Charlotte policing data points to culture of racial disparity

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Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police leadership have long defended violent interactions with civilians in isolation, but data on traffic stops, vehicle searches and use of force shows a disproportionate impact on Black people.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police have long insisted it doesn’t have a race problem.

Data shows a different reality.

From deadly confrontations to texts peppered with racist language, the department has an uneven history with people of color. After years of proposed reforms and demands of accountability, change has been slow.

“I think when you pull back and look at it in context, it informs even more what is well established,” said Charlotte attorney Jake Sussman, chief counsel for justice system reform at the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “It cannot even be called the worst-kept secret in Charlotte, which is that study after study, lived experience after lived experience, CMPD’s policing practices have been marked by, infected by, race. We have all these studies that show stopping, searching, arresting, using force against Black people in Charlotte. The disparities are unexplainable.”

The messages – uncovered last month during an unrelated state investigation – resulted in CMPD identifying seven officers linked to a multi-year group text thread that included messages of racist, sexist, and religious bigotry.

Chief Estella Patterson, who is Black, responded by ordering an audit of department records, seeking revocation of the officers' certifications, and requesting a federal civil rights review. Six officers have left the department, and termination proceedings were launched for the seventh.  In addition, the texts revealed a competition to pull over Black drivers in addition to using force against civilians.

“Transparency and accountability will continue to guide every decision we make,” Patterson said last month. “We have taken swift action since this information came to our attention, and we are committed to seeing the accountability process through. While the civil service process can be lengthy and complex, it will not diminish our responsibility to act. Our community deserves a police department worthy of its trust, and I am committed to earning and keeping that trust every single day.”

CMPD response

Patterson has outlined a process for reviewing civilian complaints and determining accountability by the department. When a complaint is received by the Internal Affairs Division, an investigation is opened and findings are referred for evaluation and hearings through CMPD’s chain-of-command board. 

Afterward, cases may be forwarded to the Civil Service Board or the Citizens Review Board.

“I recognize that addressing these allegations is what our community needs to hear from me right now,” Patterson said last month. “This moment is difficult, but it is also an opportunity to reaffirm who we are, what we stand for and the standards we expect from everyone who wears this badge. Every resident deserves to feel safe, respected and protected, and we will continue working to ensure our department lives up to that responsibility.”

Said Sussman: “I think if you looked at them in isolation, it would be hard to conclude anything other than this is incredibly disturbing racism that appears to be driving their policing. When they talk about keeping score and they talk about use of force and they're doing that in the context of race and using racist terms, it can’t be anything other than intentional racism that is not just mild banter.” 

The text incident, along with high-profile shooting deaths of Black civilians Keith Scott in Charlotte in 2016 and George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020, have led to public demands for change in how law enforcement interacts with communities of color. Although Black people control many of the political levers in Charlotte, racist policing endures. 

“We have seen this in Charlotte, we’ve seen it in other police departments across North Carolina and policing across the United States,” Sussman said. “The culture of policing – the combination of the badge, the gun, the power, the policy directives being handed down by city leaders – is what appears to be permitting that kind of, in this case, very explicit racism, and in other cases perhaps just ingrained cultural racism that is leading to a tremendous amount of distrust with policing. 

“Race plays a factor on many levels, in the fact that the leadership of CMPD, the fact that our city leadership – we are a Black-led city and should be proud of that – and the fact that we have this race problem in the policing, those things aren't mutually exclusive.”

Taking the wheel on flashpoints

Second Chance Federation, a Charlotte-based nonprofit that helps formerly incarcerated people transition to civil life, is lobbying CMPD to address the most likely interaction between police and civilians: traffic stops. 
At the center is administrative stops for non-moving offenses like expired license plates, which Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office eliminated in 2022. 

Deputies can charge drivers with offenses like driving without a valid license, lack of insurance, or outdated inspection only after stopping a vehicle for more serious or potentially hazardous violations.
Deputies still enforce stops for moving violations like speeding, running a red light and drunk driving.

“Exercising appropriate discretion in the enforcement of our laws is one of the greatest challenges and one of the greatest responsibilities of any law enforcement officer,” Sheriff Garry McFadden said at the time. “It is the intention of this new policy to encourage Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Deputies to focus on the most serious and potentially dangerous traffic offenses, while treating all drivers in and through Mecklenburg County equally under the law.” 

According to Cop Watch, a web platform maintained by Forward Justice that tracks data on law enforcement stop, search, and use of force, Black people make up 33.7% of Charlotte’s population but comprise 56.7% of stops as of 2026 compared to whites, who make up 38.7% of the population and 22.2% of stops.

“These data show significant racial disparity in regulatory and equipment stops by CMPD, which negatively impacts community trust and police legitimacy, with very little public safety benefit,” said Second Chance Federation executive director Daryl Atkinson wrote last month in a letter to Patterson.

The disparity is wider when it comes to vehicle searchers, where Black drivers were 80.9% of the people searched (2,113) compared to white drivers, who were only 5.7% (150). Hispanic drivers made up 12.9% (336) of searches. When a stop turns physical, it often involves a Black drive. Since 2002, CMPD has reported using force in 543 stops, with Black drivers making up 78.6% of incidents (427), compared to 13.3% among white drivers.

In 2025, the most recent full year of data, 16 of the 18 people CMPD used force against were Black drivers, or 88.9%. In every year on record, CMPD officers more often used force on Black drivers than their white peers.

Collaboration for change

Civil lawsuits against CMPD and internal initiatives haven’t led to long-term sustainable change in local policing, which Sussman contends is directly associated to a disconnect between civil control and law enforcement. A federal consent agreement is unlikely with a Justice Department that takes a hand-off approach to policing, so any meaningful change will be driven locally. 

“It’s really hard to find a solution together until we can all agree on what the problem is, and words in that respect matter,” Sussman said. “It matters that the leadership in Charlotte look at this squarely in the eye and say, ‘Yes, this is a problem.’ This may be a few bad apples, but this is not the first time, and I would suspect this may just be a tip of the iceberg. 

“We need to not look away and say we’ve solved it because the city has perhaps fired a couple of these people who got caught. The city really needs to engage with that, and they should ask for help, and they should enlist the community. They should enlist experts who have done this in other places to really try to root out the problem and call it what it is.”

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