WBTV Investigates: McFadden answers questions in one-on-one interview
By Naomi Kowles
Published: Aug. 12, 2024 at 5:59 PM EDT|Updated: 21 hours ago
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - When presented with data showing deaths more than doubling at the jail compared to previous tenures, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden points first at rising substance abuse in the community -- and then his predecessors.
“America has changed,” he said near the beginning of a wide-ranging 40-minute interview with WBTV. “The real question is what are we doing about the spike of fentanyl? What are we doing about the real spike of mental health illness?”
His record, he said, was better than his immediate predecessors: Irwin Carmichael and Chipp Bailey.
“We’ve tackled that issue about drugs coming through jail,” McFadden claimed. “Did my predecessors do it? Absolutely not.”
While McFadden points to rises in drug use and mental illness within the community as reasons for overdose deaths inside the Mecklenburg County Jail, several open lawsuits allege something else: negligence.
McFadden wouldn’t answer the question of whether jail staff bears any responsibility for the inmate’s deaths.
“I will answer that in court,” he said.
But a question about his own responsibility sparked defiance.
“Do I accept responsibility that I have something to do with that? Responsibility of them dying, that’s what you’re asking me?” McFadden responded. “Do I cause their death? Can I prevent their death?”
Deaths in jail spike since 2019
In McFadden’s five and a half years as sheriff of Mecklenburg County, there have been eighteen deaths at the detention center.
While that tenure included the COVID-19 pandemic, McFadden has previously stated that no residents died from COVID at the jail in the pandemic’s early years.
According to data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services, Irwin Carmichael oversaw eight deaths from 2014 to 2018.
Before Carmichael, there were eight deaths at the jail during the seven years Chipp Bailey served as sheriff, according to state data.
The state data also shows an overall increase in jail deaths across North Carolina but, when compared to numbers in larger jails such as Wake or Durham Counties over the same time frame, eighteen deaths in five and a half years remains an outlier on the high side.
“I’m doing more than my two predecessors together did about mental health,” McFadden stated.
“Then why are there more deaths?” a reporter asked.
“Well, you could say this. Why is there more substance abuse?”
Open lawsuits allege negligence
Four open lawsuits against Sheriff McFadden and the jail’s former health care provider, Wellpath, allege negligence in deaths at the jail. (In one of those lawsuits, the sheriff was recently dropped as a defendant due to legal intricacies dealing with the sheriff’s constitutional powers. An attorney said the merits of the lawsuit remain the same.)
In another recently filed lawsuit, a former inmate alleges lifelong medical damage from a stroke that went undiagnosed for days even as correctional officers tried to get medical staff to address his symptoms of distress, according to the complaint.
Court records show the sheriff recently settled another lawsuit over an inmate’s suicide in federal court.
Wellpath, also named in all of the suits alleging medical negligence, was the jail’s healthcare provider from 2008 until earlier this year. Around the country, the company has frequently come under fire for poor medical care in the jails they’re hired to serve.
McFadden, however, did not mention the companies he employed for health care when discussing factors driving the deaths.
Several of the lawsuits allege that both Wellpath staff and jail staff ignored requests for medical help or obvious symptoms of distress from sick inmates who died, an allegation that McFadden pushed back on.
“I will not let someone say that my staff does not respond to someone in a drug crisis when we observe them,” he said.
One lawsuit alleges a man suffering from extreme overdose symptoms went more than twelve hours – and stopped breathing – before he received Narcan. The man was pronounced dead minutes later, according to the lawsuit.
“How long is the acceptable time between an observance of symptoms and the administration of Narcan?” the reporter asked.
“My staff, when they observe it, they respond. I don’t think that you’ll find any other detention center in North Carolina doing what we’re doing about Narcan.”
In the interview, McFadden stated that, to his knowledge, he had never fired an employee for disregarding a medical need from an inmate.
Safety check violations
McFadden has repeatedly criticized state inspectors’ methodology in response to multiple citations for failing to conduct required safety checks at the jail.
“Every safety check has been completed properly for a death?” a reporter asked.
“What I’m saying to you is, it’s a discrepancy. I cannot trust the report,” McFadden responded.
“Do you believe from your staff that every safety check was completed properly before a death?”
“I believe my staff is doing a great job and I believe my staff doing the best of their ability to do their safety checks. Can I say 100%? I’ll leave that to the courts.”
In the interview, he again repeated accusations that state inspectors had lied to him.
The sheriff brought with him several binders of paperwork to the interview but refused to show the reporter what was inside. Evidence corroborating his claims has not been produced; N.C. DHHS also has not directly addressed his allegations when previously asked.
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