So shortly after defeating the county's first black sheriff is Columbus county
north Carolina sheriff like Jody Greene, he apparently decided to celebrate.
So he took his own phone call and decided to talk about how he's gonna get those
black officers, every one of them that works in his department.
The audio of this phone call was just released to a local news station and
it's pretty damning.
Let's look at some details of what it is that Jody Greene had to say about it some
of his officers, he said f them black bastards.
They think I'm scared they're stupid.
I don't know what else to do with them.
So it's just time to clean them out man.
Good job what a leader this guy is.
So these conversations happen with interim chief Jason Soles,
this is back in February of 2019.
Jason Soles came in here because, I think it's a bit of an odd situation.
I'm curious why Greene had this thought process but
let's get to more of what happened.
Because at the time Green was still embroiled in the aftermath of a tight
election that's against former Sheriff Lewis Hatcher who was black,
which he won by a margin of only 34 votes.
As the winner was still being determined Jason Soles had been named the interim
sheriff.
Now current day Soles is planning to run against this same chef Green and
he released this audio of that phone call to the local news outlet.
So apparently Soles also brought the order to the governor's office and
the attorney general's office as well.
But the recordings are not only being looked at by the State Bureau of
investigation for possible obstruction of justice.
Again, this is 2019 when he said all this.
So back to Greene in these recordings,
he can be heard telling the interim sheriff that he hated Black Democrats.
Didn't trust the black detention officer in the sheriff's office and
would fire people who were quote guilty by association of supposedly leaking
information about him.
So during these calls, Greene also expressed his suspicions that.
One of the department's black officers was leaking this unspecified information that
he's so worried about to then Sheriff Lewis Hatcher, the black sheriff.
He says I'm sick of it, I'm sick of these black bastards.
I'm going to clean house and be done with it and we'll start from there.
There's a snitch in there somewhere,
telling what we're doing is what he said on another phone call he said.
And I'm not gonna have it, I'm not gonna have it.
Apparently he's not gonna have it more on this because Greene also disparaged
Melvin Campbell a black sergeant at the sheriff's office.
Who had worked under Greene for 30 years at the north Carolina highway patrol.
He said more.
He said we'll cut the snake's head f off period.
And Melvin Campbell is his biggest snake is Lewis Hatcher ever dared to be.
Every black that I know you need to fire him to start with.
He's a snake.
So they of course he was looking to make sure he followed through on these promises
and these declarations especially about these black officers in his department
a little bit more.
Much of what Greene promised to do did come to pass the two black officers
on the county sheriff's command staff were demoted and
one of them was eventually fired.
This investigation is continuing ongoing and Greene did respond.
There was another point that I talked about this morning on the watch list when
he said there was nothing racist about what I said.
I didn't say anything racist.
What's racist?
Don't have any actions and thoughts that are race except for
everything that you heard on those phone calls.
One more thing about what Greene said.
He maintained his former election opponent had been spreading false rumors about him
in the aftermath of the 2018 election.
And that the conversations heard in the recordings were somehow altered,
[LAUGH] to create a misleading representation of him.
Because he also accused Soles of being an officer with poor performance who's not
trying to run a smear campaign against him weeks ahead of this election in November.
Again, the guy that's running against him knowledge wouldn't release the phone calls
because back in 2019.
Greene decided to call Soles and divulged all this to him, fellow white officer and
he's like he'll keep my secret warning, apparently not.
>> So the context of what Soles did is actually really important to the story
because Soles did not tape this years ago and
then just really said now when he's running for office.
He actually then brought it to the authorities.
He said in the beginning of course he wasn't taping.
It's just a random call between an interim sheriff and
a guy who at the time was leading and was likely to be the next sheriff, right?
And but Greene started saying these crazy things and
Soles like this is really terrible.
I think I've got a record a part of this call just so people know this is real
because he's threatening to fire all these black officers.
And if he does well that's terrible, right?
And so he then takes the tape and gives it to authorities,
gives it to local authorities.
And they say yeah we're on it.
So he waits,he waits and waits and waits and then he goes back, we're on it.
Nothing, nothing nothing.
He takes it to the FBI nothing.
He thinks to everybody for about three years then finally says nobody's doing
a goddamn thing about like well damn it, I'm gonna run against him.
And I'm gonna show you everybody the tapes.
Now by the time he said he shows the tapes they're like
yeah you're running against him, okay?
But guys that's not just the frustrating part of the story.
It's also super important because think about all of the agencies that
thought he's gonna fire all the black officers.
And he did fire all the black, he said he was gonna do it the racist thing
where he fires everyone for being black and then he did do it either fired or
demoted all of them under his command.
And they don't they think that's no big deal.
So the local authorities don't do anything.
Local government doesn't do anything, FBI doesn't do anything.
They think that that's normal that's actually more
dispiriting than this one racist sheriff.
But do you think that sheriff's gonna treat not only his own employees,
that's already a given right?
He already did fire and promote them.
You think he's gonna treat the black people in that town fairly when he
thinks they're every black he knows is a snake.
You read the quote again, every black he knows is a snake and
they're black bastards and then he says and I bet you it's mostly genuine.
He goes I don't know what's racial about that because they genuinely
think that they're 100% racism is so
normal that they're saying, wait but that's not bad is it?
Because racist sounds bad but that's not bad.
It's just being rational.
I hate every black person and
I fire them because that's what anybody would do, right?
No that's what racists would do.
So that's look guys I saw this story I thought Jesus Christ because
I'm one of you guys, if you have trouble believing how awful
people can be like this, I've been in your shoes.
I remember when I was young, I was growing up, I was actually a Republican and
people would tell me about cops behaving badly and I'm like, no.
Because it was so outside of my experience, I'm like,
why would they do that?
They're so randomly hateful and vicious.
That just doesn't make any sense.
Well, whether it makes sense or not, they definitely do it, they definitely do it.
And apparently they do it so
regularly that nobody even thinks it's out of the ordinary.
>> This story If I can be totally transparent, I always tell people about
how when you think of racism, people don't think of systemic racism.
People don't think of like institutions or maybe even processes in which
they're not even conscious they're part of that concept.
When they think of racism, they think of the old timey racism, like the white
sheriff in the town who calls the black person the N word and stuff like that.
Whereas this kind of seems like one of those cases,
this is not one of those like, well.
I don't know if this is exactly as in it is just overt,
that's how I would describe this overt racism,
hardcore revert classic old timey racism by the sheriff.
So it's pretty wild to seize the story taking place in,
2022 the year of our Lord.
It's weird though, that we got to this point though.
>> You said it's old timey, regular racism.
But I guess that's as Jenkins point out, maybe the surprising part is then after
it's presented to other folks, they don't even think before you go.
Yeah, maybe we're looking to cover this up.
But it's literally just, we're not gonna do anything because the response time many
times from authority figures or anybody like that.
It's once the pressure comes on, once people then say, hey,
why aren't you doing something about this?
Which apparently now is the case.
And he was, I think excommunicated from some sheriffs association in the area,
that's the extent of it.
Not even that they were about to vote on it.
And he said, you know what, I'm just gonna resign anyway.
Just to avoid maybe that embarrassment or something like that.
So even that level of penalty wasn't gonna happen until there was pressure applied by
people went, what are you guys doing down there?
But again, you may hear folks who like to think the way as Genk was
talking about many Republicans still do that no, no way.
But as we see more and more tapes listen to more, more audio.
Then someone says,
how do you think this guy would train his officers when they encounter.
Maybe one of those folks that he thinks are just bad people based off of who
they are.
You have to find yourself answering that question before you go on continue your
belief systems.
That's all. Just think about it.
When someone asks it to you, they're not looking to pigeonhole you put in some
corner and tell you now you have to say you're racist.
But just understand maybe detach yourselves from people that are like this
and acknowledge the truth.
It doesn't hurt in fact, your world will get better.
>> Yeah, I gotta say two more things.
So unfortunately there's a pattern throughout a lot of our stories,
which is law enforcement's complete indifference to justice and injustice.
So when cops do things that are wrong, what do they do?
Of course they all rally around the cop who did the thing that was wrong, right?
They thin blue line, they call it, right?
So in Ohio Tamir Rice, a 12 year old gets shot within two seconds.
Obviously the cops should have said, put your hands up.
They should have inquired.
He didn't need to shoot the kid, right?
And the kid was actually no threat at all.
But every cop says no, that injustice is perfectly justified.
Really, perfectly justified.
Like that doesn't cause you concern at all rape test kits, tens of thousands of them,
maybe hundreds of thousands of them lying around the country.
They don't even bother using them.
They never actually do the test.
Well don't you care.
A woman was raped.
Don't you care?
Like we gotta solve the case.
It's right there.
The evidence is right there.
They don't even test them.
They don't use them because they don't care about justice.
And that's just amazing to me.
It's the people that are supposed to care the most about justice care the least.
And so in this situation, this guy should be fired in an instant.
You can't have him be sheriff of black people when he thinks every black person
is a snake.
That's insane, but yet we have to try to convince people we have to control people.
We have to plead with people.
Can you please not have this vicious racist as a person with a gun and
the badge who could take our lives and
our freedom based on his preconceived notions of who we are.
And they say no, no, we'll have to think about it.
We'll have to do you know?
And then a giant long process maybe.
Yes and by the way, only because you caught us,
are we gonna think about it if you hadn't caught us?
We were the Soles gave us the evidence him on tape.
It is crystal clear, don't care,.
That's our law enforcement in this country and that's super scary.
>> And can I just say one quick thing is that Liam Neeson actually said a very
similar line and apologized for it.
That's an actor.
That's an actor being like, okay,
I shouldn't have used that term in that line, and I apologize.
This is sheriff.
So I would assume if Liam Neeson can do that,
then the sheriff could probably do the same thing.