Two weeks ago, Jody Greene resigned as sheriff of Columbus County, North Carolina, after it was revealed he made racist comments about Black employees in 2019. He said he resigned for his “love” for the county and asked for forgiveness as he went full speed ahead on his reelection campaign.
And on Tuesday, he won.
Unofficial election results for the North Carolina county show that Greene garnered more than 10,000 votes to be reelected as sheriff, compared to the fewer than 8,500 secured by his opponent, Jason Soles. His win comes amid significant controversy after the district attorney revealed in September that Greene had made “highly inappropriate and racially charged statements” about Black employees three years ago.
Court documents published by local NBC affiliate WECT reveal that District Attorney Jon David had obtained an audio recording from the State Bureau of Investigation of a phone call Greene was on. The court documents – a petition to remove Greene from office – say that Greene made the comments while he was suspended from office as the state Board of Elections investigated his residency status.
According to those documents, Greene was “convinced there was a leak in his office” that resulted in that investigation, and was heavily focused on Lewis Hatcher, North Carolina county’s first Black sheriff, and Melvin Campbell, a Black sergeant, as well as other Black employees whom he felt had undermined him.
“I’m sick of these Black bastards. I’m gonna clean house and be done with it,” a transcript of those recordings included in the documents reveal. “…They’re gone. I’m telling you. That’s as fair as I’m gonna be. … if they’re not with me, they’re against me. And they’re gone. … If I have to fire every mother f***er out there, guess what?”
“I’m still the motherf***ing sheriff, and I’ll go up and fire every goddamn [inaudible]. F*** them Black bastards,” he continued. “They think I’m scared? They’re stupid. I don’t know what else to do with it. So it’s just time to clean them out. There’s a snitch in there somewhere tellin’ what we are doing. And I’m not gonna have it. …hell is coming.”
The transcript shows Greene continued to say that Campbell and Hatcher would be fired, and that “they’re gonna be guilty by f***ing association.”
The call, according to Greene in a post on the sheriff’s office Facebook page in September, was recorded by his 2022 midterm opponent, Soles, who he said was a captain in Greene’s command staff at the time. Greene claims that Soles was “spreading rumors” to “further incite racial division…to pursue his personal agenda.” At the time of the post, Greene “adamantly” denied “any racial intent or actions on my part.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called for the resignation of a North Carolina sheriff following the revelation of the racist statement he allegedly made.
CAIR also welcomed an investigation by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) into the racist comments allegedly made by the sheriff of that state’s Columbus County.
The racist comments were reportedly made in a 2019 phone conversation between Columbus County Sheriff Jody Greene and Captain Jason Soles, who had been given command of the department while a complaint against Greene was being investigated. Greene reportedly told Soles he was “sick of these black b**tards.” He also said he would fire employees who he believed related to an investigation into his eligibility for the office. The call was one of several Greene made to Soles during the investigation.
The Columbus County Attorney General said that while he was unsure if Greene’s comments reached the level of a criminal violation, they did raise concerns about biased policing by the department.
Yesterday, the attorney general requested the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation (SBI) begin investigating the issue. In a statement posted to Facebook, Greene admitted to using offensive language but denied any “racial intent.”
“The comments reportedly made by the sheriff are appalling and would indicate that he is unfit to serve and protect a diverse community,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. “We urge the North Carolina SBI to be swift and thorough in its investigation and for the sheriff to consider resigning from his office.”
He said CAIR and the American Muslim community stand in solidarity with all those challenging antisemitism, systemic anti-Black racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, white supremacy, and all other forms of bigotry.
CAIR’s mission is to protect civil rights, enhance understanding of Islam, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.
The Metropolitan police is taking a former senior officer to court, claiming her allegations of racism and sexism broke an agreement meant to gag her from speaking out, the Guardian has learned.
The Met says former chief superintendent Parm Sandhu must pay £60,000 plus interest after breaking a confidentiality agreement, also known as a non-disclosure agreement.
The legal action by Britain’s biggest police force led to claims from one former Met chief that it is abusing taxpayers’ money and its power to bury uncomfortable allegations of discrimination.
A Met solicitor has revealed the use of gagging or non-disclosure agreements in a sworn statement to the court, seen by the Guardian.
The legal document is a particulars of claim issued on behalf of the commissioner of the Met, Sir Stephen House. He took temporary charge after Cressida Dick resigned in February amid scandals about her alleged failure to tackle misogyny and racism among her officers. sexism
Sandhu left the Met after 30 years, alleging discrimination. The force settled her employment tribunal claim in 2020 and paid her £120,000 in total.
Sandhu wrote a book about her experiences in the police and spoke out in media interviews after the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer in March 2021.
The Met, in the documents lodged with the Central London county court, alleges that the book breaches the agreement.
The legal claim before the court is made by Nicholas Heavey, from the Met’s directorate of legal services. In the signed document, he says he is entitled to represent the Met and its commissioner, who is named as the claimant. The Met is seeking £60,000 plus 8% interest.
The gagging clause forbade Sandhu from making “disparaging” or “derogatory” comments about the Met commissioner, or about the force itself.
It also forbade Sandhu from discussing the discrimination she alleged she suffered during her service in the Met.
On 28 July, the Arab community of Chicagoland awoke to a viral video on Facebook showing a Palestinian-American boy being brutally beaten by three Oak Lawn police officers. (Oak Lawn is a southwest suburb of Chicago that has a large Palestinian population.)
The video, filmed the day before by a Black woman from her car, shows two officers on top of the teen, repeatedly beating him in the head and body. A third officer runs up and appears very briefly to place his knee on the child’s head or neck before the three grown men finish handcuffing their target.
The boy in the video, Hadi Abuatelah, is a 17-year-old Palestinian-American and a rising high school senior from Bridgeview, Illinois, another of the Palestinian-heavy southwest suburbs of Chicago.
As a result of the attack, Hadi sustained multiple injuries, including fractures to his pelvis and face, and internal bleeding in his brain. He was transferred to a local hospital in critical condition, and it took almost six days for his health to stabilize enough for him to be released from the hospital and into police custody.
The Oak Lawn Police Department alleges that Hadi had a gun on his person and that is why they used such force. The video shows that a gun was found after the beating, but it is not at all clear where it came from.
Yet the gun has nothing to do with the criminal act committed by these three officers. In the end, it was an act rooted in racism in a community that is no stranger to systemic, structural, and institutional racism and targeting by law enforcement, other government agencies, and ultra-right and white nationalist groups.
In July 2022, the AAAN published a report exposing a surveillance and data-gathering program used by Illinois law enforcement agencies. The program, named Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), collects massive amounts of data on Arab, Muslim and other communities of color, pulling them into the US counterterrorism nexus.
The report found that police departments like Oak Lawn’s participate in the SARs program, targeting and criminalizing Arabs and Muslims for everyday activities and stereotyping us as the local face of the “enemy” abroad.
Read the fully updated report on: The Electronic Intifada
A small Mississippi city and its police department are being sued weeks after the police chief was fired after bragging about shooting and killing people in a racist and homophobic rant.
Five Black Mississippians have filed a federal lawsuit requesting a restraining order against the Lexington Police Department to prevent officers from infringing upon citizens’ constitutional rights, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by USA TODAY.
The lawsuit, filed by civil-rights law firm JULIAN, is intended to stop law enforcement in Lexington from “threatening, coercing, harassing, assaulting or interfering” with the city’s largely Black population, the group said.
The suit claims the department has a pattern and practice of using excessive force, making false arrests and retaliating against officers who report misconduct.
The suit names Dobbins and interim Chief Charles Henderson. Henderson and Lexington Mayor Robin McCrory did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Dobbins was unable to be immediately reached.
JULIAN is also calling for a federal investigation into “systemic, condoned racism in both the police department and in Lexington’s municipal government as a whole,” according to a press release.
After Dobbins was fired, Henderson told USA TODAY that his new administration would have zero tolerance for racism.
In our series of letters from African journalists, Ismail Einashe writes that many black people in Italy feel that racism is not taken seriously.
For Italian-Eritrean filmmaker and podcaster Ariam Tekle, there is no doubt that the recent killing of a disabled Nigerian street vendor, Alika Ogorchukwu, in Italy was a “racist murder”.
This is despite the fact that local police have ruled out racism as a motive for the 39-year-old’s killing in the seaside town of Civitanova Marche.
He was reportedly selling handkerchiefs when he was chased and beaten to death. None of those who witnessed the broad daylight attack appeared to intervene.
A suspect – a white man named as Filippo Claudio Giuseppe Ferlazzo – has been ordered to remain in jail as the investigation continues.
A police investigator said Mr Ogorchukwu was attacked after the trader’s “insistent” requests to the suspect and his partner for spare change.
Nevertheless, his horrific murder – caught on video – has firmly put the spotlight on racism in Italy.
In 2016 another Nigerian man, Emmanuel Chidi Namdi, was killed after defending his wife from racist abuse in the town of Fermo in central Italy.
Two years later, a far-right extremist shot six African migrants in a drive-by attack in a town about 25km (15.5 miles) from where Mr Ogorchukwu was killed.
When the police arrested him, he was wrapped in the Italian flag shouting “Viva l’Italia”, telling police he wanted to “kill them all”.
In fact this region of Le Marche has been governed since 2020 by the far-right party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy).
It is led by Giorgia Meloni, who could become Italy’s first female prime minister if she wins a snap election to be held in September.
The party, which is expected to emerge as the single largest, is part of a wider conservative bloc that includes the right-wing Lega (League), led by Matteo Salvini and the conservative Forza Italia (Forward Italy), led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Ms Tekle says black people in Italy regularly experience racist violence, police harassment and discrimination, and the rise of far-right anti-immigration parties has “normalised” racism.
Actor Daniel Kaluuya, who won an Oscar last year, said success hasn’t stopped him experiencing racism. “The police stop me.
They don’t know I’ve got an Oscar, unless I’m carrying it out the [car] window” he said. Kaluuya won the award for playing Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah. Daniel Kaluuya
The Camden-born star, 33, also said he is “conflicted” over supporting the England football team, adding that the “toxic” racism after England’s loss in the final of Euro 2020 gave him “a jolt of a reminder” of abuse from growing up, often from parents of his friends.
“It’s why we’re never comfortable in the pub,” he said during a chat with footballer Marcus Rashford on US show The Shop. Kaluuya, left, says he plans to spend more time behind the camera.
Beatrice left dad to sweat
Should Prince Andrew’s daughter Beatrice have told him not to do his infamous “I can’t sweat” BBC interview? Producer Sam McAlister, who set up the chat and is having her book on the saga made into a film, tells us Bea was a “rainmaker” over the deal.
In hindsight the “best advice” would have been to say “no”, McAlister says, but Andrew is “a law unto himself”.
Was Truss right to channel Four Yorkshiremen?
LIZ TRUSS channelled Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen as she attacked Rishi Sunak over privilege in the leader debate last night, saying she is a Tory to help kids like those “let down” at her Leeds school.
But contemporary Laura Parker says this is “not true”, as it “had significant numbers going to university”. Truss is unlikely to be quizzed on this. She is said to have “no plans for broadcast interviews” this week.
Nigel Havers defends Harry
NIGEL HAVERS, who was a pal of Princess Diana, came to the defence of her son Harry last night. “He’s desperately in love with this girl,” the actor told an event at the Delaunay restaurant.
A New York police impersonator who was caught on camera claiming to be an “off-duty trooper” while going on a racist road rage tirade has been charged with a hate crime, Sergeant Daniela Portillo with Newburgh police confirmed to CNN.
Cellphone video of the incident taken on June 11 shows the police impersonator William J. Ryan, 60, spewing racist slurs at Robert McLymore, a Black lieutenant with the Wallkill, New York, police department and his 18-year-old son, Portillo said.
“I’m an off-duty trooper, you f**king stupid n***er,” Ryan says in the video that was taken by McLymore on Saturday in Newburgh. “You’ll never be White! You’ll never be White!” Ryan continues to say before flicking his middle finger at McLymore and driving away.
McLymore told CNN the confrontation started when a man in a red truck, who was driving behind him, became enraged and sped around him when he slowed down to let another car pass in front of him.
That man, police say, was Ryan. McLymore says he then pulled next to Ryan and rolled his window down to question him and that is when Ryan began berating and yelling at him and his son.
According to a police report obtained by CNN, McLymore asked the driver what his problem was, and Ryan responded, “I thought you were letting me go in front of you.”
The entire incident spanned three different locations and lasted about 10-15 minutes, according to McLymore, and during the dispute, Ryan also threatened him with a knife, according to the police report.
In a statement to CNN, New York State Police spokesman Trooper Steven Nevel said that Ryan is only a police impersonator, not a state trooper in New York, nor is he affiliated with “any law enforcement agencies.”
“Mr. Ryan will be held accountable for his criminal actions and deplorable speech. His racists (sic) threats were not only harmful to the victim in the case, but echoes deep within our city,” Newburgh Police Chief Anthony Geraci added.
Ryan pleaded not guilty during his arraignment, court records show.
On Saturday, in the parking lot of a neighborhood grocery store, an eighteen-year-old armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle, the N-word emblazoned on its front sight, began shooting.
Shots cracked in the air, piercing through an unusually warm eighty-degree spring afternoon in Buffalo, New York. The teen-ager, who was later identified by the police, donned military-esque camouflage, was draped in body armor, and wore a camera to capture his bloody rampage.
When the shooting stopped, thirteen people had been hit, ten of them killed. Eleven of those shot were Black. The gunman was captured by the police when he left the grocery store, and, by late Saturday night, he was arraigned on charges of first-degree Racists murder.
The shooter is alleged to have posted a hundred-and-eighty-page “manifesto” avowing white-supremacist beliefs. In the hate-filled text, he denounced immigrants and Black people as “replacers” of white people.
The notion that white people are being replaced has recently moved from the fringe of far-right politics to mainstream Republican Party politics.
The Fox News personality Tucker Carlson has helped to popularize the ideology, and it has dovetailed seamlessly with the rhetoric of the Republican Party, which has insisted on describing the arrival of migrants at the southern border—seeking entry into the U.S. as asylum seekers—as an “invasion.”
The shooter rationalized his vicious attack by trying to fit it into this grand, esoteric conspiracy of white replacement through immigration.
His manifesto, by contrast, is filled with crudely racist memes about Black Americans. In fact, for all his denunciation of “replacers” in the manifesto, an archive of his posts on the messaging platform Discord, from the past six months, barely mentions immigrants.
Instead, he writes prolifically and disparagingly about Black people, whom he incessantly describes with racial slurs. In a search of archived posts beginning in 2021, the word “immigrant” appears twelve times, “replacement” eighteen times, “replacer” twenty-two times, but “blacks” and the N-word each appear a hundred times.
Scotland is a racist country, the sister of Sheku Bayoh has said. In an interview with the BBC, Kadi Johnson spoke of her guilt in encouraging her brother to relocate from London.
She also said she would not encourage young black men to make the same move.
Mr Bayoh, 31, died after being restrained by officers in Kirkcaldy, Fife, in 2015.
The family believes race played a part in his death, and say they have yet to hear the truth.
Police were called in the early hours of 3 May 2015 after Mr Bayoh was spotted behaving erratically on the streets of his home town.
He was restrained on the ground for five minutes before falling unconscious. He was pronounced dead at hospital a short time later.
A public inquiry, which started taking hearings last week, was first announced in late 2019 and is considering issues including the circumstances of the death, the post-incident management and the extent to which events leading up to and following Mr Bayoh’s death were affected by his actual or perceived race. Sheku Bayoh
Inquiry chairman Lord Bracadale has said he is “fully committed” to getting to the truth of Mr Bayoh’s death.
It was set up after then the Lord Advocate declined to charge Police Scotland or the officers involved in the death.
Asked if she thinks Scotland is a racist country, Ms Johnson replied: “I’m afraid I’d say yes, because of the way we have been treated.
“When my brother died, instead of the police coming to me telling me exactly how my brother died, it’s just the lies they told me from the start. So there was no trust in them. I don’t trust them anymore.
“How can you come to somebody to break sad news like that and yet you don’t know. You know the very first question they’ll ask you is how did my loved one die? But then you’re saying you don’t know and you’re carrying on telling me so much lies.”