UNC Police officer remains on force despite accusations of violence toward protesters

When UNC Police followed Chancellor Lee Roberts into a crowd of protesters on Polk Place on April 30, they said their goal was to restring the U.S. flag and to enforce University policy and the law. 

One officer, Captain Rahsheem Holland, was seen and filmed being especially aggressive with protesters. 

“I just remember him picking me up,” Christina — a student present at Polk Place that day — said. “I remember being so taken aback that I screamed, ‘someone help me,’ because I felt so helpless.” 

Photo and video from that day show Holland, an officer wearing khakis and a UNC Police polo, grabbing Christina from behind and slamming her into the ground. Christina, who asked not to include her last name out of fear of doxxing, stands at 4’11 and “barely 100 pounds.” Weeks after the protest, she was diagnosed with symptoms of a concussion.

Holland was also pictured grabbing a student by their ponytail, pushing a barricade onto a student in a wheelchair and ripping the shirt off another protester standing by the flagpole. 

This is not the first time Holland’s actions toward student protesters have come under scrutiny. 

In 2021, students protesting a Board of Trustees meeting said Holland was unnecessarily forceful as he pushed them out of the meeting room. Julia Clark, then vice president of the Black Student Movement, said Holland punched her in the face. She posted photos of her bruising on Twitter — now known as X — later that day. 

Community members have complained about multiple officers’ conduct on occasions including April 30, the 2021 protests surrounding Nikole Hannah-Jones' tenure at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media and 2016 protests about the Silent Sam Confederate monument previously located on campus. As it stands, the only thing community members can do to express their concerns is report their experiences to the UNC Police directly, according to the UNC Police website. There is no external review board or alternate method for holding officers accountable. 

Due to N.C. General Statute § 126-23, any complaint or subsequent disciplinary action against a specific officer is considered a part of an employee's confidential "personnel file," and is not available to the public, unless the head of the department decides that releasing the information is "essential to maintaining the integrity" of the department.

UNC Media Relations did not respond to request for comment about Holland's conduct or any potential complaints against him. 

"We are not able to disclose confidential personnel information, including formal complaints or disciplinary actions, under the North Carolina Human Resources Act," Media Relations wrote in its statement.

Frank Baumgartner, a political science professor at the University, said he thinks better policing practices and relationships with the community are possible, with the right systems in place.

“In any police department, it's a police chief who has to ensure accountability,” he said. “And I think nationwide, there's all-too-little such accountability. And then apparently here on campus, you know, there may not be the will to do that.”

Christina said that her experience with Holland deepened her fear and mistrust of the police department. 

“If the UNC response is ‘we're trying to keep people safe,’ my question is — who are you trying to keep safe?” Christina said. “You didn't keep me safe. You haven't kept a lot of my friends safe. Who is safety on campus preserved for?”

June 30, 2021

Holland has been employed at the University as a police officer since 2001. He served as the interim police chief in the summer of 2021, after former UNC Police Chief David Perry resigned and the University was looking for their next permanent candidate. It eventually selected the current police chief, Brian James. 

In that period, Holland faced harsh criticism from students and community members about his handling of a student protest at a Board of Trustees meeting discussing the tenure status of Nikole Hannah-Jones on June 30, 2021. 

“Perhaps they disagreed with the things that we said,” said former student body president Taliajah "Teddy" Vann, who was at the Trustees meeting with Clark. “Perhaps they disagreed with the fact that we felt it best to disrupt their proceedings in opposition to the decisions they were making because they were racist, quite frankly, but at no point did we physically threaten anybody in that room. They responded to the nonviolence we purposely exercised by siccing the police on us like dogs.”

Videos of Holland shoving Clark out of the room and appearing to strike her in the face in the scuffle circulated on X. The Black Student Movement, along with the UNC chapter of the NAACP and the Carolina Black Caucus, went on to call for his resignation. 

“He punched a young girl in her face, blacked and bruised her in front of everybody, and was given a cookie for it by the people who hold his leash,” Vann said. “Of course he got bolder afterwards.”

Vann, who served as the ex-officio member of the BOT in 2022-23 when she was student body president, said she wasn’t at all surprised to see Holland’s conduct this past April.

“I find it disgusting. I found it heartbreaking. No part of how I felt about it was surprised,” Vann said. “He has become more bold, but that's what happens when you allow people, especially authority figures, to act with impunity.”

April 30, 2024

Holland was among the officers in the front of the crowd approaching protesters at Polk Place.

Laura, a student activist who uses a wheelchair and asked to only use her first name out of fear of doxxing, was on the Quad that day. She was watching the protest by the flagpole, but unable to participate because of her chair. When she saw Roberts and the officers start to walk toward the flag, she wheeled closer, holding her phone up in front of her in hopes to document the event.

“Before I knew it, I was on the ground. I didn’t have time to even react or know what happened,” Laura said. 

It couldn’t have been a light push, Laura said, with the combined weight of her body and her wheelchair being over 200 pounds. After Holland knocked her over, he stepped on the barricade, trapping her on the ground while students rushed to Laura, trying to help her up. 

“I think that's just symbolic in itself,” she said. “Marking your territory, knowing that you won't be held accountable for whatever you do, and being able to brutalize students time and time again.”

Holland then went to the flagpole, where protesters had linked arms to form a human chain around the pole itself. Christina saw all of this, but said there was so much going on that she barely processed what happened until she was on the ground. 

"I didn't realize that [he] tackled me — it felt like he just threw me really, really hard," she said. "But looking at the pictures, he slammed his entire body weight onto mine." 

Christina said when she got her bearings, she thought she was going to be arrested, but Holland made no effort to detain her. Peers helped her up, and through the clouds of pepper spray, she eventually made her way off the Quad. 

A few weeks after the flagpole, Christina sought medical attention. She was getting constant migraines and spells of dizziness, so a friend suggested she get checked for a concussion. The doctor diagnosed her with symptoms of a mild traumatic brain injury, and told her to rest and be careful for the next couple of weeks.

She still gets headaches, she says, and worries about being more susceptible to head injuries now that she’s already had one. More than the physical damage though, Christina said that police violence on April 30 had a lasting impact on the campus community.

“Even if you were not a student who was physically harmed by the police, it's still impacting people who are just witnessing such violence,” Christina said. “People were talking about it afterward and we’d just cry because everything you just witnessed was so brutal and so ugly.”

Complaints to UNC Police

Both Laura and Christina said they didn't file a complaint about their interaction with Holland because they thought it wouldn't make a difference. 

"It clearly hasn't worked and it's not working," said Laura. "If the same person who can punch a student's face can continue to then brutalize students, how am I supposed to believe that the system could create any actual change?"

When a citizen files a complaint against a specific officer for something like excessive force, the complaint is investigated by the professional standards commander, who is appointed by the chief of police. According to a written statement from Media Relations, their findings are forwarded to the police chief, who makes the final determination about any disciplinary actions taken.

Baumgartner said state public records law has created issues for police accountability on campus in the past. He was the co-chair of the Campus Safety Commission established in April 2019 by former Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz to mend the relationship between the community and the UNC Police. 

He said the state law was a “hard stop” to the commission, which hoped to serve as some sort of oversight board for the department. 

“Because of the personnel rules of the state, there can be no independent outside evaluation,” Baumgartner said. “The evaluation can only be done by the police chief or people appointed by the police chief who report to the police chief. Or if not the chief, then the chief's boss, which is the vice chancellor for public safety. Or it's not him, the chancellor himself. It has to go up the line in terms of the University hierarchy of supervision, so there can't be any independence.” 

The Commission held listening sessions through 2019 and 2020, but disbanded in August 2021, citing a lack of power and support from the University. Baumgartner called it a “failed experiment.”

“Where it fell apart was getting the University to do anything about it,” he said. “That's where it became apparent that there were forces, not necessarily in the chancellor's office, in other elements of the University governance, that simply were uninterested.”

Looking forward

Some police forces in North Carolina form an advisory board to foster community involvement and trust. Durham's Civilian Police Review Board hears appeals of complaints after the department has privately investigated them in order to determine if investigations were properly completed. 

Vann and Baumgartner agreed that accountability is possible in the UNC Police system, however it requires institutional support, which they said hasn't happened yet. 

"I think the University has never tried to put that accountability in place because it doesn't care to, because doing so doesn't benefit the people in power," said Vann. "UNC has never thought about protests or activism led by students of color as an asset to the institution."

Media Relations did not provide any specific comment on Holland's conduct or subsequent disciplinary action, so The Daily Tar Heel has not been able to independently verify whether or not any disciplinary action has been taken against Holland in 2021, or because of his actions on April 30.

Ivy Johnson, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, said in a written statement that there is a provision that allows police departments to release more information about complaints when the agency’s integrity is in question.

Chancellor Roberts, Police Chief James and officer Holland did not respond to requests for comment on the situation. 

Roberts said in his Q&A with The Daily Tar Heel that he doesn't think he would have done anything differently regarding the flagpole on April 30. Christina and Laura both say their experiences that day shaped the way they think of policing, safety and their place on campus. 

"The University is supposed to be my home, I'm supposed to feel safe," said Laura. "And it's none of that — mainly because of the cops and their actions."

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