For three months, a group of protesters advocating for criminal-justice reform has been occupying the space outside a Charlotte-area jail pretending to be volunteers—all with the support of the county sheriff.
But now, after seeing issues like defecation and fornication spiral out of hand, Mecklenburg Sheriff Garry McFadden is beginning to backpedal on his support for the George Floyd-inspired group, which claims to be “volunteers” offering resources to those leaving detention.
“I support them but not what it has turned out to be,” McFadden said during an emergency meeting of the Mecklenburg County Commissioners, according to WCNC.
“I do not support what jail support has been turned into now and hijacked to be,” he added.
The group is an offshoot of Charlotte Uprising, which organized and led several Black Lives Matter-influenced protests and race riots in the city’s Uptown district.
During a June protest, only a few weeks after Floyd’s death in Minneapolis triggered nationwide race riots, Charlotte deputies arrested 43 jail support protesters engaged in a disruptive sit-in, according to WBTV.
The group later claimed that they had done nothing to warrant the crackdown.
The sheriff is trying to close our jail support program down. Please come sit in solidarity with us at jail support.
— Charlotte Uprising (@cltuprising) June 18, 2020
In addition to the unwanted bodily functions, the protesters have bullied sheriff’s deputies during shift changes and have vandalized the building, McFadden admitted.
The problem mirrors those plaguing blue-state “sanctuary” cities nationwide. The familiar pattern has played out in the headlines in cities like New York, Chicago, Portland and Seattle.
In each case, a liberal mayor and governing body have insisted that local law-enforcement stand down in what they have dubbed “peaceful protests.”
Inevitably, the results have been less than desirable, leading to violence and bloodshed, as well as looting and vandalism in many of the cities.
As witnesses like journalist Andy Ngo have testified before Congress, in many cases organized domestic terrorist groups like Antifa have used otherwise benign protesters as cover to wage a sort of urban guerilla warfare against the government.
Oftentimes, the mainstream media have acted as complicit accomplices.
Similar to Charlotte’s “jail support” group, a group was encamped for several weeks outside New York City’s Police Plaza, as romanticized by a New Yorker magazine writer who embedded with them overnight.
Writer Masha Gessen waxed sentimental about her own days as a 20something anarchist rioter in the article, saying the movement, organized via the encrypted phone app Signal, “smelled like a long-ago college party: cigarette smoke and cheap cologne” but with the addition of hand sanitizer.
President Donald Trump has, in cases like Portland, dispatched federal Homeland Security officers but has maintained that doing so is a last resort, only to protect official federal interests and property.
McFadden, however, a former homicide detective and reality TV star, came into office on a platform of defying federal immigration enforcement and has continued to butt heads with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as the GOP-led state legislature.
Last year, the North Carolina General Assembly sought to pass a bill that would force local sheriffs to comply with state and federal officials or else require that they resign their posts.
However, the bill was vetoed by Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper.
