Sheriff Who Called Black Colleagues ‘Bastards’ Forced To Step Down

By Trone Dowd

The North Carolina sher­iff who called his Black col­leagues “bas­tards” and threat­ened to fire them when he took office in 2019 was sus­pend­ed from office by a judge’s order on Tuesday.

Columbus County Sheriff Jody Greene, a Republican, has been tem­porar­i­ly removed from his posi­tion until a hear­ing deter­min­ing whether he’ll be per­ma­nent­ly removed is held, on Oct. 24. Greene’s sus­pen­sion was request­ed by Columbus District Attorney Jon David Tuesday, and was grant­ed by Superior Court Judge Douglas Sasser, as first report­ed by local NBC affil­i­ate WECT.

The sus­pen­sion fol­lows sev­er­al days of the Columbus County com­mu­ni­ty demand­ing his resignation.

“There can be no ques­tion that the use of racist lan­guage, direct­ed at all offi­cers of col­or under your com­mand, is con­duct prej­u­di­cial to the admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, which brings the Office of Sheriff into dis­re­pute,” David, who’s also a Republican, wrote in his request. “My hope is that you rec­og­nize the harm your state­ments have caused and that you will make the hon­or­able deci­sion to resign.”

Greene made the com­ments in February 2019, just four months after he ran against the county’s first Black head of coun­ty law enforce­ment, for­mer Sheriff Lewis Hatcher. The race was an extreme­ly close one, with Greene win­ning by 34 votes. The tight elec­tion led to months of lit­i­ga­tion to deter­mine the win­ner, dur­ing which Greene sus­pect­ed that Black mem­bers of the depart­ment he was elect­ed to lead were try­ing to secret­ly under­mine him with unspec­i­fied rumors. 

Greene vent­ed his frus­tra­tions over these rumors in phone calls to then inter­im Sheriff Jason Soles, who served as head of the sheriff’s office until a win­ner was determined. 

“I’m sick of it. I’m sick of these Black bas­tards,” Greene told Soles dur­ing one six-and-a-half-minute con­ver­sa­tion. “I’m going to clean house and be done with it. And we’ll start from there.”

“We’ll cut the snake’s head fuck­ing off. Period,” Greene said, in ref­er­ence to Sgt. Melvin Campbell, a Black offi­cer he’d worked with for 30 years before join­ing the Columbus sheriff’s office. “And Melvin Campbell is as big a snake as Lewis Hatcher ever dared to be. Every Black that I know, you need to fire him to start with. He’s a snake.”

Greene didn’t real­ize Soles was record­ing the conversation. 

“And I knew right then, I was like, ‘Wow, this is com­ing from the sher­iff,’” Soles, who is chal­leng­ing Greene for his seat this November, told WECT.

Last Wednesday, Greene adamant­ly denied hav­ing any racial ani­mos­i­ty toward his fel­low offi­cers. The next day, he dou­bled down on the denial, sig­nal­ing he had no plans to step down from his post, despite calls for his removal.

“I have not resigned as the Sheriff of Columbus County. I will con­tin­ue to serve no mat­ter the alle­ga­tions or rumors,” he wrote Thursday.

The Columbus County Sheriff’s Office did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for comment.

The pop­u­la­tion of Columbus County is 30 per­cent Black, accord­ing to the U.S. Census.​Both the North Carolina NAACP and the North Carolina American Civil Liberties Union called for Greene’s removal, as well as a review of all the work he’s done since tak­ing office in 2019.

“Columbus County, and in par­tic­u­lar its Black res­i­dents, deserve bet­ter,” the orga­ni­za­tions said in a joint state­ment. “To restore dig­ni­ty and con­fi­dence in the office of the Columbus County Sheriff, we demand a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion of all the activ­i­ties con­duct­ed by his offi­cers since the begin­ning of Sheriff Greene’s tenure – by all rel­e­vant author­i­ties — includ­ing the State Board of inves­ti­ga­tion and the fed­er­al government.”