Sheriff refuses to comment on effort to oust him... but calls it lies and smears (01-07-2026--Hour1)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. So welcome into Micfadden Radio. Yeah, this was not on my bingo card to start off the week, to start off the year with all things Gary, not my fault McFadden, the illustrious and often frustrated Sheriff of Mecklenburg County. But here we are so as a quick recap and we'll be kind of dipping into various components of this story glory because it is now multifaceted. Number one, you've got his request to appear in front of the North Carolina House Overside Committee along with other Charlotte City officials and law enforcement officials to talk about crime in the Queen City. That's it was scheduled for January twenty second. I think now they're asking for it to be bumped one week the legislature is. So that's all I'll say on that, where we'll see what happens. The other story is about Jail North, which was the juvenile detention facility that Mecklimberg County ran and then closed. There was a big meeting about that last night. And then of course was the big news that popped on Monday during this program about the petition to remove him from office, to have a judge remove him from office based on statutorily defined grounds. I covered that in depth yesterday and on Monday to go into all of the specific allegations again today. But he had also scheduled prior to the petition being filed and then published. Prior to that, he had scheduled I think last week he had scheduled. McFadden had scheduled a forum of sorts with stakeholders and the public and the media to come to the Valerie se Woodard Center on Freedom Drive last night at six o'clock to talk about the Jail North reopening proposals, all the various ideas. Now there were no concrete proposals that were on offer last night special thanks to WBTV that live streamed it last night. I was able to watch it without having to come all the way back into Center City after my show ended. So I watched it, I recorded it, and I have the audio of some of the highlights. So he schedules this event to occur last week. Then Monday, the petition for his removal drops with all those allegations in him, and then the district Attorney says to the State Bureau of Investigations, Hey, I need you to look into the allegations that are brought forward in the petition to remove him, so the DA will then have the evidence required when the DA is statutorily required to take it to a judge, and we shall see how Spencer Merriweather's office handles this. Because this is all Democrat, okay, there are no Republicans. Despite I mentioned yesterday there was a purportedly news website. It's a lefty blog basically that masquerades as a news site, and they are a big story yesterday was that there was a Republican that helped the law firm draft the petition. As if that matters. It doesn't matter. The allegations set forth in the petition are coming from four former employees to the best of my knowledge, they are all Democrats as well as State Representative Carla Cunningham, also a Democrat. Okay, so five petitioners or five voters, because that's all that takes is five quote unquote qualified electors in a county to file this kind of a petition. This can occur in any county in North Carolina. You got to have five people that bring forward these allegations of some kind that lend proof to the idea that the sheriff has, you know, engaged in corruption. Public drunkenness, I think was one of the criteria. But the one that I've always focused on was maladministration. And it is been clear for almost the entirety of McFadden's two terms totaling almost eight years now that he does not know what he is doing in management right. He has not been a good administrator, maladministration of the jails, of personnel, of his command staff. It's very obvious when you listen to all the people who have gone public with these accusations and lawsuits and such, the media reporting on it. Even the Charlotte Observer editorial board says that he's not fit for this office. So he books this event last night prior to and obviously he booked some media interviews as well to talk about Jail North. Because this is why I always call him not my fault McFadden is because nothing, nothing is ever his fault. It's always somebody else's fault as to why he's getting negative press, Okay, And so he goes out to the local WCNCTV station and he books this interview and they were going to talk about the Jail North forum that was held last night, but then the petition for his removal gets filed. So now of course the reporter is going to ask him about that, and he has asked for his reaction to the petition seeking his removal. Here's what he said. I believe it was yesterday morning because he was wearing the same outfit that he wore last night. First as a people. Oh, hang on a second, that's not the right clip. That's my fault. That's Carla Cunningham's speech, which, by the way, we're going to circle back Jen Pasaki style to Carla Cunningham because there are developments in that front of this whole story, the fallout from her signing the petition and alleging that McFadden basically threatened her, extorted her to change her vote on on a particular bill, and now the governor weighed in to endorse her primary opponent. Like I said, the Republicans have no fingerprints on any of this. This is all Democrat on democrat action. Okay. So here's McFadden on WC and C asked for his reaction to the petition seeking his removal. Well, the reaction is that we cannot comment on it just at this time because it is going to be investigated. By the SBI. We are well, I received the copy yesterday and read through it, and I clearly understand what is going to happen after that, but not the process. So we're just going to leave it to the. Process and stick with the process and hope that the process revealed the true outcome of what these allegations are. And so we're not going to comment on it. We just hope that it is a fair and a thoughtful investigation and that's it. Are you concerned at all about how these alliations affect perhaps the public confidence in your office? Well, I was concerned about how someone tried to create a different image of you. We're always going to be concerned about that people who know my image and know my style, and so you know, it is always that era that we have when it becomes election season. And so we're in the middle of election season, sixty days out from the primary. So we all understand that it is devastating to my staff, my family, and also to myself. But we have to leave it to the process. Okay, So mentioned is the word process about seventy thousand times in that one minute clip, but he said he cannot comment, right, he cannot comment. But then he also hinted that this is about the election season. That's what this is really all about. It's because the election season. And by the way, you could see this coming, this narrative. You could see it coming because over at the Charlotte Observer, their deputy opinion editor Paige Maston wrote two days ago headline and embattled Carla Cunningham makes curious accusations against Mecklenburg sheriff. Okay, I could describe her accusations in any number of ways. The word curious would never occur to me to use, because they're not curious accusations. But this is where this is coming from. There is obviously a campaign underway to frame all of this as simple election cycle politics. All right, Holiday football has arrived. Right. With Draft Kings sportsbook and official sports betting partner of the NFL, the unexpected can turn game day into payday. And don't forget Draft Kings as you're back with early exit. Pretty neat function here. 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Minimum mods required for additional terms and responsible gaming resources see DKNG dot co slash audio limited time offer. Remember get the Peat podcast at the peatepod dot If you miss any second of the program, you have to buy law. Subscribe to the podcast. It's free. That's why I feel okay with that law. Alrighty, so Sheriff Gary not my fault. McFadden says he cannot comment. Yesterday morning. He says he cannot comment on the petition to remove him. He's going to let the process process itself out, trust in the process and process process. But then later in the day when he goes to the Valerie se Woodard Center for the public forum and the media is there to get him on tape before the event and ask him to comment about the petition, he does comment. He says the petition is nothing but a smear campaign designed just before the election. Okay, First off, the timing is of Gary's own making. Okay, it is of his own making. Why do I say that? Gary McFadden claimed that he was not going to decide whether to run for reelection or not until he went down to his childhood hometown for the holidays, and you know, he would reflect and talk to his family and pray about it and all of that stuff. Right, the classic line that politicians use when asked if they're going to run for reelection. And so he played little hide the ball and he wouldn't say. And so for a few months, when nobody knows if he's going to file for reelection, nobody is moving to file the petition because if he does not run for reelection, this petition never gets filed. None of this comes out, none of this stuff goes before or court, none of this stuff gets investigated by the SBI. Okay, So he was the one that delayed the filing of the petition because then when he announced, which by the way, he announced before he went down there, apparently because he made the announcement in early November, he says he is going to run for reelection, that then sets the ball in motion. And you're starting now in the second week of November. Right, whatever work was done, and I have not spoken to the law firm as to how long it took for them to get all of these people's, you know, affidavits and their accusations, you know, pen to paper and all of that, but that I would surmise like that's when this stuff starts gaining traction. Then you have Thanksgiving and then you have a short period this year, just by nature of the calendar, you have a shorter window between the Thanksgiving holiday and the Ristmis holiday season. So then you've got about three weeks there. So what we're talking about is basically four to five weeks after he says I'm going to run for reelection, and the dropping of the petition, the filing of this petition on what the first work week after the new year, and he wants us now to all believe that it's because of the election season. Well, you know what, Gary, it is because you're running for reelection, because you decided to run for reelection, even though he had said in a previous interview that he didn't even like being sheriff. He said I would decide at some point around the holidays. Nobody knew. He delayed, and delayed. Then he says I'm running. Then you got the holidays, and now you got the petition, and now he's going to claim he's trying to claim that this is all just some sort of election cycle smear job. That's what he calls it, a smear campaign. He goes on to say, in his you know, adherence to his policy of not commenting, he says, it is filled with lies, and we welcome the investigation and we respect the investigation that will be occurring. Beyond that, McFadden, according to the Charlotte Observer, said he would have no further comment, and then he slowly backed away as reporters asked further questions. And I just have in my mind the Homer Simpson jiff you've seen. This comes from a Simpsons episode where Homer comes out of the hedgerow, he comes out of the bushes, he comes out of the hedges, and then he slowly backs he backs away into the hedges. Like that's the image I have of him just slowly backing away from the cameras. Okay, so thus begins the forum last night. I would say there were probably about I don't know forty people in there. I spotted Vilma Leak County commissioner. I spotted the county commission chairman, Mark Durrell saw him in there. There was also a district court judge who was in there as well. Aretha Blake. She's up for reelection, by the way, and she asked a question, and a good question at that, which we'll hear in a minute, or we'll hear McFadden's response or the state's response. So the forum starts and then he does his presentation. But from that same interview that he gave to w CNC earlier in the day, McFadden said that he wanted the forum to inform the public about the challenges with reopening Jail North. The first challenge is staffing. It would take ninety six people to run that detention center, what we call Jail North or Detention Center North. Ninety six people. How would we hire those people, how would we vent those people, and how would we onboard those people. Both agencies, Mecklinbury County Sheriff's Office and the juvenile part of the system here also have shortages. So if both of us have shortages, then why would we reopen another facility. We have some ideas to reopen that facility, and we want to present those ideas tonight. We do need a juvenile detention center in the state the size that Mecklenburg County could operate. But how would we we operate it. And when we talk about stakeholders, everybody likes to say stakeholders and resources. Of course, we need stakeholders and resources, but we need financial resources also, and their main resource is staffing. Where are we going to find ninety six people to come inside. And run this juvenile detention center. So we've been having. Conversations here and there for years, back and forth, some closed doors. I don't think nobody has an open form that we're going to have tonight. But I have been. Involving many conversations, and some of the information is slanted towards the Sheriff's office, that the sheriff does not want to open the juvenile detention center. That's not true. The juvenile detention center was closed at the ann of our contract, and so we did not honor the second contract for the juvenile detention center. And this is what caused all the rederick that we closed it. So we just didn't honor the second contract. All right. He keeps saying honor the second contract. I think he actually means renew or extend the contract. Okay, they did not re up the contract, the county did it. I have the stories, I have the comments that were made at the time that this decision was made. Here's the thing. I believe him when he says that he wants it open, but what he's not saying out loud as part of that is that he wants it open under his command. He will not allow that facility to open if he does not control it. That's the key. And on the staffing front, when he's like, oh, both the state and Mecklenberg County Sheriff's office, you know, we both have staffing shortages and we both have are having a hard time hiring people, right, that is a lie by omission. What he's not telling you is that people don't want to work for him, and I've and the proof came out last night. It's also in the petition to seek his removal. But last night it became very obvious he is the impediment to opening Jail North him alone. All Right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from themultiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Let me jump over to the text line and uh see what people are saying here. We've got Jeff who says Democrat on Democrat action. Okay, I'll get my mind out of the gutter. That's well, that's I mean, Okay, i'd be lying if I told you that. That's not why I don't I usually say I and when I'm talking about Democrat on Democrat action, it's a I usually say hot D on D action. But anyway, Joseph says Joey from Ashville, there is one central question about not my fault McFadden. It's not being asked. Where is the North Carolina Attorney General aka North Carolina's top cop. That's a very good question, Joey, very good question. Jeff Jackson aka Baby Jesus, He's gonna be in quite a pickle on this. Potentially, we shall see, depending on what the investigation by the SBI turns up. Henry says, uh, I'll stop playing my little pony. I can't help you with that. I think it's just auto filled. On the live stream, Jordan says, stop killing him. He's already dead. Pete, not yet, no, no, no, be sheriff does politics in church too. And these resources he's talking about, they live outside, they live outside the county now. And then this is Mike who says isn't figuring out how to run the juvenile detention center part of Sheriff McFadden's job yet. Well, no, see it's the staffing. Hang on, it's the staffing. See the staffing is the issue that he can't somehow overcome. So during this forum last night, he presented slides showing the staffing requirements. You heard him mentioned there the ninety six staff. I got ninety six. That's the magic. He said ninety six about a billion times last night in two hours ninety six he needs ninety six. Showed the staffing requirements needed to reopen the jail. He pegged the cost at somewhere around fifteen and a half million dollars. Okay, however, and nobody asked him to clarify the dollar figures. There was one question that came close, and he just didn't answer it because it wasn't clear if the fifteen and a half million dollar cost that he is identifying includes all the costs, and it's not clear if those costs are offset by the state of North Carolina, which pays for food, medical provision under Medicaid funding, and even housing costs to house inmates or as McFadden calls them, residents. Right, the state pays Mecklenberg for the juvenile detainees, but because we don't have Jail North open, we have to pay the state. So if we have Jail North open, we don't have to pay the state, and in fact the state pays us because they cover half of the cost, but that wasn't spelled out. There wasn't any there wasn't any breakdown in the cost to include the total costs and the offsets from the state. But McFadden says that the biggest challenge, according to him, is as I said, and he said repeatedly, the staffing. As we always know, politics plays a very big role. Whether we want to believe it or not. Politics played a role in us not reopening the center. Politics maybe because of staffing, not at the juvenile Detention Center, but at the Central Detention Center in the middle of COVID. So the Department of Inspections or Jail. Inspectors said that we need to put our numbers higher at. Jail Central because of COVID in the. Middle of the great resignation, that everybody was short of staff for whatever reason, political reason. Politics played the row and says, let's force Shriff macfatten. To close this facility. How I mean, let's force Shriff macfatten to produce more people inside and hire more people in the middle of COVID. So we couldn't, So we were left with the decision. Of closing it to man the central facility and leave the juveniles took a Barriss County and that's what happened. So it's politics. It's politics. That's why the Jailed North had to close during COVID because they couldn't staff the jail central. Is he accusing Mecklemburg County commissioners of playing politics? See again, not his fault. Somebody else is doing this to him. He's being oppressed by some oppressors. So this is the oppressor oppressed prism that so many people view everything through. Right, this is your job is to manage the jail. But because of his terrible management style and his practices, people don't want to work for him. And so the exodus out of the Sheriff's office has led to low staffing levels and state law requires a ratio. He talked about it last night. For every eight inmates, you need one detention officer. So if you don't have enough detention officers because people don't want to work for you, then you can't have two facilities open. And here's the other thing. He says he wants to keep Jail North under his control, even though it's mothballed. Essentially, it's not used to house anybody. And the reason he has told the state. When the state offered to buy the facility from him in order to open a juvenile detention center back up, he said no. When they offered to lease it back from him, he said no. Why he claims that in case he needs to move inmates, sorry residents out of Jail Central, in case of like a fire or a hurricane, then he would need that as sort of a spare jail. That's the reason he is blocking the state from taking control of Jail North so he can have a spare jail. And I'm sorry, but that is some crap line of argument. Absolute garbage, absolute garbage. I am aware of no other place in mecklem or in North Carolina, no other county that requires a spare jail, even the places on the coast that actually get hit by hurricanes. And by the way, when the AC units died last summer in Jail Central, they didn't move a bunch of people up to Jail North. They just let them cook in there, brought in fans and stuff. So no, I'm not buying this. I need the spare jail argument at all. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. 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So none of these people have been adjudicated, as they call it responsible in adult court, it would be called guilty, right, So they haven't been found guilty of any crimes yet, they've been charged, they've been taken into custody, they've been charged, and they're being housed awaiting their court prescribed hearings or you know, mental evaluations or whatever has to occur. So because we don't have jail North, we send them to Cabrera's County, and so we have to pay the state fifty percent of the cost to house them there. If we were to keep them in Mecklenburg County, then we would get our three million dollars back. We would never actually send it. In fact, the state, which has to cover half the cost, they would pay us. Another the guy from the state that the Deputy Secretary of DPS, Billy Lassiter, he said it was about four to five million dollars the state would pay us DPS Secretary Lassiter said that he was there last night at this forum at the request of constituents from Mecklenburg who asked him to help reopen Jail North and the state wants to partner with Mecklenburg County to do so. He said, there are several options. I will go over these options in the next segment in the next hour. Okay, he said. The reason why you want to keep your juveniles closer to home in the county, there are many reasons. Every kid in juvenile detention, though, is coming back to the community one way or the other. Okay, So they're all coming back. So the local jail gets local support from local nonprofits and services and volunteers, and that has been shown to lower recidivism. In other words, you intervene in these juvenile detainees. You intervene with them and you start getting to some of the core roots of the problems as to why they are embarking on a life of crime or why they got in trouble, and then you can try to steer them off course. Off of that course, you can try to get them back into being a productive, law abiding member of society. Also, if you send your kids from Mecklenburg County to a state facility, the kids get disenrolled out of their local school, they go to a state facility, and you are enrolled in that state facility. Now you're a state local education unit. And then when you get released, let's say, you know, oh, they got the wrong guy and it wasn't you. Now you have to re enroll in the Mecklamore County school and they have a hard time getting these kids re enrolled. It could be a challenge. There are also increased transportation costs because you're busting DTEs to and from court. McFadden blamed his inability to hire staff for Jail North on well many things, but also on anti police rhetoric. He said, And what. Happened is we know how we look at law enforcement and how law. Enforcement is viewed. Not many people want. To be in law enforcement because we victimize them all the time with negativity. And so people will weather work for QT. Express for sixty. Five thousand dollars or work inside of the attention center. And so that's why it happened. Okay, I don't know what the starting salary for an employee at QT Express is sixty five k. Seems high, but if true, I may be working at QT Express soon. The that salary figure, though, of sixty five K, that's important to keep in mind because it's going to come up later. It sounds like he's saying sixty five thousand is what he pays his jailers, his detention officers, and he says he can't get people to apply at that salary level. So he said staffing and cost is the issue, but also kind of sort of politics too. Again, a lot of people. Say, well, did anybody else look into that? Anybody looking at what would be the best facility? Who provides the best for the facilities? That was done in twenty nineteen. This is called the Chin Study. I don't know how long the study was, but damn Taylor, you Meganburg County would be the best and we were the best fit and we had to close it. So I noticed this sounds crazy, but we wanted but how are we going to get there? Some people said, well, the. Sheriff doesn't want it. No, the sheriff wanted the shirt, spend time with the kids out there. The schriff still answer the phone calls. The CHFF still sees these kids. So the sheriff always wanted but as we know how things are even to the. Day, politics always plays a part. We didn't want to close it, but when you have inspection after inspection after inspection, and then people lie about the expections and nothing's ever done and then we are just held accountable, then we have to make a decision to close. It, and that's what we did. So now I'm starting to wonder is this just pettiness because the state kept sending inspectors down to the jail when people were dying in his jail because he had fired the woman who ran the jail effectively for many years, Gina Hicks. Remember first, one of the first things he did before he was even sworn in, he fired her, which we weren't even sure that was legal. He fired her because she was perceived to be not loyal. This is an accusation that kept coming up in the petition to remove him from office that he rewarded his loyal soldiers and he retaliated against people he perceived to be disloyal. Nothing new here. He's been doing it for eight years. People have known this about him for eight years, and that might be why no one wants to work for him. He created this network of employee informants who would rat on each other and go run to Gary to tell him what, oh, this is what they're saying about you, and then he would retaliate against people for that. But he's still beefan on these inspections. This was years ago. He was running a jail where people were dying, and the state would come in and do inspections and they would ding him and they would say, you didn't do this right, you didn't have this covered, you didn't have enough staff over here, whatever. They were citing him for failures in the jail, and he calls this political. He's like, I'm being targeted. He accused the state inspections of being racist. That's what he was saying at the time. So this is all politics in his view. So because he can't keep staff and because the state has a quota where you got to have one jailer per eight inmates residents, and the inspections keep coming back and he keeps getting cited for failures. Now it's like, well, we don't have enough staff, we can't comply with the inspections. So we're going to close it down, by golly, so we're closing down Jail North. We're going to close it down and move the staff to Jail Central. See, so it's not my fault, all right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.