Suspended deputies sharing in sheriff’s office pay raises | News

“Even in their current status they’re still subject to getting any of those adjustments that sheriff’s office employees or county employees would get,” Vance County Manager Jordan McMillen said. “If you’re suspended with pay, it doesn’t freeze your pay.”

“They’re still full-time county employees, so they’re entitled to pay raises,” added Sheriff Curtis Brame. “All county employees are treated equally in regard to pay raises.”

Each of the deputies faces obstruction of justice and other charges in connection with a successful attempt by the sheriff’s office in 2020 to acquire title to a car Brame thought had been involved in a drug deal.

The charges allege that the effort amounted to an end run around North Carolina’s strict laws governing asset forfeiture, which requires judicial oversight of property forfeitures and, normally, a criminal conviction to make property eligible for forfeiture.

The first of the deputies to be indicted, Pittman, has been suspended since Nov. 5, 2020. Staton and Patel joined him on April 27, 2021, after they were indicted and booked.

Pittman and Patel were part of the sheriff’s office’s narcotics unit. Staton, a former State Bureau of Investigation agent, was a major and Brame’s second-in-command.

County records released in answer to a Public Records Law request from The Dispatch indicate that Staton’s current annual salary is $69,552. Pittman’s is $46,776 and Patel’s is $41,434.

Patel, 26, has been with the sheriff’s office the longest, joining the force in January 2018. Pittman, 47, hired on in June 2019 and Staton, 53, followed in November 2019.

Since being suspended, Pittman has received a $1,780 raise effective July 1, 2021, and a $500 raise effective March 2 of this year.

McMillen said July 1 raises were a “cost of living adjustment that went with” the county budget. The $500 increase, meanwhile, was the second step in a two-part hiring incentive.

Patel received a $1,594 raise on July 1, 2021. Staton received a $2,656 raise the same day, and a $500 raise on March 2 of this year.

The first part of the hiring incentive is a $1,500 pay increase, McMillen said. Patel received both parts of the incentive package before the incident that sparked the charges against the deputies. Pittman and Staton got their first-stage $1,500 incentive increases on the days they joined the force, in both cases prior to the incident.

The information county officials included in their response to The Dispatch’s records request also indicated that the suspension is Pittman’s second since he’s been with the sheriff’s office.

He was suspended without pay for a week, from Jan. 30, 2020, to Feb. 6, 2020. No explanation for that was given, nor required under the provisions of the law governing the release of public-employee records.

The decision to suspend the deputies with pay — as opposed to without pay, or not to suspend them at all — is Brame’s and Brame’s alone. But it is controversial in at least some quarters, and it has produced calls for the Vance County Commissioners to take a closer look at the sheriff’s office.

The most vocal critic of the “with pay” part of the suspension has been John Miles, pastor of Risen Faith Outreach Ministry and the grandfather of a child assaulted at Vance County Middle School in late 2019 by a former sheriff’s office school resource officer.

He was not pleased to hear on Monday that Staton, Pittman and Patel have also gotten raises since being suspended.

“When you have three officers indicted by a grand jury getting paid since July of last year, and Curtis Brame is allowing these guys to get paid, it’s a disgrace to the citizens and taxpayers of Vance County,” Miles said.