NEW CARROLLTON, Md. — There’s even more controversy unfolding in a Prince George’s County community that’s experienced a lot of it lately.
Some community leaders have accused New Carrollton Mayor Phelecia Nembhard of unknowingly making homophobic comments during a Facebook Live broadcast.
The incident happened last Friday, after a party, on Nembhard’s mayoral Facebook page.
Halfway through the eight-and-a-half minute recording, a voice resembling Nembhard talks about the wife of Councilmember Briana Urbina.
The person uses the word “butch” to describe her.
“Then Urbina’s butch came in and said, ‘You guys messing with the wrong one’,” the voice said.
The voice then uses the same word to describe the wife of another former male councilmember too.
“She look like a butch too,” the person said.
A LGBTQ+ terminology index, shared by colleges across the country from the University of Florida to the University of California, defines the word “butch” as a “person who identifies themselves as masculine, whether it be physically, mentally or emotionally”.
The definition goes on to say the word is “sometimes used as a derogatory term for lesbians, but it can also be claimed as an affirmative identity label”.
Urbina said her wife reclaimed the word by making a shirt that said “Urbina’s Butch” after the recording went public on Nembhard’s Facebook Live page.
“I’m saddened that she hasn’t taken the time over her three years of being mayor to learn how to be culturally responsive to LGBTQ folks,” Urbina said.
WUSA9 reached out to Nembhard about the recording.
She initially said no comment. Then, Nembhard called WUSA9 five hours later.
She suggested the voice on the recording was not hers and that she had seen the shirt, which said “Urbina’s Butch” before the recording was even released.
Nembhard also claimed WUSA9’s reporting was politically motivated.
Nembhard happens to be running for mayor again against New Carrollton Councilmember Katrina Dodro.
The election will be held May 1.
However, the comments made on Nembhard’s since deleted Facebook Live post have not only surprised some leaders in New Carrollton, but other officials on the county level too.
Prince George’s County Councilmember Krystal Oriadha, who is a member of the LGBTQ community, said locals held demonstrations in New Carrollton three years ago after the mayor allegedly made homophobic comments then too.
“Today we are in the same place we were three years ago,” Oriadha said in a written statement. “Prince George’s County has no space for homophobia. It is hurtful and dangerous to speak of the LGBTQIA+ community in such a demeaning and dismissive way.”
The councilmember added the public must hold its elected officials accountable when it learns about them making hateful remarks in private conversations.
“As a leader and member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I am disappointed in her actions,” Oriadha’s statement reads. “Mayor Nembhard’s community & Prince George’s County deserves better.”
The comments regarding the councilmembers’ wives weren’t the only ones to raise eyebrows on the Facebook Live recording.
The voice in the recording could be heard saying that they were responsible for running the police department in New Carrollton, not the city’s police chief.
“When I got up and seen the paper that [Dodro] sent to the public works, I brought it over to her and said, ‘Good afternoon, Ms. Dodro, the next time you pull a stunt like this, it’s not going to end peacefully. You know what she said? ‘You may not want to come in my face, because the police are right there’. I said, ‘the police won’t arrest the police. I run the police department’,” the voice says.
Nembhard fired the city’s actual chief of police, David Rice, on Tuesday.
He said he got a termination letter that morning after serving the department for 18 years.
“It says poor leadership over the last three years,” he said.
A week prior to the Facebook Live recording going public, Rice filed an equal employment opportunity commission complaint in advance of what he thought would be a “wrongful termination”.
Rice’s termination comes two months after WUSA9 learned the city administrator in New Carrollton authorized the rehiring of a police officer, who had been convicted of assault in December, to a non-law enforcement role.
The former officer, Jeffery Harris, resigned from his position in the police department before Rice could take any action on his future employment.