Nobody was looking for it.
The State Bureau of Investigation was working a completely different case. A 25-year-old Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer named Seth Elliott had allegedly run an undercover officer’s license plate through the Flock camera network and sent the results to a college friend over Snapchat. The friend was the target of a drug investigation in Watauga County. Elliott was arrested in July on a misdemeanor charge and resigned.
Standard procedure: investigators pulled the data off his phone.
That’s where they found the group chat.
Six CMPD officers, all hired within the last three years, were in it. According to sources who described the messages to WBTV, the thread included a running competition over which officer could pull over the most Black drivers. The N-word was used repeatedly. The officers discussed use of force and discharging their firearms at Black residents in the same tone you’d use for fantasy football.
At some point one of them stepped back, looked at the thread, and sent a note of self-awareness. According to a message obtained by WCNC, he wrote that their texts “sound like a clan rally.”
He did not leave the chat.
Here is what we know about who they are: they came from the North Tryon, Freedom, and University City divisions. Four of the seven officers connected to the case share the same start date, which means they likely came through the academy together and brought the group chat along like a souvenir. A source told Queen City News the officers were of multiple races, which we’re sure makes the people they pulled over feel much better.
Here is what we don’t know: their names. CMPD hasn’t released them.
The officers have been suspended without pay. An internal chain-of-command review board recommended termination last week. A seventh officer connected to the case resigned back in August, before anyone had to recommend anything. Under city rules, the Civil Service Board gets the final say after a hearing, which is why every headline says the officers “may” be fired, as though there’s some version of this where a cop who entered a contest to target Black motorists keeps his badge on appeal.
CMPD’s statement said the department “will not tolerate any behavior that contradicts our core values.” Chief Estella Patterson personally called the head of the local NAACP, Rev. Corine Mack, to deliver the news. Mack said she was “concerned that you have bigots in uniform with state authority” and wants their law enforcement certifications pulled so they can’t quietly reappear two counties over.
Now the part nobody in the official statements has touched.
If six officers were competing to see who could stop the most Black drivers, then every one of those stops was a game piece. Every citation written during that competition has a scoreboard behind it. Every arrest, every search, every use-of-force report filed by these men over the last three years was produced by people who were, by their own description, running a clan rally in their pockets.
Nobody has said those cases are being reviewed. Not CMPD. Not the Mecklenburg County District Attorney. The coverage stops at the question of whether the officers get fired, as though the only victims of this thread were the department’s core values.
Release the names. Reopen every case. The scoreboard exists somewhere. Somebody should have to read it out loud.