Get off your butt and do your job | Eastern North Carolina Now

    On October 1, 2012 at approximately 3:30 p.m. I saw a woman walking down the yellow line on John Small Avenue near Frank's Pizza. She appeared to be in a daze and was oblivious to the vehicles whizzing by. It was a dangerous situation and time was of the essence. I immediately called 911. A dispatcher answered and asked me what my emergency was. I told her, giving her all the information I had. She then announced that she was transferring me to the city dispatcher. I told her to just relay the message. She wanted to argue about it. I wanted to go and see if I could prevent the woman from being injured. When the dispatcher insisted I stay on the phone rather than go try to prevent an accident, I told her who I was and that as a County Commissioners I would bring this issue up that night for the public to know about it.

    Yes. I did react crudely and told her to just "get off your butt and do your job."

    Soon thereafter I got a call from a reporter for the local newspaper down the street. The reporter informed me she had a tape of the conversation. I told her what had happened and that yes indeed I had spoken harshly to the dispatcher.

    Was I rude? Certainly. Was I crude to the dispatcher. I certainly was. And I would do it again if I saw a county employee not doing their job as it should be done. Her job was to take the information I gave her and dispatch a car to investigate. Time was of the essence. It was a dangerous situation. It was not the time to transfer the call or argue with the caller, no matter who it was. Just get a car dispatched.

    But really, the dispatcher is not the issue here. The issue is her boss.

    Her boss is Alan Jordan, the self-proclaimed King of Beaufort County. Rather than call me, or step next door and ask me face to face if I had a problem with one of his employees he goes to the newspaper and releases a 911 tape.
Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson is really not such a bad guy, especially when he is trying to shrink government, and pry its clinging fingers off of our backs: Above.     photo by Stan Deatherage
    911 recordings are public record. No problem with that. But after Sheriff Jordan has refused more than a dozen requests for public records and after he successfully had two records of his own alleged careless and reckless driving suppressed, one has to question why he was so ready to disclose this record. Of course we all know the answer. The Honorable Sheriff likes playing "gotcha" games.

    Let me tell you what's really going on here. I believe Sheriff Jordan is trying to retaliate against me as a County Commissioner because I have been pushing for an Oversight Committee to be appointed to oversee the operations of the Sheriff's Department. A majority of the county commissioners is afraid to get involved with overseeing the Sheriff's Department because, I believe, they are intimidated by the Sheriff.

    But oversight, particularly of the Sheriff Department's budget, is a statutory duty of the County Commission. This is the department that spent over $5000 of your money suing a former deputy trying to recover a $350 gym fee. The county taxpayer ended up paying the gym fee. It is the same department that installed illegal plastic-glass in the jail which had to be pulled out and replaced by metal screens that would meet the fire codes. That boondoggle cost you, the taxpayer, over $25,000. This is the same county department that sent out letters to victims of crime telling them their case would not be investigated. And the list goes on. Clearly the poor management and lack of oversight in the Sheriff's Department has cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars in recent months. Yet the Majority on the County Commission refuses to appoint an oversight committee.

    So yes indeed, you can count on me making a public issue any time I see a county employee not performing their job the way it should be performed. Yes indeed.

    If Sheriff Jordan wants to convince me that his office is operating as it should, he would be wiser to agree to an oversight and review panel rather than leaking 911 tapes to his buddies who run the local mullet wrapper. He can call it "bullying" (wow, is that not a chic term these days) if he wants. That's fine with me. But I intend to continue to blow the whistle every time I see his, or any, county department not doing its job. Count on it. And call it what you please Sheriff.