The Columbus County Sheriff’s Office. (Photo by Johanna F. Still) " data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/www.theassemblync.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/colcor16-scaled-1.jpg?fit=780%2C520&ssl=1" /> Their attorneys say the allegations highlight ongoing racial inequities at the department.
The Assembly · Sarah Nagem · September 3, 2026
When Destiny Curby joined the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office in 2023, she dreamed of becoming a detective. She often joked that she wanted to be like Olivia Benson, the fictional investigator in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit .
Curby says she was medically discharged from the Army two years earlier when she injured her arm at Fort Bragg. Instead of returning to Philadelphia where she grew up, she moved to Columbus County to be near her grandmother and enrolled in basic law enforcement training at Southeastern Community College.
At the sheriff’s office, Curby, now 26, figured her smarts and ambition would help her climb the ranks quickly. When she took a detective’s exam in early 2024, her bosses told her she earned the second-highest score and would be promoted. They even ordered a nameplate with her new title.
But Curby, who is Black, never got the promotion. Meanwhile, the sheriff’s office moved nine white employees into the criminal investigation division between April 2024 and August 2025, according to rosters Curby’s attorneys shared with Border Belt Independent .
“It was very gut-wrenching for me,” Curby said in an interview. “I felt like all my hard work had went to waste.”
Curby filed a discrimination complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the sheriff’s office in September 2025. Another employee who is Black and Native American, Colborn Antoine Freeman, filed a complaint with the commission the next month, claiming the department retaliated against him for raising concerns about racial inequities. Border Belt Independent obtained both complaints.
Sheriff Bill Rogers “failed to apply policy evenly, discipline misconduct consistently, or evaluate employees by a common standard,” according to documents filed with the commission on Freeman’s behalf. “Instead, he allowed white officers to violate policy, endanger lives, drink on duty, and benefit from selectively relaxed standards, while he scrutinized, undercut, underpaid, demoted, and ultimately discarded Black employees.”
The sheriff’s office fired Curby and Freeman in March, after both had taken medical leave due to stress following demotions.
“It was very gut-wrenching for me. I felt like all my hard work had went to waste.”
Rogers has been the Columbus County sheriff since early 2023, when Jody Greene resigned from the post for the second time amid allegations of misconduct. Months earlier, WECT aired a recorded phone call in which Greene called deputies “Black bastards” and “snakes.” State and federal law enforcement launched investigations into Greene’s time as sheriff, but no one has been indicted.
“In our opinion, [Greene’s] removal and a new sheriff coming in unfortunately did not change the culture of the sheriff’s office,” Jennifer Bills, an attorney with the Chapel Hill law firm Patterson Harkavy, which is representing Curby and Freeman, said in an interview.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office did not return a request for comment for this story. In written responses to the employment commission, the office said the sheriff can reassign or fire employees at any time.
Michele Tatum, executive assistant for the sheriff’s office, said in an emailed statement on Friday that the sheriff would not comment on pending complaints.”These matters will be addressed through the appropriate legal and administrative processes. Sheriff Rogers and the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office respect those processes and will allow the facts to be considered in the appropriate forums.”
Misty Jorgensen, now the assistant attorney for Columbus County, wrote in response to the employment commission in Curby’s case: “The Sheriff does not discriminate.”
Freeman, who began working for the sheriff’s office in 2015, had been promoted to sergeant, then first sergeant, and later patrol lieutenant. In 2024, he became the accreditation manager responsible for helping the department gain national credentials through the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.
As part of the job, Freeman was responsible for ensuring the sheriff’s office “complied with policies and procedures designed to ensure fairness, accountability, and lawful practices,” according to the complaint he filed with the employment commission in October 2025.
The previous accreditation manager, a white man, was a captain and earned a salary of $82,0000, the complaint says. But Freeman was not promoted to the higher rank when he took the manager role, and his salary was $72,000.
Starting in 2024, according to the complaint, Freeman “repeatedly raised concerns about discriminatory practices against non-white officers, including the consistent denial of promotions and advancement opportunities while less qualified white employees with personal or familial ties to leadership were promoted.”
The sheriff’s office reassigned Freeman in June 2025 to bailiff, cutting his pay to just under $50,000. When Freeman asked why, he was told that “the sheriff can do what he wants,” according to the complaint.
In a response filed with the employment commission, the sheriff’s office said Freeman was reassigned because he failed to complete work that would help the office gain accreditation. Freeman’s attorneys dispute that and told the employment commission a performance evaluation in January 2025 shows he met or exceeded job expectations.
The stress and anxiety Freeman experienced following his demotion worsened his pre-existing heart condition and severe depression, according to the complaint. He went on medical leave and was seeking disability benefits when he was fired on March 30, 2026. Bills and Robyn Sanders, another attorney representing Freeman and Curby, said the firing was “a blatant attempt” to avoid honoring Freeman’s disability claim.
“A change in sheriff doesn’t necessarily erase the institutional culture overnight.”
Freeman, a 39-year-old father of six, decided to work for the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office after he called for help when someone tried to transport his infant son without a car seat. The deputy did little to assist, his lawyers wrote in a document filed with the employment commission.
“[Freeman] wanted to be the kind of officer he had not encountered,” they wrote. “He wanted to bring seriousness, dignity, and care to a setting where too many people had experienced the opposite.”
Freeman and Curby both say in complaints they have heard “credible reports” that the sheriff’s office has told other law enforcement agencies not to hire them.
“What was taken from [Freeman] was not just rank or salary. It was vocation and standing,” the lawyers wrote. “It was the identity he had built through years of sacrifice.”
In 2023, Columbus County agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a federal lawsuit from Melvin Campbell, who argued he was fired because he is Black.
Campbell began working for the sheriff’s office in 2016 under Lewis Hatcher, the county’s first Black sheriff. When Greene was elected in 2018, the sheriff’s office demoted two other Black employees, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Eastern North Carolina.
Greene mentioned Campbell by name during the controversial recorded phone call. “Melvin Campbell is as big a snake as Lewis Hatcher ever dared to be,” Greene said. “Every Black that I know, you need to fire him to start with; he’s a snake.”
In a recent interview, Bills said she thinks other non-white employees in the sheriff’s office have faced discrimination. “I can tell you,” she said, “we’ve talked to lots of people who describe a culture that is really biased.”
Curby said she is still struggling to come to terms with her experience. In January 2025, a year after she took the detective’s exam, the sheriff’s office named Curby a corporal—a role that increased her responsibilities but not her pay. About eight months later, according to her complaint, she was next in line to become a shift sergeant, but a white man got the job instead.
Curby says her superiors pressured her to transfer to the civil division in which deputies serve court papers and work as bailiffs. At one point, she said, she asked Chief Deputy Jerome McMillian, who is Black, if Rogers did not want Black women in the criminal division.
“McMillian acknowledged that ‘he knew that the situation looked racial’ and confirmed that he had raised those concerns directly with the Sheriff,” Bills and Sanders wrote in a document filed with the employment commission.
Like Freeman, Curby went on medical leave due to job-related stress. When she returned to work in January 2026, she asked to be reassigned as a school resource officer. She said she was fired two months later “without warning, without explanation, and without the opportunity to ask questions.”
Jorgensen, the assistant attorney in Columbus County, wrote in a November 2025 response to the commission that Curby failed to carry out her duties on two occasions—when she refused to serve an arrest warrant and when she remained in her car while her partner faced a “potential dangerous situation” while serving an eviction notice. Curby’s attorneys dispute the claims.
When Rogers, who previously worked with Greene at the Highway Patrol, was appointed sheriff, he said he wanted to improve morale within the office and prove that all residents would be treated equally. Sanders said it’s clear from these complaints that little has changed. “We essentially are saying that a change in sheriff doesn’t necessarily erase the institutional culture overnight,” she said.
Rogers, who won the Republican primary in March, is running unopposed in November.
Curby didn’t give up on a career in law enforcement. She said she was sworn in on Wednesday as an officer with the Fairmont Police Department in Robeson County. “This agency has welcomed me with open arms,” she said. “And I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a statement from the executive assistant at the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office.
Sarah Nagem is editor of the Border Belt Independent . She previously worked for The News & Observer and currently attends graduate school at Duke University.
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