By Julia Coin
The Charlotte Observer
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The FBI is investigating civil rights violations in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, where officers were recently exposed for reportedly using racial slurs and competing over who could pull over the most Black drivers. CMPD — which is in charge of policing the country’s 14th largest city, where a third of its population is Black — on Thursday broke its silence on the investigation that unearthed the divisive and upsetting texts.
“My personal reaction is one of disgust,” Chief Estella Patterson said at a news conference inside the Spectrum Center.
| SPECIAL REPORT: Where is your agency losing time?
Patterson, who became chief less than a year ago, said officers’ text messages showed racial, sexual and religious bias and went back “several years.” All six officers — who are of three different races — were from the same 2024 graduating class, she said. Three have resigned, and Patterson “hopes to soon refer to [the others] as former employees.” Those three are on unpaid administrative leave and have been cited for termination, something that must be approved by a city board at a date that has not yet been set.
“I hope they will not be officers anywhere in the country,” Patterson told reporters, saying she wants their policing certificates revoked by the state.
Patterson said the department has not found any evidence the involved officers had problematic traffic stops, arrest records or external complaints. The allegations could call into question the soundness of criminal cases based on the involved officers’ arrests. Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office had not yet begun a review of potentially affected cases as of Wednesday evening. The U.S. District Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina, which handles federal cases, is not aware of any impacted cases.
Patterson asked the FBI to investigate the officers, making CMPD the second governing body in Charlotte to fall under federal probe this month. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is also under a federal microscope following reports of “financial irregularities.”
‘Racism coming from the ranks’
Local TV stations first reported the messages earlier this week. The texts were found as a result of a State Bureau of Investigation probe into a CMPD officer who abused Flock license plate reader technology. The SBI charged Seth Elliott, who resigned from the department, with accessing government computers for looking up a license plate at the request of his college friend. CMPD’s internal affairs handled review of the messages found during the SBI’s investigation into Elliott.
Charlotte NAACP President Corine Mack, in an interview with The Charlotte Observer, said Patterson called to tell her about the messages. Mack was infuriated.
“I reminded [Patterson] that I told her that there was a possibility of some white supremacists and racists in CMPD,” Mack said. “We’re a microcosm of the rest of the country, and the former director of the FBI, Chris Farley, told me that the CIA and FBI has known since 2006 that there had been a huge number of white supremacists infiltrating police departments all over the country. So why not CMPD?”
Patterson told reporters she is committed to “making sure that what was discovered in this case is not a systemic problem.” The department is auditing all the involved officers’ body-worn camera footage and continues to do random audits of footage department-wide. She is reviewing potential gaps in CMPD’s hiring process. Her public information officer told the Observer they do background checks, which include social media checks.
Mack said she appreciated Patterson’s quick decision to try to terminate the officers and hopes it is followed with “tangible and sustainable” changes within the department.
“As a Black woman who began my career here in this very department,” Patterson said. “It is especially painful and disheartening to hear concerns from our community about racism coming from within the ranks of this organization. The Charlotte community helped shape and develop me as a leader, and I have dedicated my entire career to being a person of character and high integrity. I learned how to be a servant leader from this police department. Now that I am the chief, I accept responsibility of what happens or doesn’t happen within this agency, and I’m committed to maintaining transparency by sharing what I legally can share to the public.”
Robert Dawkins, with ActionNC, said he is tired seeing the same problem in different forms. Each chief has promised things would be different, he said, flipping through different scandals in his head. There was the killing of Keith Lamont Scott and the protests that followed. There was the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, where police used kettling techniques to trap folks into a tear-gas filled area. There was the woman who was beaten after officers stopped her for having a legal joint outside a south Charlotte Bojangles .
Each time, Dawkins said, CMPD’s chief said that problematic practices are not going to be tolerated.
“But it is tolerated,” Dawkins told the Observer. “It’s never going to be fixed if it’s ingrained in the culture.”
©2026 The Charlotte Observer. Visit charlotteobserver.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
