RALEIGH, N.C. — Columbus County Sheriff Jody Greene faces allegations of racism, politically motivated arrests and other misdeeds. He’s under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice. He recently resigned.
Yet Greene was sworn in Thursday to his second term as the top law enforcement officer in his rural county in southeastern North Carolina, after voters reelected him this November.
Almost immediately after he was sworn in Thursday morning for what is supposed to be a four-year term, the local district attorney filed a petition in court seeking — for the second time — to have Greene permanently removed from office.
The local newspaper, the News Reporter, published a copy of the petition that cites half a dozen reasons Greene should be removed from office, ranging from “highly inappropriate and racially charged statements” to corruption and a sexual relationship with one of his deputies.
A local judge already temporarily suspended Greene from acting as sheriff earlier this year, as the election was heating up. And just minutes into a courtroom hearing in late October that could’ve permanently removed him from office, Greene instead resigned. That stopped the hearing from moving forward while he continued running for reelection, The News & Observer reported at the time.
And even though voters in Columbus County this year chose Greene, a Republican, to become sheriff once more, District Attorney Jon David has now started that legal process over again, to have him removed.
The N&O attempted to contact Greene by email Wednesday requesting comment but didn’t receive a response.
Greene faced intense criticism during his 2022 reelection campaign, after local TV news station WECT published a recording of him making racist remarks about Black deputies he suspected of being disloyal, frequently referring to them as animals or with expletives.
“Every Black that I know, you need to fire him,” he told a top deputy in one recording.
Facing increased scrutiny from that initial scandal, The N&O reported, Greene was then later accused of other wrongdoing as sheriff including:
— Arresting his perceived political enemies — including a county commissioner who Greene had arrested, after he was recorded threatening to arrest him if he voted against a budget increase for the sheriff’s office.
— Threatening county commissioners with retribution in other ways, including by removing air conditioning units from a local middle school and sending investigators to one commissioner’s business.
— Sexual harassment, involving an affair with a deputy under his command.
— Damaging government property, for a broken window that allegedly stemmed from a tryst with that deputy.
— Failing to protect people in county custody, after one man was left with severe brain injuries from a beating that jail staff under Greene’s command failed to stop.
The State Bureau of Investigation is conducting a criminal investigation into Greene, The N&O reported earlier this year. The file from that probe isn’t public at this point, but Greene’s attorney said in court in October that he believed it to be over 900 pages long.
Opposition from many sides
The racist remarks, in which Greene refers to deputies he believed were sharing information with his opponent as “Black bastards” and “snakes,” were criticized by many, ranging from civil rights groups to the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association.
Calls for Greene’s resignation came from local and state chapters of the NAACP, and, crucially, from David, a fellow elected Republican official who is the district attorney for Brunswick, Bladen and Columbus counties.
Sheriffs have immense power in North Carolina, and little oversight. One of the only ways they can be removed from office — other than by voters every four years — is by order of a local judge.
David used his power as prosecutor to do just that, filing legal petitions to have Greene suspended from his position, and removed permanently. When Greene abruptly resigned in late October, David said his office would have an “ethical obligation” to file a new petition to have Greene removed if he were to win a second term.
On Election Day, Greene was reelected by 54% of Columbus County voters who cast a ballot. But he faced additional challenges after the election, filed by Columbus County residents who sought to disqualify him from holding office.
Local and state elections authorities ultimately rejected those challenges, but they pushed back Greene’s swearing-in ceremony, which was originally supposed to be held on Dec. 5, according to WECT.
Legal troubles pile up for Greene
The surfacing of the racist comments Greene made about Black deputies sparked several legal troubles for the incumbent sheriff, who was narrowly elected in 2018 by a margin of just 37 votes out of more than 18,000, The N&O reported.
But even before his current legal issues, Greene also faced other scandals from that 2018 run for office.
His campaign had hired a group that employed McCrae Dowless, the late political operative from neighboring Bladen County who during that same election ran what was described by authorities as a fraudulent scheme to help elect Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris. Greene also faced allegations that he actually lived in South Carolina and was ineligible to run for office.
However, elections officials in 2018 reviewed those concerns and ultimately decided not to block his victory. He took office in 2019, and even before he was officially installed as sheriff, a top deputy began recording Greene’s rants about the office’s Black employees.
That deputy, Jason Soles — who unsuccessfully ran against Greene in the 2022 elections — has previously said he didn’t go to the media with the recordings until 2022 because he tried to first raise concerns with state law enforcement officials, but to no avail.
After the recordings came out and David publicly called on state authorities to launch an investigation into whether Greene and his deputies may have committed obstruction of justice, the SBI confirmed that it had launched an obstruction probe into Greene.
A search warrant filed in December stated that a federal investigation into the sheriff’s office had been opened by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina, according to the News Reporter, which reported that David’s office asked for part of the warrant to be kept under seal to protect a federal investigation.
The U.S. attorney’s office declined to say if that search warrant was correct in mentioning the existence of a federal criminal investigation into Greene.
“We do not confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigations,” wrote a spokesman for Michael Easley Jr., the top federal prosecutor for Eastern North Carolina.
On top of the investigations, David told Greene he would no longer be able to call Greene as a witness in criminal cases being tried in Columbus County, “based on his racial bias.”
The comments have also halted certain grant funding for the sheriff’s office, with the North Carolina Governor’s Highway Safety Program and the Governor’s Crime Commission informing the sheriff’s office that they were suspending grants due to potential violations of federal civil rights law, The N&O reported.
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