Five Charlotte-Mecklenburg officers are gone after investigators allegedly found racist texts on a fellow officer’s phone, including talk of a contest to pull over the most Black drivers and use force on Black residents.
The texts surfaced by accident. State investigators probing former officer Seth Elliott for allegedly misusing the department’s Flock license plate cameras recovered the messages from his phone. Elliott was arrested for illegally accessing a government computer and resigned in August.
According to the chief, the conversations went back years and carried racial slurs along with sexual and religious bias, and one message reportedly likened the group to a “clan rally.” Patterson, who started her career in this same department, put it plainly.
“As a Black woman who began my career here in this very department, it is especially painful and disheartening to hear concerns from our community about racism coming from within the ranks of this organization.”
Chief Estella Patterson, October 15 briefing
On Monday, after a public records request, the department named the five who resigned: Mateo Juarez, Joseph Kelly, Tredan Maronic, Matthew Osborn and Alexander Larsen. All five were hired in 2023 or 2024, and Patterson had already moved to fire them. A sixth officer, Jeremiah Todman, is suspended without pay pending a Civil Service Board review.
Now the department is going back through their traffic stops, arrests and body camera footage, and Patterson has asked the FBI to help look for civil rights violations. She is also pursuing revocation of their state certifications, so none of them can go be a cop somewhere else in North Carolina. Charlotte’s NAACP chapter wants the same.
One line from the chief matters for fairness: investigators have not identified evidence of civil rights violations yet, and none of the officers has been charged over the texts. The only criminal case so far is Elliott’s computer charge. The words were on the phone, though, and five careers ended over them.
The audit keeps going, because the question hanging over all of it is whether this was one group chat or a glimpse of something wider.