Middletown’s Police Advisory Board was formed in 2020, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, and subsequent calls for accountability. The board was voluntarily formed, with no local or state government mandate, and held its first meeting in October that year.
Three years later, the Board was disbanded by Middletown’s mayor and town council on questionable premises related to House Bill 206 of 2023. Rebranded as the Middletown Police Accountability Committee (MPAC), a mix of new and returning members were appointed. Since then, the group has been all but hidden from public view and appears to do little, if anything, to hold the town’s police force accountable for any misconduct.
How–and why–has Middletown so successfully obfuscated police accountability and essentially rendered its current committee meaningless?
Middletown’s government has a long history of questionable and racist behavior reaching back at least six decades, and that history very clearly holds influence to the present day.
1964-1975
These eleven years of Middletown’s history began to shed light on its government’s corruption, as well as its rejection of racial equity and resistance to fair and transparent governance. Middletown was the subject of federal, state, and/or county intercession on more than one occasion.
Middletown’s current mayor, Kenneth L. Branner, Jr., is the son of former Middletown Councilman Kenneth L. Branner, Sr. The elder Branner was elected to town council in 1964 and almost immediately became notorious for scheduling last-minute meetings and barring reporters from attending. The following year, the town was forced by the state to integrate its school system, and Branner was controversially appointed chair of the police committee by Mayor Robert C. Moor. Shortly thereafter, the police chief resigned after a spat with Branner.¹
Middletown’s next decade was marked with ongoing racism, excessive use of force at the hands of police, and corruption within the police force. After refusing to provide public sewer services to the adjacent low-income Black community of Daletown, Middletown was ordered to do so by the federal government. After laying the sewer lines, Daletown residents were threatened with property condemnation if they didn’t personally pay to install plumbing and connect their homes to the sewer system, which many residents could not afford.
Five years later, the Middletown Police Department began to unravel. Inappropriate use of state funds and two use-of-force occurrences—one involving an “unofficial” police dog and one against an 18-year-old Black man—resulted in New Castle County government taking control of the Middletown Police Department (even though county police officers had controversially used tear gas against town residents in 1974). The county took over the department that same year.
Middletown seems to have been “quieter” in the five decades since. However, the events of the past two years show us that the government of Middletown, which includes Mayor Kenneth L. Branner, Jr. (now serving his 19th term), still openly embraces the same racism.
2020-Present
In 2020, in the aftermath of the George Floyd uprisings, Middletown’s government seemed to turn a corner. After being approached by the Middletown-Odessa-Townsend (MOT) chapter of the NAACP to form a police accountability board, Mayor Branner and Town Council agreed. Eight members were appointed by the MOT NAACP, and seven more were appointed by council members and the mayor. The Middletown Police Accountability Board (PAB) had its first meeting in October of 2020.
Trouble was already brewing, though. Middletown Police Officer Christine Brenner made accusations of misconduct against former Police Chief John Kracyla in 2020. An internal investigation (overseen by then-acting chief William Texter) resulted in no negative findings or disciplinary actions, but Kracyla resigned in December of that year.
Early in 2021, Texter was internally promoted Chief of Police. This decision was cause for consternation from the PAB since members had previously been told that the selection process would be open. The group had also spent two months preparing for the possibility that two members would serve on the hiring panel.
Per the meeting minutes of the PAB, the group largely operated in a peaceful manner for over two years. However, after the disappointment in the police chief selection process and the revelation of Brenner’s allegations in 2022, the PAB started asking questions. Not long after this, Mayor Branner began expressing disappointment in the “negativity” and “criticism”² levied by PAB members—primarily those appointed by the NAACP—against the town’s police. Rather than accept feedback as opportunities to improve the police department’s relationship with members of the community, the mayor and some board members preferred to avoid accountability altogether.
During this same period, PAB member Charles “Billy” Warrick, a former Wilmington Police officer, repeatedly expressed concerns that the group was still meeting in a hybrid format and recently had trouble making a quorum.³ Mayor Branner appeared to share the concerns that Warrick expressed, and both made it clear that they wanted the PAB to be required to meet in person.
Additionally, the Town of Middletown and Chief Texter are now the subjects of a federal discrimination lawsuit filed by former MPD Officer Christine Brenner’s legal team in 2022.
Also in response to the murder of George Floyd, Delaware’s state government began to look at the state’s Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBOR) in an effort to mandate more accountability and transparency in policing throughout the state. State Senator Elizabeth “Tizzy” Lockman introduced Senate Bill 149 in March of 2022. This sought to ensure public access to “all serious and substantiated records of law-enforcement misconduct,” as well as “enabling the creation of…community review boards at the State, county, and municipal level[s].”
Predictably, Sen. Lockman’s bill came under intense attack by numerous police-affiliated groups and the bill never made it out of the legislature. Instead, two watered-down measures, House Bills 205 and 206, were introduced the following year.
HB 205 adjusted LEOBOR by requiring internal investigation narratives for certain circumstances be provided to the public, removing the public review and broader misconduct provisions of Sen. Lockman’s initial bill.
HB 206 renamed the state’s Council on Police Training to the Police Officer Standards and Training Commission. The Commission is tasked with both establishing training standards for police in the state and oversees cases of officer misconduct, including conducting suspension and de-certification hearings, with findings deemed public documents. The bill also required police departments in the state to “form public accountability commissions with non-officer members,” with no deadline for departments to establish these groups.
Police reform advocates expressed dismay at the blunting of the initial legislation, citing gaps that could still be exploited to shield officers from meaningful consequences, but both bills were passed and signed into law on August 7, 2023.
Perhaps just as predictably, Middletown’s leaders saw HB 206 as an escape hatch, using it as the premise to dissolve Middletown’s PAB and reform the group in a way they desired.
On August 21, 2023, Branner informed the PAB that he would be holding a special meeting with them on September 6. At the September meeting, just 30 days after HB 206 was signed into law, Branner again expressed disappointment in the criticisms against the police that he claimed came without recommendations for improvement. PAB President Salahudin Bin-Yusif reminded Branner that the group provided two annual reports to the town with 15 recommendations, with another report forthcoming.
However, the mayor and the council had already decided to dissolve the PAB⁴ and establish a new Police Accountability Committee (PAC).
The new committee’s members have been chosen from an applicant pool by the mayor and council members. The new group is composed of only 7 members, and the new arrangement essentially stripped the MOT NAACP of its involvement. PAC members are now required to live within the borders of incorporated Middletown, eliminating representation from unincorporated areas of the town, and a virtual option is no longer offered for the public or PAC members to attend.
Interestingly, Billy Warrick was chosen to return to board membership, even after questioning attempts to recruit more females to join the town’s police department during a PAB meeting.
When interviewed by the DelawareCall/NOCAP team, some NAACP members, a few of whom were intending to commit to another three-year term on the PAB, were shocked and disappointed by the dissolution of the board. Those same members believe that Branner and the council used HB 206 as an excuse to disband the board and absolve the police department of having to make any meaningful changes since, per committee and town council meeting minutes, the current PAC does little to address community concerns regarding the Middletown Police Department.
After the PAB was disbanded in 2023, it took over two years for the new PAC to begin meeting. The group had its first meeting this past January and has met only a few times (meetings are held in person at the Middletown Police Department). Neither the PAC membership list, nor the group’s meetings and agendas, were published on the town’s website until after DelawareCall/NOCAP filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Town of Middletown. Minutes from PAB meetings were removed from Middletown’s website not long after Call/NOCAP began its research into this topic and, as recently as July 28th, the town publicly refuses to livestream PAC meetings and attendees are not permitted to make public comments or ask questions.
Kracyla is now the chief of the Laurel Police Department despite Brenner’s allegations against him. In the next part of this series, we will dig deeper into her lawsuit and the individuals it involves.
- The Morning News (Wilmington, Delaware), 19 Sept. 1964, p. 11. Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/155766955/.