Victim receives check, tongue-lashing from sheriff's chief deputy

Less than 24 hours after Robert Goforth went public with his recent experience with the Iredell County Sheriff’s Office, he was hand-delivered a $3,715 county check from the sheriff's right-hand man, Chief Deputy Rick Dowdle.

Goforth also received an apology – but not before being lambasted by the chief deputy himself.

Dowdle showed up at Goforth’s house, unannounced, Thursday morning, being driven by another man whose identity is unknown. In Dowdle's hand was a county check for $3,715 – restitution for the sheriff’s office destroying Goforth’s property in violation of state law (http://thegattonreport.blogspot.com/2010/04/evidence-room-error-destroys-property.html)

“I got this check for you,” Dowdle said to Goforth, “but I’m a little disappointed this turned into being a political thing.”

“I’m just disappointed that it turned out … why somebody take this and … I don’t know that you had anything to do with it … but somebody take this and turns this into a political situation that they don’t know what they’re talking about,” stammered Dowdle. “And that bothers me.

“I wouldn’t think that you would back something like that without being man enough to come and look me in the face and explain the situation to me,” the chief deputy said to Goforth. “Now am I right or wrong?”

Interestingly, however, when Goforth asked Dowdle later in the conversation – a link to which can be accessed on this page – if he could “go to the person that destroyed [his property] and ask them myself why they did such a foolish thing,” Dowdle refused to provide names. “Well, I’m not going to give out the names for that because I’m not going to get them involved in this,” Dowdle said.



Oftentimes stuttering and not completing his sentences, Dowdle apologized that Goforth’s property had been destroyed. But each apology was followed by yet another tongue-lashing. “I’m sorry; this don’t happen. We don’t do this,” Dowdle said, interrupting Goforth and talking over him. “If you go to the finance office, I don’t go write restitution checks for property that we get destroyed because that ain’t the way we do business.

“But when things get strung out to other people, and get misled, that’s what bothers me,” the chief deputy continued, adding: “I hope you understand that cause that’d be just like me turning around and writing something about you that, you know, that aint the way you do business. And that’s why it bothers me.”

At one particular point in the conversation, Dowdle sounded sympathetic toward Goforth. The chief deputy explained that while he cannot account for the items that were destroyed, he said one possible explanation is that the evidence room had been moved. “We moved to a different building,” he said. “Some of this stuff could’ve got put into some things that got destroyed. I don’t know that. But it could have been a mistake.”

Dowdle said “the paperwork had marked it being destroyed. When we found the paperwork – when you brought it up – that’s when I got involved.

“Understand,” said Dowdle, “I ain’t been involved in this but a couple weeks. I don’t know how far this thing goes back, but I think it goes back quite a bit of time.”

However, said Dowdle, “I don’t think somebody would’ve took the artifacts like that … the common sense person … gonna take artifacts like that and just destroy them.”

Dowdle said he had recently ordered Det. Poteat to look into how and why the items were destroyed. “That don’t make no sense to me,” Dowdle said. “Why would you go out here a destroy a steam engine? That don’t make no sense to me because I got ‘em myself.”

But once again, any apology – or any attempt by Dowdle to treat Goforth like the victim he is – was short-lived. “I’m a good person, and I’m sure you are, too,” said the chief deputy, “but it just disappointed me that I hear that somebody took that information and sent it to somewhere that has totally nothing to do with this situation.

“Rumors makes in for a bad situation,” Dowdle said. “I’m not a man that deals with rumors. You put facts in front of me. And I would think you’d be the kind of a person that wouldn’t go off of rumors, too,” the chief deputy said to Goforth.

“You got problems, come and talk to me,” Dowdle continued. “I don’t like somebody going around saying this or saying that. I can come and tell you 10,000 things, but, you know, unless you got the facts in front of you, that bothers me.”

“And, you know, the sheriff don’t … I assure you … we don’t go around just destroying peoples’ property,” Dowdle said, chuckling. “It don’t work like that. We’ve been in office too long for that to happen.”

Dowdle continued: “I don’t go on these blogs and stuff that gets throwed out there. I’ve never had the opportunity to come and talk to you and then I hear that my name’s getting throwed around that I won’t pay you. And that was totally not the fact.”

Dowdle did not elaborate on who, exactly, has stated that he would not pay Goforth.

Continued Dowdle: “This is an election time; you know that. People’s picking up every little rock they can throw left and right. Has any of them people throwed any rocks come and stood in front of me? No. What does that tell you?”

“I’ll leave it at that,” Dowdle said.

Though Dowdle said he had been involved Goforth’s case for “a couple weeks,” Goforth said Thursday’s visit was the first contact he had received from any top-ranking official with the sheriff’s office. To date, he still has not heard from the sheriff, Phil Redmond.

County finance director Susan Blumenstein said today that the county check for Mr. Goforth was from “sales proceeds from items sold through the Jail Commissary to inmates.” In other words, she said, “no taxpayer funds were used to make the payment.”