The City of Wilmington has appointed former police chief Ralph Evangelous to serve as interim head of the police department. Current police chief Donny Williams is set to retire on June 27. Evangelous will step into his interim role on June 30.
Evangelous spent roughly half a century in law enforcement and served 16 years as the city’s police chief from 2004 to 2020. The city praised Evangelous for overseeing major departmental advancements and supporting community engagement, transparency, and accountability. Under his leadership, the city saw significant decreases in murder and other violent crimes. Officials said his familiarity with the department would provide stability during a time of transition.
His tenure was also occasionally controversial. In 2019, about a year before his retirement, he called for the closure, and potential razing, of public housing communities like Creekwood and Houston Moore and the dispersal of low-income residents "throughout the community" — a sentiment supported by the StarNews editorial board, which called those communities "killing fields," an apparent allusion to the brutal actions of the Communist Khmer Rouge party during the Cambodian civil war. While many experts have warned about the concentration of poverty, some in the Black community objected to these comments as insensitive.
The city is currently undertaking a nationwide search for a new permanent chief. The process included interviewing around 140 people — including members of the law enforcement, business, religious, and Black communities — about what they’d like to see in a new chief in order to shape the job description.
People interviewed included current WPD officers and community members. The list included the following people and groups, according to the city:
- District attorney
- Private defense attorney
- NHC Sheriff
- Y/faith-based group
- Local and state NAACP president (LeRon Montgomery and Deborah Dicks Maxwell)
- Pastor at Saint Luke AME Zion Church
- Pastor at Saltbox Church
- NHC Resiliency Task Force
- Chamber of Commerce
- UNCW Chancellor (Aswani Volety)
- Wilmington Downtown, Inc.
- Downtown Business Alliance
- Wilmington Housing Authority
- New Hanover County Schools
- NHC Emergency Management Director (Steven Still)
The city has received 45 applications, which have reportedly been whittled down to seven.
In North Carolina, city councils hire police chiefs, but afterward transfer supervision to city managers.
