near where Johnson used to work in Upper Darby, Pa., calling for his resignation.
The officers also funded a mobile billboard, which has been driving around the city and stopping at the Dover Police Department building, city government building, and Legislative Hall for the past two weeks, according to a driver for the billboard company, Matador Mobile Advertising.
Members of the FOP lodge first initiated an investigation into Johnson’s actions in December 2022, according to posts by the union.
This initial investigation focused on Johnson’s absence from Dover for his second job as an adjunct instructor at Penn State University, and his use of a city-owned vehicle to drive to the second job. Christiansen reportedly gave Johnson permission to use the city vehicle to drive to Penn State’s main campus at State College, Pa., more than four hours and 200 miles from Dover, according to the union.
While that investigation was dismissed in April 2023, it is unclear what led the FOP to revisit the allegations this summer.
Johnson declined to comment on any specifics of the ongoing investigation. He did, however, confirm to Spotlight Delaware that he is currently an adjunct instructor for the Justice and Safety Institute at Penn State, which requires him to travel to teach classes a couple of times a year, for three or four days at a time.
City council allegedly targeted
Additional allegations outlined in the FOP’s recent social media posts include that Johnson created a nonprofit organization to receive funds outside of the city budget, and that Johnson and Christiansen urged the FOP to attack city councilmen Roy Sudler and Brian Lewis for their comments criticizing policing in Dover.
These alleged actions prompted the council to vote for a third-party investigation in early September into the chief and mayor’s behavior.
Sudler and Lewis declined to comment on the specifics of the ongoing investigation, but both expressed uneasiness that their names have been brought into the conversation.
“I hope it’s not true,” Sudler told Spotlight Delaware on Tuesday. “I just know that the city of Dover is better than that, and we just need to work together.”
The city’s attorney, Daniel Griffith, said the third-party reviewer has not yet been selected, but will be shared publicly once it is chosen.
The FOP has also lamented in its posts that Johnson was an outside hire when he took the position in early 2020, rather than rising up through the ranks of the Dover Police Department like previous chiefs.
Christiansen and Neil, the council president, declined to comment on the controversy, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation. The mayor released a Sept. 2 statement on social media expressing his support for Johnson, and Neil expressed agreement with that support in his own post on Sept. 11.
Spotlight Delaware has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking any communications that discuss the controversy between the police chief, mayor and the FOP.
The FOP also wrote in a Sept. 5 letter that the group filed an official complaint against Johnson with the state Department of Justice’s Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust on Aug. 31.
Community response
A number of community activists who have raised concerns about city policing said they are not taking a side in the Chief-FOP dispute, but feel that the controversy is distracting from their requests.
Dover resident Chelle Paul said she believes controversy has made officers’ behavior toward residents worse in recent months.
“A lot of the issues right now that you’re facing with the city of Dover Police Department is that they’re literally running off of no morale,” said Paul, who founded the criminal justice advocacy organization Divided We Fall of Delaware.
Vanella, an organizer of NOCAP, similarly described the Chief-FOP upheaval as “small potatoes” compared to broader issues with police transparency.
NOCAP, which aims to address police accountability across the state, launched a so-called “pilot project” case study of policing in Dover. So far, the effort has included co-hosting town hall meetings with other local organizations to discuss policing and creating a complaint form for residents to describe their experiences with the Dover police officers, Vanella said.
Town hall meetings in August and September, both held at the Dover Public Library, drew more than 40 attendees each. The August event featured a panel with community activists and Dover residents who have been impacted by policing, while the September iteration included small group discussions of policing in Dover, according to Chris Asay, a member of the League of Women Voters of Delaware who has been involved with their planning.
Vanella said the organization plans to use the form to notice any trends in police misconduct in the city, and eventually write a report based on the information, with the aim of increasing transparency in the way misconduct complaints are typically handled.
Since NOCAP opened the form in July, Vanella said, they have received over a dozen complaint reports, many of which mention the Governor’s Task Force – a unit that includes both Delaware State Police and Probation and Parole Officers, which has previously been accused of serious misconduct by the Delaware ACLU.
In an Aug. 14 statement, Johnson responded to activists’ critiques of police behavior during public comment at city council meetings and on social media.
“The same proxy speakers are coming month after month with their hearsay information, in what appears to be a coordinated effort to cast doubt on the great work my officers do EVERY single day,” Johnson wrote.
Paul and Asay both said they have noticed more frequent settlements being paid out by the city to people suing the police department for misconduct in recent years.
“The city doesn’t make any admission of guilt,” Asay said. “They simply explain it away as, well, this is a business decision made by our insurance company that it’s cheaper to settle than it is to go to trial.”
Paul’s daughter, Sha’Ron Caldwell, was paid $200,000 by the city in September 2024 to drop claims that two Dover officers used excessive force against her, breaking her leg in multiple places, Paul said.
“She just so happened to become a victim of what I was fighting for,” Paul added.
Dover resident James Mayhall filed a lawsuit on Aug. 1 accusing officers Cliff Figueroa and Jordan Marucci of excessive force against him when he was picking up his grandson. The lawsuit alleges that the officers tackled Mayhall to the ground and knocked him unconscious, leaving him with face and cervical spine injuries that had to be treated in the hospital.
Johnson told Spotlight Delaware that the process for addressing misconduct complaints can involve the department’s internal affairs committee, the state Department of Justice and the mayor’s office, depending on the nature of the complaint.
Seeking transparency
While Dover community organizers said they will continue the town hall meetings to raise the profile of their cause – the next one is scheduled for early November – the ultimate goal is to create more transparency in policing across the state of Delaware.
Kailyn Richards, associate director at Tide Shift Justice, another group involved in the Dover discussion, said she hopes to achieve more robust legislation than House Bill 205 and 206, passed in 2023, which were intended to create more transparency with police departments across the state, but are seen as inadequate by many in the activism community.
“The shortcomings with 205 and 206 is that residents and civilians don’t feel like they have an outlet to go to when they feel like police are not acting in good faith,” Richards said.
While HB 205 did allow police misconduct records to be shared publicly, it does not direct them to be public records, limiting who and when they can be accessed. HB 206 required the creation of police accountability boards for each police department in the state, but some of those boards are more active than others.
Johnson had already created an informal advisory committee shortly after he took the position of chief in 2020, but the group became an official Police Advisory Board in 2024, after passage of HB 206.
Some municipalities, Asay said, still do not have functioning police advisory boards, despite the legislation requiring each department to have an advisory board going into effect over two years ago. Johnson called Dover’s advisory board, and the informal advisory board that preceded it, the “DNA” model for other committees across the state.
Many Dover residents criticize the Advisory Board as unproductive, and lacking the necessary authority to address citizen complaints. Asay, who has attended all of the board’s meetings since it became an official body last year, said he has only heard it receive one citizen complaint over that time period.
“The Advisory Board by their own admission has been unproductive,” Vanella said.
Johnson and Chanda Jackson, the current president of the Advisory Board, both said they would be happy for the committee to be an avenue to receive residents’ concerns about the police department, but people do not currently seem to be aware of or enthusiastic about the committee as a resource.
Jackson described Johnson as consistently willing to receive criticism and talk through issues with the Advisory Board.
“He wants to engage, figure out ways to be more effective and efficient when it comes to community relations,” she said.
The advisory board is currently accepting applications for its open seats, which include a high school representative and a college student representative.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.