Rep. Carla Cunningham has joined forces with a quartet of former Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office deputies to petition for a court-ordered removal of county Sheriff Garry McFadden.
The petition accused McFadden of a variety of misconduct, including telling Cunningham the people of Mecklenburg County would “come after” her if she didn’t vote to sustain one of Gov. Josh Stein’s vetoes.
Cunningham, D-Mecklenburg, took that and similar comments as a threat of physical harm, or that the Sheriff’s Office “would refuse her any protection,” the petition alleges.
In all, it was “akin to a mafia boss demanding money by saying ‘nice little store you’ve got there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it,’” said the petition, drafted by Raleigh-based lawyers Philip Thomas and Jonathan Marx.
McFadden is reportedly aware of the petition, but did not issue an immediate response, according to media reports.
The filing came on the same day that Stein endorsed one of Cunningham’s opponents in the upcoming Democratic primary for the District 106 seat, the Rev. Rodney Sadler.
“The people of North Charlotte deserve a representative who will fight for Democratic values, defend our public schools and keep costs down,” Stein said. “Rev. Dr. Sadler will help us build a North Carolina where we can all afford to thrive.”
The subtext here is that Cunningham’s been a part of what House Speaker Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, has called the GOP’s “working supermajority” in their chamber.
As the petition puts it, “on a handful of occasions,” Cunningham “has crossed the aisle to vote for Republican-sponsored bills that require great cooperation” from sheriffs like McFadden with federal immigration authorities.
The removal process is court-supervised, and a Superior Court judge has the power to suspend a targeted sheriff pending the resolution of the matter. State law assigns county attorneys or district attorneys the job of presenting the case for removal.
Mecklenburg County DA Spencer Merriweather responded Monday to the petition by asking the SBI to probe the petition’s allegations.
Merriweather said the removal law creates “creates [due-diligence] obligations” that in this instance first require an investigation.
He also noted that the process is only rarely used, as “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.”
Like Cunningham, McFadden is facing opposition in March’s Democratic primary, from former deputies Rodney Collins and Antwan Nance and from former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Sgt. Ricky Robbins.
McFadden complaints
The petition seeking Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden’s removal from office contends that the two-term incumbent arbitrarily played favorites among deputies and jail inmates.
Former Mecklenburg Sheriff’s Maj. Bryan Adams alleged McFadden promoted unqualified deputies because they were part of what he called “Team Sheriff.”
In practice, that meant “going outside the chain of command and reporting to McFadden personally about their co-workers and supervisors to remain in his good graces, and to be considered for promotions and more desirable assignments,” the petition says.
Adams claims a detention officer got promoted to sergeant because she “acted as a de facto informant” for McFadden about happenings in the county jail.
Another got bumped up from sergeant to captain despite failing the captain’s exam. A third deputy escaped discipline for criticizing higher-ups — McFadden among them — because he was giving the sheriff information.
Former deputy Juan Delgado, meanwhile, says he saw McFadden make “oral, in-person promises” to some inmates that went against the county jail’s written policies.
Deputies who subsequently insisted on following those policies faced having to explain that to “now-irate and sometimes violent inmates,” the petition alleges.
Former Sgt. Marcia Crenshaw Hill says problems with contraband in the jail “increased significantly” after McFadden took office.
She also says the sheriff relaxed policies on what inmates can possess while they’re in “single-cell confinement” to “appease inmates and their families,” the removal petition says.
Hill got stabbed in the neck by an inmate in 2020, with a homemade weapon made “likely out of shards of his mirror.” She says McFadden faulted her for the incident. After being out on worker’s comp leave for a year, the sheriff’s office eliminated her position without giving her a chance to apply for medical retirement.
Former Chief Deputy Kevin Canty — a former SBI agent who left the Mecklenburg Sheriff’s Office after nine months because of disagreements with McFadden — says the sheriff launched internal investigations of workers who had done nothing wrong because he disliked them or didn’t think they were loyal.
The petition more broadly alleges that the Mecklenburg Sheriff’s Office is short-staffed because deputies don’t like the “intolerable work environment” the incumbent has created.
The county’s fiscal 2025-26 budget authorizes the sheriff to employ up to 961 full-time staff and 35 on a limited part-time basis. The part-timers mostly work courthouse security.
The removal petition alleges the office is operating with about 770 employees.
House Republican leaders had already scheduled a Select Oversight committee hearing with Charlotte-area officials for Jan. 22, to address security concerns following two recent stabbings on the city’s light-rail system.
A couple hours before the filing of the removal petition on Monday, House Majority Leader Brenden Jones, R-Columbus, tweeted that panel will question McFadden about “the gross mismanagement within” the Sheriff’s Office, “not to mention its blatant disregard for state law.”