The chaotic removal of council member Aaron Rawls from a March 25 Martinsville City Council meeting has ignited a firestorm of accusations, conflicting narratives, and concerns about government transparency and authority.
Rawls, flanked by fellow council member Julian Mei, held a press conference on March 27 and alleged City Manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides of orchestrating his removal, and to criticize the council’s handling of controversial topics, including executive pay raises.
In response, city officials — including Ferrell-Benavides, Mayor LC Jones, Vice Mayor Kathy Lawson, and Rayshaun Gravely — denied any coordinated effort to oust Rawls. They instead attributed his removal to a misinterpretation by a sheriff’s deputy attempting to maintain order during a contentious meeting.
The fallout has divided the council and residents, with Rawls, Mei and others alleging a breach of constitutional rights, while another camp condemns Rawls’ comments as disrespectful and disruptive.
The Incident
Rawls’ removal occurred after he indicated residents may not have been told their taxes and utilities would increase, “and now we’re talking about raising executive pay with your money. Raise the pay for somebody who’s making almost $200,000 a year in the City of Martinsville,” Rawls said at the meeting.
At his press conference, Rawls said, “I knew Tuesday night was happening, it was no surprise to me. The level of coordination was absolutely criminal, literally.”
Rawls claimed he was removed from the meeting at the instruction of Ferrell-Benavides, who allegedly signaled to the attending sheriff’s deputy, Reva Keen, with a nod. A video of the meeting, taken by Caleb Robertson of What Does The Bible Say?, shows Ferrell-Benavides nodding her head twice in the deputy’s direction, then motioning her head sideways, towards Rawls.
“I wasn’t removed by the mayor, I was removed by the city manager,” Rawls said. “Civil rights violations are the most expensive” kind of civil suit. “They try to turn a room against you,” he said, describing what he characterized as a “stacked agenda” designed to suppress dissent.
He also alleged that hostile audience members were encouraged to disrupt his remarks, creating an atmosphere in which his statements were intentionally drowned out.
Mei, who has aligned himself with Rawls on several issues, called the incident “the most disturbing event I’ve ever experienced.”
Mei said he noticed documents being distributed before the meeting and later received a text alerting him to their presence. During the meeting, Rawls referred to the documents as being “disseminated unsigned by a coward.”
City council members whisper to each other about decisions during meetings, Mei said, adding the March 25 meeting was no different. He said he heard a member twice whisper to Jones that Rawls was out of order.
According to Mei, after Jones slammed his gavel and told Rawls to “fall in order,” Keen approached Rawls and began escorting him from the chamber.
“I’ve gone back and looked at the footage, it doesn’t look as aggressive as it felt at the time,” Mei said. “But it did feel like he was being grabbed by the elbow or the arm and pulled up out of his chair.”
Mei acknowledged that he was in favor of giving Jones the authority to negotiate the city manager’s salary. “It was my suggestion that we go ahead and give LC the authority to do this,” he said, adding that he is also part of the minority vote.
Noting that gallery footage shows Ferrell-Benavides giving the signal to remove Rawls from his elected seat, Mei insisted that Rawls’ First Amendment rights were violated.
“Aaron’s rights of speech under the First Amendment have been 100 percent violated,” Mei said. “Regardless of attacks, Aaron was protected by the right of free speech.”
Conflicting Accounts
In a later interview, Ferrell-Benavides categorically denied ordering Rawls’ removal.
“I know someone said they saw me shaking my head, well if you look, I shake my head a lot. I move my head a lot,” she said. “But at no point in time did anybody call for him to be removed. It’s inappropriate for me as a city employee, as the City Manager, based on the ICMA Code of Ethics to have that done,” she said.
Ferrell-Benavides said the only person with the authority to have Rawls removed would be Jones, or in his absence, Lawson.
“The mayor is the chair, and so he runs the meeting. According to the rules of the council, he has to control the decorum. But at no point in time did anybody call for him to be removed,” she said.
In speaking with Sans Anderson, the city attorney’s office, Ferrell-Benavides said she was informed that as clerk to city council, she could order someone removed from a meeting.
“While I didn’t think I had the right, she said you could in certain situations as the clerk have the right if someone is disruptive to have them removed as the clerk. I didn’t do that, and I wouldn’t do that. I had the ability and didn’t realize it,” she said.
Ferrell-Benavides believes Rawls being removed from the meeting was an unfortunate situation that’s been growing overtime.
“While Mr. Rawls may be looking for the conspiracy theory there is not one here. There was a degree of shock on mine and anyone’s face. The key is nodding my head, shaking my head, I shook my head several times at different things, and in fact there were people who would look at me and I’m like, ‘yep, this is what I deal with’ and that wasn’t the case. She (Sheriff’s Deputy Reva Keen) said it too, she said I did not tell her to do that,” she said.
Ferrell-Benavides said she also followed up with Sheriff Steve Draper to ask if Keen thought she was telling her to remove Rawls, “and she said no.”
Rawls’ removal also wasn’t preplanned.
“Oh God no,” Ferrell-Benavides said. “The only thing that I could say would be preplanned for me, I was not going to sit and be insulted. I would have walked out if he would have started like he keeps doing, but other than that, absolutely not.”
While Martinsville Police Chief Rob Fincher has kept order during previous meetings, Ferrell-Benavides said Keen’s presence was due to more people attending the meetings and acts of violence in other localities — not because of Rawls.
Before his removal, “we had a great meeting. We had a very aggressive agenda. We were almost done with the meeting and going in a positive direction. So, all the rest of this hurts me and hurts our city because we’re trying to get developers to come here, and they see this kind of stuff. It doesn’t make us look good and we’ve got to get over ourselves and focus on Martinsville. We’ve got to start putting Martinsville first and leave the personal vendettas and egos out of it,” she said.
Jones also denied ordering the removal.
“I was focused on maintaining control of the room,” Jones said. “With the statements that were being made and people in the audience making statements, it was hard to draw the line.”
Jones noted the entire council voted to approve its Rules of Council which include being respectful to each other.
“Even when we have discord with each other, you can articulate your points without slanderizing another person,” he said, denying an organized plan to wear black on black clothing. He noted that many people wore different colored clothing.
“When you disrespect members of this community – see Aaron’s not from this community, so he doesn’t understand the culture fabric of this community. It’s not a black or white cultural fabric. It is a community culture fabric because all of these people went to school together, they grew up together, they worked together, they go to church together. So, when you disrespect one, he can disrespect one person, he doesn’t know who they’re related to, who they’re friends with, what type of organizations they’re involved in, so the next thing you know he has a whole city upset with him behind that,” Jones said.
As a result, Jones said many residents came out to confront that type of behavior.
“I think that’s what he saw. It’s not like an organized thing like somebody plotted against him. No, you have a lot of people upset, this city’s upset, and he thinks because of the 10 to 15 people who are supporting his disrespectful behavior that he has the power to continue the movement, but he doesn’t understand he has the whole city upset with him,” he said.
Jones noted the last election is an example of that as Rawls “put up three people to run and only one of them (Mei) passed” because he’s from Martinsville.
Lawson said that no official motion was made to remove Rawls, and Keen just misunderstood.
“That’s my understanding because nobody made any indication. He just needed to stop talking because he had violated the Rules of Council, and the Rules of Council have a code of conduct, and the code of conduct says that you will not badmouth” your peers, she said.
Lawson said Rawls did that by making negative comments about other council members, which is why Jones called him out of order.
“We did not have any idea she was going to ask him to leave. We’ll have a policy in place I’m sure within the next month to address things of that nature,” she said.
In her almost 10 years on council, Lawson’s never seen a situation like this before.
“Of course, we’ve never had one of our council members bash us. It was an unfortunate situation. It was just one of those ‘oh my gosh’” situations, she said.
Lawson didn’t think Keen would remove Rawls, but rather stand behind him so he would stop talking.
“I don’t necessarily agree with it, but he needed to stop talking,” she said. “He has bashed me for two years, I don’t listen to his stuff. I hear, but I’m not going to listen to garbage. I’m just not going to listen to it,” she said.
Gravely said, “I was really just looking all around, and I really couldn’t exactly tell you who did it. I’d actually have to look at the footage from the other local media to give you a definite answer because there was a lot going on that night”.
He believes Keen used her training to do what she did.
“I’ve been a deputy, I’ve worked as a bailiff, I’ve worked in the jail, I’ve worked on patrol. It’s also a discussion on what they should do,” Gravely said.
Looking forward
Ferrell-Benavides has since requested a formal legal opinion to determine whether the removal violated any laws or policies.
“If we did something wrong, we have to acknowledge it. We have to own it if it was a mistake,” she said.
