Spartanburg community reels in the wake of Sheriff Chuck Wright's resignation

Councilman Monier Abusaft had a lot to say about Sheriff Chuck Wright's credit card spending recently at a Spartanburg City Council meeting.

"Ultimately, somebody needs to say that the sheriff did wrong," Councilman Abusaft said. He asked for an independent review of the matter.

Among other things, Abusalf took issue with the sheriff's decision to pay back $1,100 of the more than $53,000 he spent since December 2017, saying that "this number strikes me as random."

You can read more about Councilman Abusaft's comments on Sheriff Wright's credit card spending by reading the minutes of the council meeting on the city’s website.

The FBI has launched an investigation into the matter. There is no word on when its findings will be made public.

A popular sheriff for over 20 years has unexpectedly resigned. But even overwhelming popularity cannot silence whispers, doubts, and suspicions.

Some, therefore, welcome the outcome of an FBI investigation, hopeful that it will bring clarity to the saga of Chuck Wright.

“You’d always see that he was doing operation this or operation that,” Kim Reid said, who may have had in mind Operation Rolling Thunder, an annual sweep of Interstate 85 and Interstate 26 targeting traffic violations and drugs.

From her vantage point within the justice system, Reid considered Wright "a very good sheriff.”

Wright resigned on Friday, May 23, citing in a letter to Gov. Henry McMaster “a recent health diagnosis.”

In early April, Wright took a leave of absence for undisclosed medical reasons.

He had been under public scrutiny related to the hiring of his son, which led to a state ethics investigation, and the use of a county credit card to make purchases that appeared personal.

The Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office has been under investigation by the FBI.

Wright returned to work on May 20, only to resign in three days.

“I thought he was wonderful – and then all this,” Reid said. “It’s so disappointing.”

For Spartanburg County Council Chairman Manning Lynch, Wright’s resignation was “very sad.”

But he hopes it will calm uncertainty within the Sheriff’s Office and among the public, and give the council more time to “get on with the business of running Spartanburg County. It’s a load off our backs.”

With Wright’s resignation, “we’ll have an interim sheriff in place and can feel better about things,” Lynch said.

McMaster announced hours after Wright submitted a resignation letter that he had appointed Cherokee County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Jeffery F. Stephens to serve until a special election takes place later this year.

A May 23 post on the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office official Facebook page included a photograph of Stephens greeting staff members.

The post read, in part: "We're proud to welcome Jeffery F. Stephens as our Interim Sheriff! Sheriff Stephens brings over four decades of law enforcement experience back to Spartanburg County, where his career began in 1980 ... We're honored to have him back and confident in his leadership during this transitional period."

Wright was first elected in 2004 after defeating incumbent Bill Coffey in a Republican Party primary runoff.

Rick Beltram was the county’s GOP chair at the time. He recalled that Coffey had served for 16 years and faced increasing criticism over how he managed the sheriff’s office.

“Chuck was the guy who was going to clean house,” Beltram said.

Beltram said he thinks Wright “ran a good shop.” But he was aware that over the years, some of Wright’s tactics – including Operation Rolling Thunder – had become controversial.

As a countywide elected official, Wright had more constituents than almost any other local politician, Beltram noted. He was also popular among Republicans, most recently defeating primary challenger Nick Duncan in a landslide.

That combination made Wright politically powerful. Beltram, who has remained active in GOP politics, worries that the swirl of controversy and speculation surrounding Wright, as well as what may come of the FBI investigation, could have political ramifications.

“The average Republican in Spartanburg is very law-abiding and very faith-based,” he said. “And is one of our high Republican officials caught up in something unpleasant? There is a concern. People aren’t jumping off a cliff, but there is a concern.”

Monier Abusaft, the lone Democrat on Spartanburg County Council, said Wright’s popularity within the GOP made him politically almost out of reach.

Moreover, he said, the council has limited authority to hold the sheriff’s office accountable.

“We really only have two tools – his salary and his department budget,” Abusaft said.

Cutting the budget for law enforcement would likely have been unpopular. So, overall, “there was never a willingness to be confrontational,” he said.

Still, Abusaft thinks council members need to pay closer attention to – and be more willing to raise concerns about – the affairs of the sheriff’s office in the future.

A politically popular sheriff has the opportunity to amass power, he said, and “once he knows nobody’s checking him, then plain goofy stuff can start happening.”

At the Dollar General located next door to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office on Howard Street, store clerk Jariah Scott said she had just learned about Wright’s resignation.

She said deputy officers visit the store from time to time and are “just like regular customers.”

She had heard no rumblings that anything was amiss within the sheriff’s force, but said she would be interested to see how Wright’s saga continues to play out.

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong,” Scott said. “And that goes for everybody.