CMPD Police Chief expresses disgust, anger and frustration over racist texts among officers
1 Video View·Oct 15, 2026
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My personal reaction is what I've discussed, anger, frustration.
CMPD has broken its days-long silence over specifics about
the investigation that exposed
racist messages sent in between its officers.
My name is Julia Coyne. I'm the courts and public
safety reporter for the Charlotte Observer.
Inside the Spectrum Center just now, Chief
Estella Patterson said that she has asked the FBI
to investigate six of the officers that were
involved in these messages.
Three of them have resigned and three of them have been recommended
for termination. The next step is for that to go
to a city board that will determine whether the
officers will in fact be terminated.
Chief Patterson also said that the text showed several
different kinds of bias. I can share with you
that the biases show racial, sexual, they also show
religious biases.
She said that of the three officers that have not yet been
terminated, she hopes to soon call them former employees.
And we will be pursuing
as an organization the revocation
of their North Carolina law enforcement
certificate so that they cannot
be an officer anywhere in our state and I
hope that they will not be an officer anywhere in this country.

