5 Things to Know: MCSO Chief Deputy Resigns, Calls Out Sheriff McFadden

Chief Deputy Resigns from MCSO, Calls Out Sheriff McFadden

Former Chief Deputy Kevin D. Canty with the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) announced his resignation on Friday with a scathing letter that accused his former boss, Sheriff Garry McFadden, of abusing his power and cultivating a toxic culture in the department by way of verbal abuse, retaliatory action and other dysfunctional behavior.

Canty joined the MCSO as chief deputy in February of this year after having worked with the NC State Bureau of Investigations.

In his letter, Canty said he was proud to join Sheriff McFadden’s office, as he had voted twice for Mecklenburg County’s first Black sheriff, but once he joined the department he learned that some of the allegations he had heard about McFadden were “100% accurate,” describing how he witnessed McFadden tell effortless lies only to react with anger when confronted with evidence of those lies.

“The failures of this agency are due to your lack of professionalism, leadership, and managerial abilities,” Canty wrote. “You often mention the ‘culture’ of MCSO and imply that it is somehow attributable to your predecessors. That works the first year or two after you become the leader. But after year six, the culture is your culture.”

Many of Canty’s claims corroborate reporting by Queen City Nerve in 2022 in which multiple former members of McFadden’s staff raised red flags about his toxic style of leadership, warning that it was putting both employees and people incarcerated in MCSO’s jails in danger.

Read more: Former Staff Speaks Out About Issues at Mecklenburg County Jail (2022)

“The MCSO functions like a third-world dictatorship with no one following the chain-of-command, which you openly and repeatedly flaunt and encourage staff not to follow,” Canty wrote in his resignation letter to McFadden. “This has resulted in pure chaos. In my thirty-three years of law enforcement experience with now four agencies, I have never witnessed such dysfunction. I have never worked in such a toxic and abusive environment and have never seen an agency head conduct himself in such a classless and abusive manner as you.”

You can read the full text of Canty’s letter here.

MCSO sent out a release on Friday confirming that McFadden had received Canty’s letter but could not publicly discuss personnel records in accordance with state law.

“We are a great agency and we always have been,” McFadden wrote in a statement. “We will continue to be a great agency and I am confident that we will be an even better agency tomorrow than we are today.”

NC Orgs Call for Reduction in Prison Overcrowding after Helene

Organizers with Disability Rights NC (DRNC) and eight other human rights organizations in North Carolina on Friday called on state prison and parole officials to release nearly 2,000 incarcerated women and men to ease dangerous overcrowding in state prisons after evacuations and shut-downs due to Hurricane Helene.

Representatives of the nine groups gathered in front of the NC Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh on Friday morning to call attention to the fact that Hurricane Helene led to shut-downs at four North Carolina prisons due to severe damage at each one.

“Many incarcerated people at these prisons suffered days without running water or electricity, forced to defecate in plastic bags,” read a release on Thursday. “Now, prisons further east that are already experiencing overcrowding and understaffing are being overwhelmed with people from evacuated WNC prisons. Incarcerated people report sleeping on the floor in gymnasiums with little to no access to communication with loved ones, reduced food rations, unreliable access to medical and mental health attention, and increased tension and violence.”

Organizers are asking that officials relieve the overcrowding by releasing some of the people incarcerated in these prisons through parole, application of discretionary time credits, Extended Limits of Confinement authority, and discretionary action by the Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission, as they did for 4,500 people during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These efforts kept vulnerable people safe from the virus, reduced overcrowding issues, saved millions in taxpayer dollars, and had no negative impact on public safety,” read Thursday’s release. “With some state prisons now operating at more than 130% capacity, while severely under-staffed, we are urging state officials to revive these available, common-sense efforts.”

You can watch the full press conference via the NC Justice Center Facebook page here.

Two Killed in West Charlotte Wreck

Two senior citizens were killed in a traffic wreck this week after a car they were in was struck by a speeding driver.

At approximately 8:13 a.m. on Wednesday, first responders were called to a motor vehicle crash with injuries on Freedom Drive, where they located a 2024 Mitsubishi Mirage with extensive damage that was occupied by a driver, 67-year-old Gregory Thompson, and front-seat passenger, 70-year-old Connie Yates. Medic pronounced Thompson and Yates dead at the scene. Officers also located a 2010 Dodge Challenger occupied by a 34-year-old driver and a juvenile girl. The driver of the Dodge and the juvenile passenger were transported to Atrium Health Main with non-life-threatening injuries. All occupants of both vehicles were wearing their seatbelts.

In the above map of deaths due to traffic-related incidents in Charlotte in 2024, red markers signify a person killed in their car, black markers signify pedestrian deaths, purple markers signify motorcycle deaths, yellow markers signify pedestrians killed by trains, and green markers signify deaths involving micro-mobility vehicles such as bicycles, scooters, skateboards and wheelchairs.

A preliminary investigation indicated that the driver of the Dodge was driving southeast on Freedom Drive when he collided with Thompson’s vehicle as it was making a U-turn near the 3200 block of Freedom Drive. The driver of the Dodge was found not to be impaired, but excessive speed on his part was a contributing factor in this collision. Once he was released from the hospital, he was arrested and charged with two counts of misdemeanor death by vehicle, driving without a license, improper use of a lane, child safety seat violations, speeding, and window tint violation.

County Health Department Launches New Narcan Kiosks

Mecklenburg County Public Health unveiled a new program on Monday in which medical vending machines known as kiosks will hold free Naloxone, also known as Narcan, as well as COVID tests and sexual health kits.

The county’s first kiosk is already open inside the Ella B. Scarborough Community Resource Center at 430 Stitt Road in east Charlotte, with another set to open outside the Valerie C. Woodard Community Resource Center at a later date.

To receive the free supplies, residents will register for the medication with their phones for verification while at the machine, allowing for any pending or needed follow-up appointments, according to a release on Monday. Once registered, the kiosk will release the products to residents.

CMPD Officer Arrested, Charged with Harassment

CMPD on Tuesday announced that one of its officers has been placed on administrative leave without pay following his arrest on harassment charges out of South Carolina.

According to CMPD, the Rock Hill Police Department (RHPD) had issued a warrant against officer Dylan Lineberger for first-degree harassment on Oct. 25, on which he was arrested following a traffic stop in Lincolnton, NC, on Tuesday, four days later. He was off-duty at the time of his arrest.

The charges were reportedly tied to two separate reports of vandalism against multiple vehicles in Rock Hill, one on Oct. 22 and the next on Oct. 24.

“I am tremendously disappointed to learn of the arrest of Officer Lineberger,” wrote CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings in a statement on Tuesday. “Any time an officer is arrested, it shakes the public’s confidence in law enforcement and erodes trust in policing. We work daily to improve relationships with the community and will continue to do so. We have high expectations for our men and women in uniform, but when our officers are not at work, we expect them to abide by the same laws they are sworn to uphold.”