NAACP calls for full federal investigation of Harnett County Sheriff’s Office
Lillington -- The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP has asked U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to send federal officials to Harnett County to protect residents from the deputies sworn to protect them.
The NAACP cites an News & Observer investigation, “Deadly Force,” in its request for federal intervention. The series highlighted several incidents in which residents say they have been battered or harassed by Harnett sheriff's deputies. Two men died; others have been shot with Tasers, sprayed with toxic pepper spray, punched and kicked.
“This means the problem is systematic,” Rev. William J. Barber II, state president of the NAACP, told a crowd of media and relatives of those who lost loved ones at the hands of Harnett County law enforcement. The NAACP held a press conference at the county courthouse in Lillington Monday morning.
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Family members of some victims stood behind Barber as he spoke. Dolly Griggs, mother of Christian Griggs, told the crowd that her son’s 2013 death was covered up by Harnett deputies. A cousin of Brandon Bethea, who died after being shot with a Taser by a Harnett detention officer while being held in the jail in March 2011, broke into tears as she tried to explain how he was left to die in a cell. Carmen Cardwell, the sister-in-law of John Livingston, told the crowd that Sheriff’s Deputy Nicholas Kehagias had not been punished for killing Livingston.
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