The Sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer of the county and is elected in partisan elections for a 4-year term. No person is eligible to serve as sheriff if that person has been convicted of a felony, whether or not their rights of citizenship have been restored. Duties of the Sheriff’s office include the operation of the jail, law enforcement, providing security for courts, serving criminal warrants and other writs and summonses, and transporting prisoners.
Position/philosophy statement
If you don’t have a plan someone has a plan for YOU./ I am the Dream of My Ancestors.
Current Occupation
The Sheriff of Mecklenburg
Age (optional)
65
Campaign Phone
704-906-2982
I am the current elected Sheriff, which gives me a clear advantage over every other candidate in this race. I have not lead from the sideline, I led from the front during a global pandemic, civil unrest, the Black Lives Matter movement, and an ongoing immigration crisis affecting communities across America. In each of these moments, I proved that leadership matters. I led with courage, facts, and faith ever when it was not popular with the media and others. I also bring more than four decades of continuous law-enforcement experience, earning appointments to every major executive-level Sheriff’s board in America. Under my leadership, this Sheriff’s Office has engaged with this community in ways no previous administration ever accomplished.
Staffing and Recruiting
Staffing is harder than it has ever been. Years of negative narratives about law enforcement combined with seven agencies in Mecklenburg County recruiting from the same limited poo have created real competition for qualified candidates. We don’t complain about it; we confront it with better leadership, accountability, and a culture people actually want to work in.
Mental Health
More Mental Health programs. We will continue to strengthen mental-health support for both our staff and those in our custody because healthy employees perform better, and humane treatment of residents is the right thing to do and the smart thing to do.
Re-Entry
Stronger Re-Entry for our returning Citizen to help create safer communities .
More Faith-Based & Mentorship Programs that will connect with them upon release and commit 90 days after their release
Youth & Young Adult Intervention
Early intervention for 18–25 year olds.
Veterans Services
Dedicated support and VA connections.
Veterans should not fall through the cracks.
Expanded Mental Health Treatment
Ongoing therapy and Suicide prevention
Substance Abuse Treatment began in 2024
Medication-assisted treatment began in 2024
Relapse prevention before release, not after.
Re-Entry Planning From Day One
IDs, benefits, housing, and job placement started at intake.
Release without a plan is a setup for failure.
Mental Health
Expand in-custody behavioral health care, Hire more licensed clinicians staff to reduce suicides, self-harm, and repeat incarceration.
Recruiting and Staffing
Competitive pay, retention bonuses, and real wellness which leads to chronic understaffing that leads to burnout, that leads mistakes because you can’t run an agency on overtime forever.
Community Engagement
It would help fund a full-time outreach program for youth
Housing for the Homeless After Evictions
Funding allows partnerships with housing providers because stable housing reduces repeat arrests
Housing for Our Returning citizens with support services. Because most of them have no where to go at least for the first 90 days after being incarcerated.
Under my leadership The Mecklenburg County Sheriff Office open North Carolina’s first ever Post Release Center in 2024 and has now served over 200 recently released individuals who are seeking employment, social services, identification cards, Social Security cards, and any other thing that would help them to get back on their feet and backing into Community better than their left
We also have program called The Next Great 50 entrepreneurship program is the only of it’s kind in the United States which offers and create a business and entrepreneurship with an and LLC, credit repair and and a website along with the knowledge to continually run their business after leaving the detention center. This is one of it’s kind in the US in correction
As your I keep my word. Every promise I made to you in my 2018 election and my reelection campaign in 2022 fulfilled.
Not some. Not most but each and every one of them. I did that because this community depends on its Sheriff, and I take that responsibility seriously. I created initiatives inside the Detention Center that are now nationally recognized. I currently serve on multiple national sheriff boards and on the Board of the American Correctional Association, which governs certified correctional facilities across America and I serve as Chair of Detentions for all certified correction facilities to include Chairman of The Board for Sheriff. I have served this community faithfully for more than four decades. I have led this agency through some of the most difficult moments in its history like COVID in which No one died during that time with more that 1600 inmates ( residents) and through it all, I did not fail my staff, the resident our facilities, or Mecklenburg County as Sheriff.
