North Carolina Sheriff Out For Racist Remarks — Again

A recently re-elected North Carolina sheriff resigned for the second time in three months after coming under fire for racist comments he made about employees.

Columbus County sheriff Jody Greene resigned in October after a recorded phone call became public in which he said of two employees, "I'm sick of these Black bastards..." and "Every Black that I know, you need to fire him..."

But Greene remained on the November ballot and won re-election.

Minutes after he was sworn in on Dec. 29, District Attorney Jon David filed a petition to have him removed again, and sought to permanently disqualify him this time.

Greene’s attorney announced his second resignation at the beginning of a hearing for that petition Wednesday, following months of political pressure, WECT first reported.

While larger police departments nationwide confront racial disparities in hiring and enforcement of laws, Greene's comments created a firestorm in a rural area where a single elected official — the sheriff — holds outsized power.

He was the top law official in a county that’s 30% Black and sits in the southeastern corner of the state, an often-forgotten region more than 100 miles from urban centers Raleigh and Charlotte.

“Let me be clear, while elections are a popularity contest, constitutional rights belong to everyone, including the disenfranchised, including the people that do not have political power in the community," David said in a press conference Wednesday.

Greene’s comments came after his first election, in 2018, when he narrowly defeated a Black candidate for sheriff, Lewis Hatcher, by less than 40 votes.

Hatcher challenged the election, saying Greene shouldn’t have been eligible because he didn’t actually live in the county.

A court, appointed Jason Soles, a white man, as acting sheriff while elections officials investigated Greene’s residency.

Soles told WECT last year that shortly after he took the interim job, he started receiving late-night calls from Greene complaining about Hatcher and fired sergeant Melvin Campbell, both of whom are Black.

"He made the comment that he hated Democrats," Soles told WECT. "And then he said, 'I take that back. I hate a Black f***ing Democrat.' And I knew right then, I was like, 'Wow, this is coming from the sheriff.' And I had to start recording those conversations."

The WECT story and the recordings prompted the district attorney to petition a judge to have Greene removed from office twice: Once, about a month before the election, and again after he won re-election.