There's a word for Charlotte's Sheriff: "Corrupt" (01-06-2025--Hour3)

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 let's talk about our sheriff again. I didn't even get to all of the allegations against him yesterday and I talked about it for over two hours. That's how many allegations there are against Mecklemburg County Sheriff Gary. Not my fault, McFadden. So some developments since the petition was filed and was published by the law firm that is handling the petition. They're based out of Raleigh, and some leftist website purporting to be a news operation. They got to the real heart of the matter. The real story here is that they identified a Republican operative who helped the law firm draw up the petition. Pay no attention to the fact that the petitioners are all Democrats. They're all former employees of the sheriff. So this is not a Republican hit piece on Gary. Not my fault, McFadden. This has been building for years, right. The real story is not that some Republican guy helped to draw up the petition for the law firm. The real story is that we have an awful sheriff who is credibly a cute of a whole host of things from corruption, maladministration, extortion, bribery, retaliation against crime victims and whistleblowers like. We have been documenting this for years and it has finally now resulted in a petition for his removal. I have been advocating this for years because it is the only way to get him out of the office that he was elected to. So because of the petition that was filed, the district Attorney in Mecklemburg County now shall investigate or I guess he could have the county attorney take it up, but he Spencer Merriweather his office put out a statement yesterday said the qualified filing of a removal petition is a serious matter, requiring an approval determination from either the district Attorney or the county attorney in order for the petition to proceed. District attorneys have only rarely granted the approval of such a petition. Yep, because the petitions are rare in and of themselves too, So these things don't get filed all the time. So, yes, that's true. But it's also true that there aren't a lot of these things that get filed. So with the understanding that the election of a community's official is a binding choice of the public which should be only superseded under the most grave circumstances, yes, like we have right now. Yes, the most fundamentally sound method for removal of public officers is popular election by ballot, where the people of a given jurisdiction are themselves the final arbiter of the fitness of those who wish to serve them. Okay, slight problem there. If you have a corrupt sheriff who has built a constituency out of inmates, former inmates, and their families and a patronage system that he is running through the jail through his office right where he values the loyalty of his employees and their families to go vote for him because their promotions depend on their loyalty to him. And that's what's documented in the petition here, not that he's demanding their votes, but that their promotions are tied to loyalty. So obviously, if you know your husband or wife works at the sheriff's office and they are perceived to be not loyal enough to the sheriff, then they're not going to get promotions. They're going to get crap assignments. They may even get fired, which is in the petition. But if you're loyal to not my fault McFadden, and you're willing to act as an informant to him about what other coworkers are doing, then you can rise through the ranks and now you are stickier to him, which means you're going to be supportive, which translates into votes. Right, if you have an elected official who has built a machine, if you will to guarantee his continued reelection, this is the mechanism. I understand that in a perfect world, these things should not be entered into lightly, and all of that, I get all of that. This is not being entered into lightly. The accusations against him are well known, they've been documented, and they are egregious, but it took until now for five people, five voters with direct knowledge of these accusations, to finally step forward to get the five necessy very petitioners to sign on to this petition. I'm going to come to a piece that was over at the Charlotte Observer about the suspicious timing of all this. No, it's not suspicious timing. McFadden wouldn't say if he was going to run for reelection, right, He kept hemming and hauling about it before the holidays. Oh, I'm not sure. I'm going to go down to Macbee, South Carolina for the family reunion and all of that, and we'll go down to our family home and we'll pray about it and all of this. So he was he was not saying if he was going to run again. There's a March primary, and so now that he's going to run again, that's the now the petition got filed. So the timing does not seem suspicious to me. Anyway, back to the DA's press release here. For decades, other prosecutorial authorities, both state and federal, have developed policies restricting the advancement of any prosecution of public officers within close proximity of them. Standing for election. Yeah, and that's how we ended up with Pat Cannon becoming the mayor of the City of Charlotte while being investigated for bribery and corruption. And then when he won because the public didn't know he was under this investigation, then he wins and then you arrest him, not the day they were federal charges, but then they arrest him, and now we have no mayor, and now we have to have what an appointment, right, that's how we got the Democrat Party. They got to appoint a replacement and then a special election gets held. That's a cost to the taxpayers. You could have just told us that you had this guy on video in a hotel room taking cash and like flitting through the dollar bills. You know, Oh, I love the breeze of the dollar bills on my face. Like you could have told us that before the election. Yeah. I'm not a big fan of this rule. Like I understand, you know, the intent behind it is, like, well, we don't want to influence the election. Yeah, I would prefer to know the information if our if our city councilman, mayoral candidate is under federal investigation is about to be indicted. I'd prefer to know that before the election. I feel like that's a pretty critical piece of information, you know. Nevertheless, the statement from the DIA goes on to say, our removal statute creates obligations for the district Attorney or the county attorney, if he so chooses. I don't know who the he is there. I don't know if it's the If it's the county attorney, is the he and he gets to choose, or if it's the DA, who is the he who gets to choose who takes the case up? But he is correct. The state law requires you to bring this investigation forward. It requires it. It says shall, It's not may, you shall. So whatever your thoughts are about not wanting to get involved in any of this investigation or litigating this petition with the March primary coming up, McFadden is in the primary, it doesn't matter. You have to do it. In this office, a substantive review of any allegations will typically come only after a state or local law enforcement agency has had an opportunity to investigate any reported claims. Accordingly, before an approval determination comes from this office. I will, in my discretion, request that the State Bureau of Investigation investigate each allegation and report its findings to my office directly. So it sounds like he doesn't want to take lead on this, so he wants all of the evidence presented before he goes forward with it. If he's going to stick his neck out against mcfadd jod, he wants the SBI involved in it too. 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 min 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. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. The district attorney's news release that he sent out saying that he has kicked the removal petition against Sheriff Gary not my fault, McFadden. He has kicked it over to the State Bureau of Investigations because of the allegations in the letter, he says, in your review to this is the he's sending to the Special Agent in charge of the SBI. In your review of the petition, you will note that a number of criminal violations are alleged, which I'm requesting to be investigated as well, including the following state campaign finance violations, Hatch Act violations, extortion and bribery, economic threats made to influence legislation, and then he he notes, in the event it impacts, where the investigation may be assigned, I want you to be aware. One of the petitioners is former North Carolina SBI Southern Piedmont District Special Agent in Charge Kevin Knty, who was formerly your colleague. No. I interviewed Kevin Canny. Kevin Canty came from the SBI. He had a long career at the SBI, well respected, went to work for McFadden, lasted nine months, quit, wrote the public letter. His successor came in, he lasted nine months quit. He too wrote a public letter where they outlined all of the outrageous behavior of the sheriff. A lot of it is detailed in the petition to remove McFadden. It says McFadden misused official resource in his management of dignitary duty. Dignitary duty refers to the use of on duty sheriff's deputies and other official resources to escort and protect public figures and VIPs okay specifically on information and belief. McFadden directed deputies on dignitary duty to pick up officials at the National Sheriff's Association who were in town for a conference. National Sheriff's Association in Charlotte. Dignitary duty assigned to these deputies, and McFadden directed these deputies to drive the Sheriff's Association members. So these are sheriffs and their entourages, I guess to drive these officials around Charlotte to bars and strip clubs. The deputies did as instructed they were on duty and used Mecklinberg County Sheriff's Office vehicles while driving the officials to the bars and strip clubs. I'm no prude, but I don't think that's appropriate. I don't think that the local sheriff's office needs to be running an uber service to strip clubs. Why are we paying the freight for that? Why are we paying the cost for that. McFadden also misused official resources in connection with travel. On information and belief, McFadden has used the county credit cards to pay for upgrades on hotel rooms and flights. This is in violation of policy requiring economy class travel. On information and belief, McFadden has used vehicles for personal travel, including driving to his wife's family reunion in South Carolina. McFadden has also misused a f resources for the benefit of friends and political supporters, Specifically on information and belief. Nickfadden has ordered patrol deputies to check on the businesses of his friends and supporters, even if those deputies would ordinarily be doing something more pressing. Normally, these businesses would need to hire off duty law enforcement to obtain a similar level of service. Once again, those are taxpayer funded cruisers and personnel, and he's sending them to his friends and political supporters' places. Then there is his weaponization of the Office of Professional Compliance, which is basically the internal affairs division inside the Sheriff's office. McFadden directed this office to initiate investigations of deputies, detention officers, and civilian staff based on his personal animosity towards them when there was no suspicion of any actual misconduct. So he's initiating internal affairs investigations against people inside his own outfit. I mentioned this yesterday. It's in the petition. When he took over, there was twice as many employees as there are now. Right now, I think there's like seven hundred and seventy employees, and when he took over, I think there was like thirteen hundred. People don't want to work for him. This is what the people who are quitting are telling the media. Again, this has been known for years. But it's not his fault. He'll tell you. That's what he says about all these allegations. None of this stuff is his fault. Okay, he used a racial slur, but that wasn't his fault. It was that, according to him, he got flustrated. He was flustrated by his command staff not doing what he told them to do, or not being loyal enough. And that was his real problem, was that he he trusted people and then they stabbed him in the back and he got frustrated, and that's why he needed to use the racial epithet. Not his faults. Hey McFadden intervened in at least two internal affairs investigations to protect a field training officer as well as a major, because they were both loyal to him, they were in his good graces. In the first incident, internal affairs found that the field training officer at the issue had falsified a doctor's note, which would normally be a firing offense. McFadden personally appeared at the hearing and refused to allow the review board to recommend the officer's termination despite the board's finding of the falsification of the doctor's note. As a result, the Sheriff's office became saddled with an officer who became effectively unswearable in court, right because that's part of their record. And so now if you try to call this person like something happens at the jail. You need them to testify. You can't because they're impeachable because there's a finding that they falsified the doctor's note, so you cannot put them on the stand. That's why it's a fireable offense. They were unswearable in court and no longer suitable for field duty, all because McFadden wanted to protect a dishonest employee who was personally loyal to him. In the second incident, a major, also a favorite of McFadden's, was accused of being complicit in allowing a field training officer to falsify the time records. The Internal Affairs found there was substantial evidence to support her involvement, but McFadden came to her hearing and would not allow the Internal Affairs panel to sustain the allegation, nor would he allow them to demote or terminate her. The major was also allowed to ridicule and disrespect her supervisor during the hearing without any admonishment. This major then sat on the Internal Affairs hearing panel for the field training officer who had falsified the doctor's note, and she sided with McFadden not determinate the employee and then McFadden promoted this major to the position of chief. This is corruption. What these allegations spell out is corruption. 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 multiple 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 gra 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. On Twitter, a message from Russ. Russ says it makes sense that McFadden would keep the unswearable deputy if I recall correctly. Not my fault. McFadden is also unswearable due to past conduct as a CMPD officer. Yes, I believe, I believe that is correct. Kevin says, I worked at CMPD for thirty years and there were a lot of people like McFadden. They jockey and politic for prestigious positions because they want to dress fancy and feel important rather than do the job. Once they get the position, they can't help but abuse it because they think they are untouchable, and in a lot of cases they are. Jim says past Mecklenburg sheriff CW. Kid was taking prisoners to the beach to work on his motel back in the eighties. Wow, that was before my time, but that would not surprise me. On the text line, Anthony says the state of Connecticut did away with the election of sheriffs due to just what you are talking about, patronage and the like. The grumpy major says, you talked about deputies being unusable in court due to their internal affairs record. McFadden falls into that scene group due to internal affairs investigations while at CMPD. It's called the Giglio rule, and guess what it was his fault. I love it when you go to call your county commissioner who's supposed to represent you. In my case, Vilma Leak. She doesn't have any voicemail on the phone number. She doesn't take any calls. I've called her a couple of times over the last six or seven years and told her that McFadden is a problem, it needs to be audited, and she has never called me back. We aren't being represented by people who care about the people who are voting for them. They only care about the people who pay the bills. And that's the worst part about this city is nothing here gets done because we don't have enough money to influence the people who need to do the things. Yeah, I mean, this is part of the concern, is that. Yeah, I mean, you get this guy out, but then, you know, is the new boss the same as the old boss? You know? Let me get Alex on real quick. Hello Alex, welcome to the show. Happy, Hey, I'm good. What's up. Yeah, I just want to say I was born and raised in Charlotte, and I still live here, and over the years have seen this city and this state put people in positions of power who are so crooked. There's still to stink off a dog turd, no. Man, oh, I say, okay, well, thank you, Alex. It does seem like it's gotten worse. Charlotte used to have a record and was proud of its record of being a clean government city, and that has taken the beating over the last ten to fifteen years or so. From the petition. Marcia Crenshaw Hill. She was an employee of the Sheriff's office for thirteen years. A sergeant, she worked in the detention center. She observed that when officers were assaulted by inmates, the inmates were not charged, and if charges were ever filed, they were dropped for unclear or spurious reasons, all involving allegations of fault on the part of the victim. In other words, the officer. Crenshaw Hill observed that the frequency of weapons, drugs, and contraband in the jail increased significantly after McFadden took office. She saw how McFadden changed policies and his non enforcement of and add hoc exceptions or case by case on the fly exceptions to existing policies created unsafe conditions in the jail. For example, before McFadden, inmates in single cell confinement, in other words, they're placed in a cell alone, usually for disciplinary or safety reasons. They Before McFadden, these people were not allowed to have pencils or soda bottles or cans. That's a standard correctional policy because prisoners could and sometimes did harm themselves with these items or make them into weapons. McFadden relaxed these policies to appease inmates and the inmates families. I honestly think this is the key here. I think it's the families of the inmates and the people that go through the jail, the residents. Right this whole kid glove euphemistic treatment that he gives the inmates, and he gives them his personal cell phone number, gives the families of the inmates his cell phone number, and then they call him directly to complain about anything that goes wrong in the jail against their son or daughter or family member, like oh, they're sleeping on they're sleeping on the floor, and how dare you let them sleep on the floor and all this and so then he makes exceptions for them. And I think he sees the families and the innates as his constituency. I think this is the key. I think that he is expecting their support for him, which makes sense if you have a regular jail population, like most of the crimes are committed by you know, a limited cent of the population. But if all of those criminals that keep getting re arrested, you get all of their families to keep voting for you as sheriff because like in the past, I remember talking to former Sheriff Jim Pendograph when Democrats activists tried to go into the jail to register voters in his jail, and he was like no, he was like, generally speaking, inmates in the jail aren't hot to trot to vote for the sheriff. But what if you flip that dynamic, What if you cater to the inmates and their families, right, wouldn't that redound to your electoral benefit. Before McFadden, inmates would lose visitation rights if they violated rules. Now, if jail officials restrict visitation in response, to inmates misbehavior, the jailers worry that McFadden is going to overrule them to appease the inmates and the families. Prisoners then increased their hoarding of contraband because they believed McFadden would allow them to have it, despite policies to the contrary. As a result, crenshaw Hill observed that inmates became more emboldened to hoard contraband and break jail rules. In twenty twenty, crenshaw Hill was stabbed in the neck by an inmate inside that inmate's cell. They were doing an inspection a shakedown looking for contraband. The wound missed her artery narrowly that would have killed her. Okay, despite an inmate attempting to murder her, McFadden was never willing to lay fault with that inmate, always and only with blaming his own employees. In communications with others, McFadden blamed crenshaw Hill, not the inmate. McFadden contended that crenshaw Hill had violated a policy by entering the inmate's cell. In fact, crenshaw Hill had not violated any such policy by entering the cell for the contraband search because she had a supervisor and multiple other deputies with her, as the policy required. Crenshaw Hill was out of work on workers' comp for over a year. At the end of the year, she was fired. Kevin Canty, former chief deputy. He witnessed McFadden initiate internal investigations into employees who had done nothing wrong simply because McFadden appeared to dislike them or did not view them as personally loyal to him. McFadden pressured Canty into recommending that the Sheriff's office that he fired the head of HR and the director of business Operations, even though Kanty said they had done nothing wrong. McFadden could have terminated them based on their act Will status, but he didn't want to do it himself. He wanted Canty to do it. He wanted a sock puppets report from a subordinate finding that they committed misconduct. And when Kanty didn't do it, that's when he was at odds with McFadden, and then he quit and he told us all about that story when he was in studio with us. Then there's Juan Delgado, an officer from four through twenty twenty two, and he witnessed McFadden make verbal in person promises to inmates inconsistent with security policies, but he never would change the policies. McFadden could change the policies, but he never would. He would just give these exceptions, these case by case ad hoc decisions, and then the jailers come in and they're like, well, no, we're following the policies, And then McFadden comes down on the jailers. Is it any wonder why he's lost about half of his staff? 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. If your player goes down in the first half, you still get paid. In case, download the Draft Kings sportsbook app and use the code PETE. That's code pete. New customers can bet five bucks and get two hundred dollars in bonus bets if your bet wins instantly. In partnership with Draft Kings, the Crown is yours gambling problem. 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Then, when McFadden left the jail after making those promises, Delgado and the line deputies under him would have to explain to now irate and sometimes violent inmates that staff were going to follow the written policies until they were changed. So think about this scenario, right, you got an inmate who's acting up but has somehow, you know, had some interaction with not my fault McFadden in the past, and he has gotten McFadden's phone number and gave the phone number to the inmates family. And so mcfatten and is now kind of buddy chump pals with the inmate. And McFadden says, fine, fine, you can carry the contraband you can violate the policy. We'll let you get away with it. Whatever. So now you're the jailer, and now you got this inmate who is saying, I get to do this thing. You can't tell me what to do. I got the sheriff on my side, and the jailer says, no, we're following the policy until the sheriff changes the policy. And the policy has not been changed. So we are following the policy, which then angers the inmate. Now the inmate is mad at the jailer. You can see how this creates a dangerous workplace for these jailers. Delgado also witnessed McFadden make oral in person promises to deputies that were inconsistent with policies without actually changing those policies. Delgado was informed by inmates that McFadden gave out his personal phone number to them and their families. When inmates broke prison rules and were disciplined according to the policy, they and their families would call the sheriff directly to complain. McFadden then blamed the middle managers like Delgado, or the rank and file employees for enforcing jail policies. McFadden possessed authority to change jail policies that he disliked, but he didn't do so. He simply reacted to complaints by inmates and family members on an ad hoc basis, again a case by case basis. Because Delgado insisted on following jail policies as written without these exceptions, he attracted McFadden's wrath. Shortly before his retirement, McFadden summoned Delgado into his office and threatened him, saying, quote, I am going to get you. Delgado retired shortly thereafter. Then there is the petitioner, Brian Adams. Brian Adams retired after thirty years of service as a major in the Sheriff's office. Each year the Sheriff's office conducts a promotional process for individuals looking to get a promotion. Candidates have to pass all of the phases of the process in order to be considered for the promotion. The first phase is a written test. Everybody has to score a seventy or above in order to advance to phase two. If they fail the written exam, then they automatically are disqualified. But McFadden undermines the process and promotes those who are in his favor. While in charge of training, Adams witnessed McFadden routinely circumvent policies that he disliked regarding the promotion and training process. Even though McFadden had substantial authority to change policies and regulations regarding these promotions, he never did so. Rather, he simply he ignored the policies in an ad hoc fashion in order to hire and promote the candidates that he personally preferred. He valued candidates for hiring and promotion based on their loyalty to him personally, not on their qualifications or job performance. And by the way he has said this, he has said this repeatedly in interviews that his demands for loyalty like he wants people around him that are loyal to sheriff. Make sure they're loyal to the sheriff. In all of this, he says, there's a quote of McFadden's if you want to eat, you have to provide something, and that if they wanted to advance, they needed to stay on quote team Sheriff. What McFadden meant by this was that employees needed to demonstrate personal loyalty to him by going outside the chain of command and reporting to McFadden personally about their coworkers and supervisors. That would help them remain in his good graces and to be considered for promotions and desirable assignments. Thus, Adams and others watched McFadden develop a culture of internal informants, which predictably rendered much of the Sheriff's office workforce paranoid and afraid to question anything the sheriff said or did, even when misguided or unethical. McFadden also developed a culture in which personal loyalty to him was the paramount value in policies and procedures designed to protect staff were routinely ignored based on his personal whims. McFadden promoted one deputy detention officer to a sergeant within six months of her being hired. Because she was on Team Sheriff, she acted as a de facto informant. This deputy was not prepared for the demands of being a sergeant and was later demoted because she was overwhelmed by the work. He promoted an unqualified sergeant to captain because she was on Team Sheriff. This deputy had failed the captain's exam. Adam's training department removed her from the captain training program. McFadden, though, intervened, insisting shed be reinstated and continue in the training program, which had never been done before. This same sergeant later arrived late to a training exercise that would have been disqualifying for her, but no McFadden again intervened to insist that the training department schedule a makeup session for her and her alone, never been done before. When reviewing candidates for promotion to captain, McFadden insisted that this sergeant would be promoted over several other qualified candidates who had passed the written exam and had completed the required training without incident. McFadden promoted this candidate over better qualified competitors because of her perceived loyalty to him. Again, the word for this is corruption. 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 dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.