Five officers with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in North Carolina have resigned and a sixth remains suspended after an internal investigation uncovered a private group text thread that the department says contained racist language, according to reporting by The Guardian, ABC News and Charlotte local outlets WSOC and WCNC.

Source: The Guardian via We Got This Covered

Police Chief Estella Patterson addressed the case at a news conference on Thursday, October 15, calling the messages "deeply troubling." She said the discovery prompted a full review of the officers' body-worn camera footage and arrest records, and that the department has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to conduct a civil rights investigation.

Source: ENM News

The department identified the five who resigned as Mateo Juarez, Joseph Kelly, Tredan Maronic, Matthew Osborn and Alexander Larsen, all hired in 2023 or 2024, and said Patterson had already cited them for termination. A sixth officer, Jeremiah Todman, hired in 2022, remains suspended pending further investigation and a civil service board review. Local reporting cited by WSOC and WCNC said some messages contained racial slurs, and one message likened the officers to a "clan rally" — an apparent reference to the Ku Klux Klan. Those characterisations are the department's and local media's accounts of messages the department has not released in full.

According to the reporting, the texts surfaced during a separate North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation probe into misuse of the department's Flock license-plate reader system. A seventh officer, Seth Elliott, resigned in August after being arrested and charged with illegally accessing a government computer in that Flock case, the reports said.

No officer has been criminally charged over the texts themselves. Patterson said she intends to seek revocation of the officers' state law-enforcement licenses, and the arrest-record review means cases involving the officers could face fresh scrutiny in court.