Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden belittled the staff members and said he would never trust them, according to an audio recording obtained by The Charlotte Observer.
“Let me tell you this about Chief White and Chief Collins: I would never, ever trust you,” McFadden said in an apparent reference to Telisa White, who oversees the county jail, and former Chief Deputy Rodney Collins.
“But that captain – that white, scrappy captain – is better than the other seven captains upstairs,” McFadden continued in the recording. He didn’t name that captain.
Of Collins, he said: “I don’t know who that n**** is.”
Former Deputy Chief Kevin Canty provided the recording, which someone else shared with him, following a Nov. 1 firing that was made public. He said the recording shows a pattern. Canty has alleged that McFadden is verbally abusive to staff, is racist and behaves in a manner unbecoming of a sheriff.
He started working for the sheriff in February. It took less than a year for McFadden to warn that he would fire him. Previously, Canty worked for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and as a supervisor for the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.
Canty also heard McFadden call SBI Director Bob Schurmeier a “cracker,” he said in an interview Thursday.
Canty said he first began writing his resignation letter in June, when he shared his concerns with the sheriff at a meeting. According to Canty, McFadden asked him to name five times he had insulted staff. Canty’s response to the sheriff: Every time the sheriff’s management team met.
McFadden doing this is “the norm,” Canty told the Observer. Employees have gone to therapy because of McFadden, lost sleep and were afraid to come to work, he said.
“It’s just disgraceful,” the former chief deputy said.
McFadden has declined to be interviewed about Canty’s letter.
Other concerns
The former chief deputy said he heard complaints about the sheriff when he worked as a special agent for the State Bureau of Investigation overseeing the Charlotte region. While he had concerns, nothing amounted to a criminal investigation, he said.
In 2021, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police criticized McFadden and shared anonymous letters from sheriff’s office employees alleging negligence as inmate attacks on detention officers increased. The FOP letter said McFadden called employees “slaves” and accused him of saying he needed to get them out of a “plantation mentality.”
“While he speaks for hours, McFadden never takes responsibility for the terrible circumstances that unfold… He seeks and places blame on everyone, including his closest associates, but himself,” an anonymous employee wrote in the package. Fraternal Order of Police constituted and made public in 2021. “McFadden did not hold a single meeting with a positive tone in nature that was not accusatory or demeaning to his supervisory staff.”
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Local police chairman Daniel Redford said McFadden’s behavior is no secret.
“It’s been there. People just don’t care enough to pay attention to it,” he said.
Mecklenburg County Commissioner Vilma Leake, who represents the southwestern part of the county, told the Observer on Friday that McFadden has been giving her the cold shoulder for about a year. She asked him about some funding requests, she said.
“One of the things he asked for was a (renovated) office, and I was concerned about that,” she said. “Why do we need a new office? And who will pay for the office? And how much will be used? These are fundamental questions – which I don’t understand (why) anyone would be angry about – that a committee is asking.”
She found his silent treatment “very unprofessional,” she said.
“The general public should know how we spend their money – or our money, because I’m a taxpayer too,” she added.
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