Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Estella Patterson said she doesn’t know if she’ll ever release the messages sent in an alleged racist group chat between officers.
Six officers have resigned, and one is suspended because of racist and sexist texts uncovered during an internal investigation.
Channel 9’s crime reporter Hunter Sáenz spoke with Chief Patterson on Wednesday.
She is owning the wrongdoing in an effort to move forward.
In the fallout after the story broke, community activists demanded, in part, to see the years-long text messages sent between officers that included racist slurs and other offensive language.
The chief told Sáenz on Wednesday that she does not know if she’ll ever release the texts.
She told Sáenz that every officer in the group chat was cited for termination and that nobody slipped by.
Chief Patterson said that as far as she knows, nobody in the chat raised any concerns about what was being said nor tried to stop it.
She said each officer sent messages to that group chat.
She believes this was an isolated incident and does not prove a systemic problem in her department.
“It is about accountability with me,” Chief Patterson said. “We recognize, as an organization, the trust with the community is delicate, right now. We want to rebuild that trust. We want the community to know we are here, to serve them, and my personal thing is we are not going to hire or have people on this police department that is going to violate that trust.”
At 6 p.m. on Channel 9, Chief Patterson tells Sáenz how she plans to rebuild that trust, and you will hear her explain exactly why she doesn’t know if she will ever release the actual text messages.
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