A North Carolina sheriff currently seeking re-election is being investigated after a three-year-old explosive phone call allegedly revealing racist rants and threats to fire every black representative in his office surfaced.
Jody Greene is currently facing off against her former friend Captian Jason Soles in a bid to remain as Columbus County Sheriff, but the racial accusations stemming from her narrow loss to Lewis Hatcher, the county’s first black sheriff, in 2018 will make Greene likely a lot more difficult. .
Greene’s campaign against Hatcher was tight, with Greene winning by just 34 votes, WECT, the NBC affiliate in Wilmington, NC, reports. As the race ran through February 2019, Soles was appointed interim sheriff.
The paranoid Greene allegedly called Soles in February, nagging about the “snitch.” Sol was distracted enough by Greene’s statement that he hit the record.
(Video: YouTube)
“I am sick of. I’m sick of these black bastards,” Greene told Soles. “I will clean the house and get it done. And we’ll start from there.”
Greene believes there was a leak in his office and has so far been looking into phone records from Verizon to determine whether Hatcher or Melvin Campbell, a recently fired African-American sergeant, had been in contact with anyone in his office. department in the last two months.
“They’re gone. It’s as fair to me. Just telling you, it’s coming,” Greene could be heard telling Soles. “When I and [attorney] Boyd [Worley] and [wife] Angie [Greene] go through it tomorrow, the first numbers we see, they’re gone. They won’t make it as brothers.”
“I said they might as well find somewhere else to go,” he continued. “Because if you’re not with me – I’m not referring to you – but if they’re not with me, they’re against me. And they left. And that’s what will happen. Clarity – whatever it’s called, I don’t believe in it. Dawn says she’s racist… If I had to fire every mom out there, guess what?”
“I’m tired of them playing games with me. It doesn’t happen anymore. Nothing else,” he vowed. “So tell them if I find their number in the next day or two they won’t like it. They definitely won’t like it. And it must be someone on the command staff.”
Greene then targeted another black employee, Augustine Clarida, who was then a detention officer.
“Clarity,” he said. “I don’t believe him. He just sat there staring at me the other day, all the time. Staring at me all the time.”
The shocking scolding grew quieter as Greene continued.
“Tomorrow will be a new day,” he said. “I’m still the sheriff motherf**king, and I’ll go up and fire every god**n [inaudible]. Fuck them black bastards. They think I’m scared? They’re stupid.”
“I don’t know what else to do. So it’s time to clean it up,” said Greene. “There’s a snitch somewhere that tells us what we’re doing. And I won’t have it. I won’t have it.”
Greene’s plan to thwart the snitch allegedly involved goes after everyone “guilty of the damn association” and fires them.
“We will behead the snake. Period,” he promised Sol. “And Melvin Campbell is as big a snake as Lewis Hatcher has ever dared. Every black I know, you gotta fire him to begin with, he’s a snake. ”
According to Soles, the call was heartbreaking.
“It broke my heart. Because that’s not what I believe in,” he told WECT. “It pissed me off because I had to start recording his phone calls. And I don’t want to go around recording people’s conversations. But… this is not the leader we need to lead the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office into this racial slur.”
Soles insisted that the release of the summons was not politically motivated and said he had been trying to get the County Commissioner and other officials he could think of to address the issue since the summons came years ago.
Although one of the commissioners followed up on Soles’ claims, the rest were reported to be “mostly Greene supporters”, and as such, nothing was done.
“Everyone has deaf ears,” Soles said.
But as it turns out, making public calls has worked.
After receiving an email from WECT about the tape, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) contacted Columbus County District Attorney Jon David, who claimed it was the first time he had heard of the allegations.
On Tuesday, David issued a formal request to the SBI to investigate Greene for obstruction of justice charges by the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office.
As for Greene, he denied everything.
In a lengthy statement posted to the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page, Greene accused Soles of running a “dirty campaign.”
“When Soles announced his candidacy for the Sheriff, Republicans from Columbus County were contacted by Soles’ camp and stated they wanted to run a smudge-free clean-up campaign,” he wrote. “From the alleged 2019 footage that Sol just released, it’s clear he had other methods in mind.”
“If Soles had this alleged tape since 2019, why did he intentionally withhold the tape? Why would he want to let them go almost four years later? What is the purpose?” He asked. “The only agenda Soles has is to become Sheriff at all costs. If Soles really wanted unity and peace, this would have been a problem at a time when the alleged footage was not right before the election.”
“In closing,” he said, “I categorically deny any racist intentions or actions on my part. I acknowledge there were racial tensions during the 2018 election certification and that the media and some members of the public refer to the two sides of politics as black and white. And I also admit that I used swear language but refused to use it with malicious intent.”
Source : www.bizpacreview.com
