Another day, another racist cop exposed! Our cup runneth over with bad apples.
The latest is Jody Greene, a sheriff in Columbus County, North Carolina. He was recorded calling Black employees derogatory names and saying they should be fired, presumably without cause. It’s hard to extend the benefit of the doubt to repulsive racists. Greene doesn’t deny that he’s on the phone call WECT-TV obtained, but he argues that the call was edited or otherwise altered. You can do wonderful things with the Garage Band app but I don’t think you can turn an otherwise benign statement into “Every Black that I know, you need to fire him.”
The call is from February 2019, shortly after Greene narrowly beat former Sheriff Lewis Hatcher, the county’s first Black sheriff, by about 40 votes. Hatcher had sued to be reinstated as sheriff until disputes over the outcome was resolved. While elections officials examined the close results, then-Capt. Jason Soles acted as temporary sheriff and apparently Greene’s part-time analyst. Greene ranted to Soles over the phone, suggesting that someone from the sheriff’s office was leaking information to Hatcher.
“I’m sick of it. I’m sick of these Black bastards,” Greene is recorded saying. “I’m going to clean house and be done with it. And we’ll start from there.”
Greene was also recorded as saying: “Every Black that I know, you need to fire him to start with, he’s a snake.”
He went on this way for a while. It was like the Training Day “King Kong” speech but with an unattractive racist and not Denzel Washington.
GREENE: They’re gone. This is as fair as I’m going to be. Just giving you a heads up, that’s coming. When me and [attorney] Boyd [Worley] and [wife] Angie [Greene] go through it tomorrow, the first numbers we see, they’re gone. They ain’t going to make it brother. I’m telling you, they might as well find somewhere else to go. Because if you ain’t with me – I ain’t referring to you – but if they’re not with me, they’re against me. And they’re gone. And that’s just how it’s going to be. Clarity – whatever her name is, I don’t trust her. Dawn says she’s racist…
Greene was apparently referring to Augustine Clarida, a Black detention officer. She is probably not the racist in this situation.
GREENE: If I have to fire every (expletive) out there, guess what? I’m tired of them (expletive) with me. It ain’t happening no more. No goddamn more. So you let them know, if I find their numbers in the next day or two, they ain’t going to like it. They damn sure ain’t going to like it. And that’s got to be somebody in the command staff. Clarity. I don’t trust her. She’s just sitting there staring at me the other day, the whole time. Staring at me the whole (expletive) time.
Greene was as good as his word! A Black captain was fired and a Black lieutenant was demoted after Greene was eventually sworn into office. Another Black sergeant was reported canned not long after Greene was elected. Some Black deputies appeared to have kept their jobs, but below the level of command staff. It was all very separate and unequal.
Soles shared the recordings of Greene’s racist rants with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and a county commissioner, but they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) investigate without a formal request from the local prosecutor. Now that Soles is running for sheriff against Greene, he released the tapes to the media. Greene learned the “bro code” doesn’t apply when it comes to politics.
SOLES: It broke my heart because that’s not what I believe in. It upset me that I did have to start recording his phone calls. And I’m not wanting to go around recording people’s conversations, but this was not the leader that we needed leading the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office making these racial slurs.
Greene whined, “If Soles has had these alleged recordings since 2019, why would he intentionally hold the recordings? … The only thing Soles has on his agenda is to be Sheriff at all costs necessary.”
The recordings aren’t alleged. We can hear them. It’s his voice. There’s no real market for racist Southern sheriff impersonations.
Last week, Greene resigned from the North Carolina Sheriff’s Association after he was informed the group was considering whether to expel him. He also his looming legal troubles.
District Attorney Jon David told the station that he was informed of the recording Monday. In an email Thursday, David said he asked the SBI on Tuesday to investigate “Sheriff Jody Greene and deputies under his command for obstruction of justice,” but declined to elaborate.
Columbus County, about 120 miles southeast of Raleigh, has a population of 50,000 people, 63 percent of whom are white and 30 percent Black. That’s a lot of Black folks who’ve lived under the rule of a racist sheriff. District Attorney Jon David might have more than a few firsthand witnesses to Greene’s awfulness.
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