‘I don’t think he gets it.’ Meck sheriff faces lingering criticism despite election win
In a recent interview with the editorial board of The Charlotte Observer, Garry McFadden envisioned a Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office that would enforce laws and investigate crimes countywide.
It’s an office that doesn’t exist, and it’s not the job the incumbent sheriff was reelected this week to do.
On Tuesday night, McFadden carried 51% of the vote in a three-candidate field to earn a second four-year term. Yet he will reenter office in December under more scrutiny than any other elected official in North Carolina’s second-largest county.
While McFadden made good on some promised changes to how the Sheriff’s Office and county jail operate, his reforms have largely been overshadowed by growing criticism of his policies and leadership style, including from his own staff.
They say McFadden has driven away deputies and jailers while making the county jail — the core mission of the Sheriff’s Office — less safe. Addressing those challenges will largely define whether McFadden succeeds in his second term. He has his doubters.
“In the next four years, Mr. McFadden’s biggest problem is going to be Mr. McFadden,” said Gina Hicks, a former Mecklenburg deputy who finished second to McFadden in Tuesday’s vote. “I hope he realizes that his people are public servants of Mecklenburg County. He can’t do anything without them. Frankly, I don’t think he gets it. I don’t know why because he’s a former law enforcement officer.”
McFadden’s office did not respond Thursday to an Observer request for an interview.
Jake Sussman, a Charlotte civil rights and criminal defense attorney who works on criminal justice reform issues around the country, said in an email to the Observer that much of that criticism of McFadden is a byproduct of his efforts to change the status quo. Those include his early decision to remove his office from the controversial federal immigration program, 287(g), while placing tighter restrictions on the jail’s use of solitary confinement.
“Agree or disagree with what he’s done while in office, Garry McFadden has done a service simply by increasing the salience of the sheriff’s role to bring about needed change in our criminal legal system,” said Sussman, who consulted with McFadden over several of his planned reforms before he was sworn in.
“The concerns about safety for jail staff and people being held in custody are serious and need to be treated seriously. We can’t forget that the jail was never a healthy place or one that honored human dignity under prior sheriffs, especially if you were detained. Sheriff McFadden promised to change that reality and Tuesday’s results suggest that voters still believe in what McFadden stands for and that he’s the right person for the job.”
In his interview with the Observer’s editorial board, McFadden listed his priorities for a second term as improving mental health services for both inmates and staff, and the creation of a “robust” re-entry program for inmates so they can better find jobs after they leave the jail. He also said his office also plans to use federal and county money to improve recruiting.
Jail deaths and lawsuits
McFadden, a longtime Charlotte-Mecklenburg homicide detective and star of his former cable TV show, has long been a well-known and popular presence in neighborhoods and communities across the city. He won in 2018 during his first try for elected office, yet came into the job without any administrative experience.
Some of his strongest critics come from law enforcement. In an unprecedented public rebuke late last year, the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police called for an investigation into McFadden’s operation, alleging that he routinely demeaned and overworked his employees while putting procedures in place that had fueled a surge in inmate violence against jail staff.
His two challengers in Tuesday’s Democratic primary were former deputies, one of whom McFadden fired before taking office in 2018. Both ran campaigns pillorying what they described as their former boss’s lack of leadership. Both also accused McFadden of being more interested in self-promotion than doing his job. Combined, Hicks and Marquis Robinson carried almost 49% of the vote.
While McFadden set out to improve treatment of the jail residents under his watch, six inmates have died in the past calendar year — a period in which jail deaths have risen statewide, according to N.C. Department of Health and Human Services records obtained by the Observer.
In several of the deaths in Mecklenburg, however, the jail was cited for safety violations tied to inadequate staffing in connection with several of the most recent fatalities. Two families of dead inmates have sued, and a third complaint is pending.
In one of the cases, the family of a dead juvenile accuses jailers of failing to adequately monitor the suicidal teen, then filing fraudulent reports to hide the violations.
“Progressive goals and vision is great, but if people aren’t safe in the jail, that’s a big problem,” said Charlotte attorney Tim Emry, an unsuccessful candidate Tuesday for Mecklenburg district attorney.
Staffing shortages at jail
In February, the state’s top jail inspector said an unprecedented staffing shortage posed “an imminent threat to the safety of the inmates and staff.”
McFadden blamed the exodus of employees on the “Great Resignation” brought on by pandemic and said he had put reforms in place that all but eliminated the inmate attacks on staff.
Yet his critics, both anonymous and by name, say many of those who left MCSO took other law enforcement jobs, often with a cut in pay. The problem, they say, falls on McFadden.
“We’re not losing them to the Great Resignation. We’re losing them because of Garry McFadden, and he’s losing them in droves,” said Hicks, who collected more than 38% of the vote Tuesday night. McFadden fired her in 2018.
Jeff Eason, a retired major in the Sheriff’s Office who McFadden made the second in command at the jail in 2019, told WFAE this month that he knew one of the sheriff’s reforms to make the jail more humane was never going to work. For a time, McFadden allowed inmates sent to solitary confinement, known as the Discipline Detention Unit to take their personal items, commissary food and computer tablets with them.
“We virtually gutted the legs that we had to stand on for any type of discipline because when folks want to go to the place we have designed them to not go to — there is a tool you have lost,” he said.
Casting blame
While McFadden has routinely granted interviews with television newscasts, he has repeatedly refused requests from an Observer reporter to discuss staffing and safety issues under his watch. During campaign appearances in recent months, according to people on hand, he routinely blamed the criticism of his performance on his enemies and disgruntled employees pushing back on his jail reforms.
During a February news conference to address highly critical state inspection reports about the jail, the Sheriff’s Office announced that McFadden would not take questions only after reporters arrived. McFadden then criticized what he said was unfair reporting before ignoring shouted media questions as he left the room.
One Charlotte attorney, who regularly represents clients at the jail, says McFadden is his own biggest challenge.
“The biggest issue is his own personality. It’s all about him, and that has to be demoralizing for the people who work with him,” said the attorney who asked not to be identified out of concern about the treatment of his clients. “It’s a cult of personality with him. He really needs the humility to allow someone else to run the day to day operations and he can be the public face. But I’m not sure his ego will allow him to do that.”
Despite increases in pay and the use of signing bonuses, the jail still had 179 vacancies in late March — more than 21% of the detention center’s total jobs.
County Commissioner Pat Cotham, a longtime workplace recruiter, on Thursday said she offered to sit down with McFadden to discuss recruitment strategies.
“He has never taken me up on my offer,” Cotham said.
This story was originally published May 20, 2022 at 6:10 AM.
