Some racist remarks allegedly made by Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden have sparked a response from Sheriffs’ Offices across the state, and the association that represents all sheriffs in North Carolina counties has now joined the chorus of people commenting on the incident.
A leaked audio clip of McFadden, who looks to be black, apparently shows him addressing his colleagues in an angry monologue in which he uses a racial slur against both a white and a black officer.
In the tape, McFadden also implies that the seven black policemen are lazy.
The Mecklenburg sheriff has been under fire since the recordings were made public, and the NC Sheriffs’ Association has said that it is currently looking into the incident.
“I know I can’t trust that captain,” McFadden appeared to say on the audio tape. “That white cracker captain is better than the seven other captains upstairs.”
Later in the audio, when he talks about personnel that are untrustworthy and do not do their jobs, he uses the N-word, making his contentious tirade one of the few hidden mic moments where someone is captured using racial slurs against both blacks and whites in the same sentence.
After the controversy became public and made headlines in the Charlotte area, McFadden made a public comment about it at a speech to new trainees, without acknowledging that it was his voice in the audio.
“If you believe I’m racist, you need to talk to me,” he told me. “If you think I’m racist, talk to the children who come to see me. If you think I’m racist, ask the people who know me.”
This isn’t the first time people have complained about the sheriff’s purported racial bias.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police has long criticized McFadden’s leadership.
Dan Redford, the organization’s president, told a Mecklenburg County media site that this was a recurrent issue with the sheriff.
“We mentioned the racist comments that McFadden was saying three years ago, but nobody believed us,” he told me.
The North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, which represents all 100 sheriff’s offices in the state, issued a statement shortly after the sheriff’s statements were reported in the media. According to the association’s statement, the statewide group is aware of McFadden’s alleged “racially charged comments”.
According to the Association’s statement, his statements “shock the conscience” and are “inflammatory, racially derogatory, insulting, and offensive.”
“The Association believes sheriffs are and should continue to be held to the highest standards of professionalism, ethics, principles, and morals and should serve their communities regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, or sex,” according to the statement. Racially tinged comments clearly do not fulfill those standards.”
The preamble of the association’s Constitution speaks of the need to establish “bonds of confidence, respect, and friendship” among the sheriffs across the state,” which, the preamble says, “maintains peace for North Carolina citizens and residents, and seeks to gain the public’s confidence through the “courtesy, honesty, integrity, and dependability of the sheriffs of North Carolina.”
As a result, the Association’s Executive Committee, or governing body, said last week that it had agreed unanimously to look into the situation further.