An NC sheriff’s racist comments were recorded in 2019. Why did it take so long to act?

Calling African American employees “Black bastards” is about as offensive as it gets — especially if you’re a law enforcement officer and elected official.

So why, then, did it take more than three years to launch a formal investigation into a North Carolina sheriff’s racist comments?

“I’m sick of these Black bastards. I’m going to clean house and be done with it,” Columbus County Sheriff Jody Greene told a colleague in a 2019 phone call. A recording of the phone call was obtained by local TV station WECT.

Greene was referring to Black deputies who he suspected of leaking information to the former sheriff, Lewis Hatcher, who is also Black. Greene narrowly defeated Hatcher in the 2018 election for county sheriff, but the results were contested. That dispute took months to resolve.

“Tomorrow’s gonna be a new f**king day. I’m still the motherf**king sheriff, and I’ll go up and fire every goddamn [inaudible],” Greene said, according to the recording. “F**k them Black bastards. They think I’m scared? They’re stupid.”

Jason Soles, the man on the other end of the phone call, recorded the conversation because he was concerned that the county’s most powerful law enforcement officer was racist. Greene demoted or fired multiple Black officers after taking office, and there are no longer any minorities on his command staff, WECT reported.

“This one particular phone call that we received, 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 had to start recording those conversations.”

That conversation occurred in February 2019. Soles told WECT that since then, he has taken his concerns to every public official he could think of, from county commissioners to the offices of North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein. Representatives for Cooper and Stein told the News & Observer they were not aware of the recording until it was made public.

No one took action until Wednesday, when the State Bureau of Investigation announced it would review allegations of obstruction of justice at the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office.

Why?

A quick Google search shows that Sheriff Greene has attracted more than his fair share of controversy over the past several years. His election in 2018 was shrouded by a dispute over whether he even lived in Columbus County to begin with. He’s acquired millions of dollars worth of military surplus equipment and his possible ties to the Oath Keepers have been publicly scrutinized. More recently, he refused to remove a Bible verse that he had painted on a wall in the sheriff’s office, which is a government building.

In a lengthy statement posted to Facebook Wednesday, Greene claimed the recording had been edited and accused Soles of having ulterior motives. (Soles is running against Greene in this year’s sheriff’s race.)

“I also acknowledge that I use expletive language but deny using it with malice intent,” Greene said in the statement. Greene resigned from the North Carolina Sheriff’s Association Thursday.

It’s hard to interpret Greene’s words as anything other than malicious, however. Those discriminatory words and actions have no place in public office.

“His language is divisive, nasty, and offensive — his words are disparaging and hurtful to people of color. His actions have cast a cloud over his ability to execute the office with impartiality,” the North Carolina NAACP said in a statement demanding Greene’s resignation.

The population of Columbus County, which is located in southeastern North Carolina, is about 30% Black. If this is how Greene treats his Black colleagues, how might he treat Black residents? Can he even be trusted to police fairly and without bias, or to uphold equal justice under the law?

If public officials truly did not investigate Soles’ complaint, they need to explain why. Their inaction also sends a troubling message. It’s not just the obviously racist sheriff that’s the problem — it’s also the people at all levels of government who were allegedly told about his behavior and did not act. There are people who insist that systemic racism does not exist in the United States today. This is evidence that it very much still does.

This story was originally published October 2, 2022 at 5:00 AM.