Arkansas County Sheriff Recorded Ranting at Woman for Talking to a Black Person, Resigns After Outcry

A racist sheriff has resigned at the demand of his colleagues and community members in Arkansas County, after a recording of him dropping the n-word over and over again started making its rounds on Facebook.

Sheriff Todd Wright was called to a quorum meeting of the county council on Friday to answer for an audio recording in which he was heard chastising his girlfriend for speaking to a Black person in a grocery store.

According to local paper the Pine Bluff Commercial, which first reported that Wright was the person in the audio, the sheriff used the n-word at least 9 times in his rant.

From PB Commercial:

In the recording you hear a man, who the women identifies as Todd, call her a “n**** lover”.

“I don’t understand why you’re so mad at me,” asked the women on the audio recording.

“Why you got to holler at f****** n****** when I’m around,” he responded.

“Todd you talk to people all the time,” the woman said.

Though no identity can be determined due to the blacked out screen, the verbiage of cuss words were identical to a separate video that circulated that showed Wright in a rage, which he publicly apologized for his behavior on his Facebook page.

“To all I have offended or hurt I send my sincere apologies and will pray for my enemies,” wrote Todd in a May 28 Facebook post.

Despite his ‘sincere’ apologies, when Wright was called to a meeting of community members to answer for his actions he predictably tried to claim he wasn’t racist.

“People who know me, know that’s not me. I was angry,” said Wright, adding that he went off on the racist rant in the privacy of his own home—as if that makes a difference when he held a position of power in a county whose population is 25% Black people. Wright was elected county sheriff in 2017.

The mother of the Black man whose presence Wright’s female companion acknowledged, an action which apparently upset the former sheriff so much, was among scores of people who demanded his resignation at the quorum meeting on Friday.

“My son is hard at work every day. I do not appreciate you calling him or any other else that n-word,” she said. “I don’t feel that was right for you to call him outta his name like that. Whatever you got going on.”

Wright resigned on Friday but will continue to be paid by the county through the end of September as contract labor, reports NBC. He will not be working as active law enforcement during that time, but I won’t be surprised if he ends up getting a similar job again in another county.