The first few months of 2025 have been tumultuous for Sheriff Bill Rogers, the chief law officer of Columbus county in North Carolina.
In February, his department settled a lawsuit accusing Columbus jail deputies of neglecting the care of a county inmate who was almost beaten to death in 2022. Then in March, a group of Rogers’s deputies were accused of assault during the arrest of a 57-year-old who claimed he was punched in the back of the head and left bloody after allegedly running a stop sign.
Those episodes follow years of scandal.
In 2023, Rogers’s predecessor in the top job was forced to resign – twice – after recordings emerged of him describing African American deputies on his force as “Black bastards”. The department was also under a recent federal investigation over allegations of sprawling embezzlement.
