Local Mayor, Police officers arrested, charged with Criminal Conspiracy and Misconduct in Office
For nearly two years, drivers rolling through the small town of McBee may have been unwitting contributors to a municipal budget scheme, according to South Carolina state investigators who this week arrested the town’s sitting mayor and three of its top law enforcement officials.
SLED investigators say the operation was simple in concept but sweeping in scope: pressure officers to write as many citations as possible, prioritize the tickets that pay the most, and funnel the proceeds toward town debts — all in direct violation of a state law that bars police agencies from imposing citation quotas.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) announced the arrests of Mayor Glenn C. Odom, 77; current Police Chief Timothy R. Knight, 51; former Chief Michael A. Irvin, 52; and former Captain Gregory P. Block, 41. The three law enforcement figures were booked Monday on charges of criminal conspiracy and misconduct in office. Odom followed a day later, facing conspiracy along with three separate misconduct counts.
All four were processed at the Chesterfield County Detention Center and released after posting $5,000 personal recognizance bonds on each charge. The South Carolina Attorney General’s Office will handle the prosecution.
Irvin’s legal troubles didn’t end there — court records show he was hit with an additional misconduct charge in July, again resolved with a $5,000 bond. Block, meanwhile, had already been charged separately last August with obstruction of justice and misconduct in office.
According to the SLED affidavit, the pressure campaign traces back to March 2023, shortly after Odom took the mayor’s office following five years on town council. Investigators say Odom leaned on then-Chief Irvin to boost ticket volume so McBee could cover roughly $178,300 in outstanding federal loan payments.
The alleged instructions were direct. Message logs cited in the affidavits show Odom directing Irvin to keep a particular officer writing tickets and to avoid town hall, while pushing Irvin himself to produce four or five citations daily. By March 2024, the request had escalated — a dozen tickets per officer, per month, from a roster of six. Investigators say that by 2024 and into 2025, the informal target had hardened into a stated floor of ten citations per officer per shift.
Multiple officers told investigators they felt constant pressure to hit these numbers — pressure that state law was designed to prevent.
The affidavit paints speeding tickets as the mayor’s preferred revenue source, reportedly because they could bring in as much as $440 apiece, compared with roughly $25 for a seatbelt citation. One officer described being confronted at home by Irvin, sent by Odom, after writing more seatbelt violations than speeding tickets.
That same officer alleged a pattern of interference: fines being inflated, tickets being rewritten, arrests being discouraged so as not to “lose” ticket revenue, and even being pulled off an unrelated arrest to instead write traffic citations. The officer also claimed that in August 2024, Knight asked them to issue citations under Block’s name — and that Block later instructed them to deny any involvement if questioned.
The scheme allegedly extended beyond ticket revenue into local politics. Investigators say that in June 2024, around the same time one officer received a payment from Odom, the mayor asked two other officers to help turn out votes for his preferred candidates — including a relative — in the 2024 Republican primary. Text messages allegedly show Odom offering $100 in “gas money” in exchange for driving voters to the polls, with similar requests reportedly sent to Irvin and another officer.
Perhaps the most striking allegation involves cash seized during a routine traffic stop. On June 6, 2024, McBee officers pulled over a driver and seized suspected narcotics along with $37,584 in cash; the driver maintained the money was legitimately earned. Investigators say Odom moved $35,000 of that seized cash into a police narcotics savings account.
Then, on Jan. 8, 2025, according to the affidavit, Odom personally called the bank and had that same $35,000 transferred into McBee’s general fund. Town financial records reviewed by investigators show the general fund’s balance had fallen to just $871.97 shortly afterward — meaning more than $34,000 of the transferred money had already been spent, with no public accounting yet of where it went.
SLED has not indicated whether its investigation has ended or is still ongoing or whether additional charges may follow. Court records show Odom has no prior criminal history in Chesterfield County, though he has appeared in numerous civil cases — both as plaintiff and defendant — over the past two decades.
For now, McBee is left with allegations that its own leadership treated traffic enforcement less like public safety and more like a revenue line item.