North Charleston, SC – Members of the Elbit Out of South Carolina Coalition met with Major Michael Aiken of the North Charleston Police Department (NCPD)’s Office of Professional Standards on April 29, to discuss the disturbing patterns of behavior by off-duty NCPD officers working as paid security at Elbit Systems America’s facility in Ladson, South Carolina. That location is a subsidiary of Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.
For the past year and a half, organizers from the coalition have picketed outside of Elbit’s Ladson facility weekly to bring awareness to its role in manufacturing Howitzer cannons for the Israeli use in the Palestinian genocide.
“Over the course of the past year, we’ve seen Elbit employees act aggressively towards picketers, all while NCPD officers have stood by in their uniforms and cars, fraternizing with Elbit security and doing absolutely nothing to protect community,” said Miranda Xiong, one of the coalition members who attended the meeting. “Elbit employees have hit us with their cars, swerved onto the grass and pavement where we’re standing, and threatened us verbally.”
Throughout the meeting, Mayor Aiken claimed that off-duty NCPD officers have an obligation to protect private citizens, collect reports when crimes occur on scene, and act in an unbiased manner. However, members of the coalition brought up the fact that Elbit pays NCPD officers $60 per hour, a number Aiken himself confirmed during the meeting.
“North Charleston Police Department leadership is lying when they claim there is no conflict of interest between Elbit and NCPD officers,” said Matt Colburn of the Lowcountry Action Committee (LAC) and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). “It just shows that even when cops are off duty they exist to protect profits of companies like Elbit and not Lowcountry residents.” Colburn was arrested at a picket in front of Elbit in August 2025, but won a not guilty verdict.
During the meeting, coalition member Collin Holloway discussed his experience of being verbally threatened by an Elbit employee and forced to call NCPD’s non-emergency line because the off-duty NCPD officer present refused to file a report.
“The officers that work for Elbit are openly corrupt by pretending not to notice Elbit workers committing crimes, while treating us as criminals,” said Holloway.
Throughout the meeting, Major Aiken repeatedly resorted to explaining the perspectives of NCPD officers and the “potential” security threats that picketers posed. When pressed for more information on what exactly he meant, Aiken cited instances of vandalism and fears that the Elbit facility in Ladson would be “hijacked.”
Coalition member Christopher Newhard expressed his concern that such language is frequently weaponized to demonize organizers and activists within the pro-Palestinian movement.
Xiong added, “It’s clear that NCPD doesn’t see us as equal because if they did, they wouldn’t be trying to gaslight us into thinking that we are somehow the threat here, when Elbit is a multimillion-dollar corporation profiting directly off the Palestinian genocide.”
Another area of conversation surrounded the failure of existing NCPD channels for community feedback, such as CRIMEWATCH. In December 2025, LAC led a conversation with NCPD Chief Ron Camacho and North Charleston Mayor (former Police Chief) Reggie Burgess to discuss community control of the police.
Denise Scott, the sister-in-law of Walter Scott, the unarmed 50-year-old African American man shot and killed by an NCPD officer in 2015, was also present at the December meeting. When LAC representatives raised similar concerns related to NCPD officers’ behavior, whether on or off duty, Chief Camacho and other NCPD officers present explicitly urged community members to file complaints about misconduct through the CRIMEWATCH website.
The CRIMEWATCH website was launched haphazardly in response to the recommendations from a 2021 Racial Bias Audit, which determined “community members have not filed complaints even after negative experiences with NCPD personnel, and the complaint process is confusing to most.”
At a NCPD town hall meeting officers the day before the LAC’s December meeting with the mayor and chief, officers prided themselves at having fulfilled 89% of the audit’s recommendations. Yet, since the December meeting, coalition members have submitted at least five complaints concerning officers’ behavior at Elbit, four through CRIMEWATCH and one over the phone.
Major Aiken admitted that he had not seen anything regarding these complaints and that they must have “fallen through the cracks” via technical difficulties because CRIMEWATCH was supposedly a “new” system.
The Racial Bias Audit recommended NCPD revise the complaint process to make it more accessible and ensure residents are updated on the status of their complaints and involve community members in the complaint review process, among other suggestions made back in 2021, but NCPD only launched the new process days before the December 2025 meeting. “The inability of NCPD to acknowledge the concerns of their community is yet another unfulfilled and false promise to the community by NCPD,” said Xiong.
Erica Veal of LAC and FRSO said these inconsistencies are precisely why they advocate for community control of the police, “Law enforcement has proven they are unwilling or incapable of adhering to protocols and recommendations to keep communities safe and are not committed to transparency and accountability,” Veal said. “We have presented ample evidence of their officers’ unequal enforcement of the law at pickets, we used the channels they insisted we use to document the misconduct and we have been met with excuse after excuse.” She went on to say, “The Racial Bias Audit was not enough. We demand community control of police now!”
#NorthCharlestonSC #SC #AntiWarMovement #Elbit #EOSC
From Fight Back! News via This RSS Feed.