Murphy – The Cherokee County grand jury indicted Andrews Police Chief Rocky Burrell on Monday on nine felony counts of obtaining property under false pretenses. An arrest warrant was issued but not served as of Tuesday morning.
The indictments were still sealed pending their being served and publicly available information lacked details, other than to say the offenses occurred on Oct. 4, 2022.
There had been murmurs of the State Bureau of Investigation looking into the Andrews Police Department over the last several months. Town officials had no comment about it during that time, but they did not deny it, either.
Calls and emails to Andrews Town Hall were not immediately answered, and Burrell’s listed phone number at the police department was disconnected. Inquiries to the SBI and N.C. Department of Justice were not answered before the Cherokee Scout’s press time Tuesday.
Burrell attended the Andrews Board of Aldermen meeting on Sept. 12, which he routinely does. The board agenda called for a closed session to, among other things, “consider the qualifications, competence, performance, character, fitness, conditions of appointment, or conditions of initial employment of an individual public officer or employee or prospective public officer or employee.”
It’s unclear whether the board discussed Burrell’s status at that time.
Burrell’s situation is the latest in a series of black eyes involving Andrews police this year, and in previous years, and with Cherokee County law enforcement over the past year.
Burrell has been working limited hours due to an unspecified illness since the start of the year. During that time, his assistant chief accidentally shot himself in the leg in the police department’s parking lot, and a patrol officer was fired as a protective order was being sought against her involving a teenager. She was later arrested for violating the protective order.
Over the summer, a Cherokee County sheriff’s
deputy was charged with DWI, and late last year a Cherokee Tribal Police SWAT team, summoned by the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, opened fire on a Bear Paw resident who was attempting to comply with orders, severely wounding him. That incident is now the subject of a lawsuit in federal court.
Aldermen appointed Burrell chief in August 2021, the eighth person to lead the department in the previous 3½ years.
Burrell was an Andrews police officer for about a year beginning in 1999. He spent 20 years working in law enforcement before starting a private investigations firm called Sabre Group in 2018.
He has been employed by several law enforcement agencies throughout western North Carolina, including the Cherokee County Sheriff ’s Office.
“I’m hoping to gain the trust of the business owners and the citizens of Andrews,” Burrell said after taking the oath of office in 2021. “I’m looking forward to bringing back a sense of security because that’s the thing you hear the most complaints about.”
Burrell, 44, of Marble, said he returned to law enforcement because he still had friends in the profession. Plus, his son had been studying criminal justice.
When he became chief, there were several ongoing issues within the department. Local police were barred access to the evidence room as state investigators probed actions from April 2021 that led to the entire police force being fired.
In 2022, Burrell was involved in a bar fight in Andrews.
Cherokee County sheriff’s Deputy Dennis Dore filed a signed statement about what he observed at Ronnie’s Bar & Grill, saying a fight occurred between individuals over control of a pool table, including a man who arrived at the bar with Burrell, who was off duty.
Dore said he was flagged down by an Andrews police officer as he was leaving the scene. The deputy said he was told by the officer that Burrell instructed him to say “nothing really happened, and there was no need to do a police report.”
At the time, Burrell called the officer a rookie and denied the allegations made in Dore’s report. He said he stopped by the bar to pick up a to-go order pizza and was talking to a manager when he was alerted that a fight was taking place. He said he assisted in breaking up the fight.
As a young adult, Burrell faced charges in Graham and Swain counties, including convictions for larceny and simple affray in Graham in 1995.
In December 2010, Burrell was among several Cherokee County sheriff’s deputies who were fired. The SBI had been looking into the sheriff’s office concerning possible misuse of grant funds, but it has been unclear whether the firings were related to that investigation.
Read updates at cherokeescout.com.