Staffer was fired for using inmate’s food stamp card. Durham’s sheriff rehired her.
Nine years ago, Miranda Reddish, an accounting clerk in the Durham County Sheriff’s Office, was fired after admitting to charging more than $1,500 in purchases to a welfare benefits card that belonged to another woman.
Reddish, whose last name was Burton then, made personal charges to a card while the other woman was in jail, according to an investigative report obtained by The News & Observer. North Carolina court records show Reddish was charged with obtaining property by false pretenses, which is a felony.
“Burton was confronted and interviewed about this and confessed that she had been making food purchases for herself and that she knew she wasn’t supposed to,” Lt. Walter Narron wrote in the report. “She admitted that she was a recently divorced mother of one and was in a bad financial situation.”
A county dismissal record shows Reddish was later fired. A notation on the form reads: “NOT ELIGIBLE FOR REHIRE.”
But today Reddish, 52, is back on the department’s payroll in a similar role. She is paid a $54,090 salary as an accounting technician for fiscal services. Shortly after Clarence Birkhead was elected sheriff in 2018, he rehired her.
Birkhead told a reporter who reached the sheriff by phone early this month that he would schedule an interview the following week to explain several hires, including rehiring Reddish.
“I’m very serious,” Birkhead said. “If I say I’m going to call you and we’re going to set something up for Wednesday or Thursday of next week, that’s what we’re going to do. Fair enough?”
But he never did. This week, Birkhead’s staff emailed a statement defending Reddish that does not address the firing or arrest.
“Regarding Ms. Reddish, I am not bound – and no Sheriff is bound – by the hiring and firing decisions of previous administrations,” Birkhead wrote. “... As with all employees employed by this agency, Ms. Reddish was hired based upon her skills and experience. She is a valued employee.”
Reddish’s firing is one of several surprises The N&O has reported among hires Birkhead made after winning election in 2018.
Reddish and two other hires in administrative positions had previously been fired from government jobs. Two others were top campaign supporters but had no law enforcement experience listed on their LinkedIn pages.
The home of one those campaign supporters was searched as part of a drug investigation after sheriff’s investigators found a convicted drug dealer stayed there overnight.
Birkhead, 61 and a Democrat, is running for re-election this year. One critic of the hires is a political rival.
Maria Jocys, an independent running for Durham sheriff, is a retired FBI special agent who previously supervised the Raleigh field office. She criticized Birkhead over the hires and his failure to explain them.
“Clarence Birkhead is a sheriff who promised transparency when he ran for office,” Jocys said in a statement.
A sheriff “erodes public confidence when he hires someone to manage public tax dollars who used their government position to steal money. Durham deserves better,” Jocys wrote.
Birkhead has cited personnel and criminal investigation exemptions in state public records law when asked about the hires. But state personnel law gives agency leaders discretion to release information about confidential personnel matters to show their agencies operate with integrity.
Reddish did not respond to a phone and email message requesting an interview. County records show she first joined the sheriff’s office in 1997 as a staff assistant at the county jail. She had made $44,000 in the year prior to her firing, pension records with the State Treasurer’s Office show.
Narron’s investigative report said Reddish had befriended a female inmate at the Durham jail, and became the “designated payee” for her by filling out paperwork with the county social services department.
Reddish was then issued a food stamp card to make purchases for the woman, but began making them for herself multiple times when the woman returned to jail, Narron’s report said.
Durham County policies required social services to be notified when someone with a food stamp card is incarcerated, but that didn’t happen, Narron’s report said.
Narron, who retired in November, said he remembered filing charges against Reddish after consulting with the district attorney’s office.
Current criminal records databases showed no arrest or conviction. But the N&O found the case in AOC records obtained in 2014. Those records showed that Reddish was given 12 months supervised probation with prosecution deferred.
North Carolina law allows for criminal records to be expunged when a charge is dismissed or results in a not guilty or not responsible verdict. The law allows people to win expunction for multiple misdemeanor convictions or a single nonviolent felony conviction.
Staff writer Virginia Bridges and data editor David Raynor contributed to this report.
This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 11:57 AM with the headline "Staffer was fired for using inmate’s food stamp card. Durham’s sheriff rehired her.."