SC mayor and high-ranking police officers arrested, SLED says. Here’s why

The mayor of a South Carolina town along with current and former high-ranking members of the police force were arrested for a money-making scheme that involved a quota for issuing traffic tickets, according to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

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McBee Mayor Glenn C. Odom, 77, and McBee Police Department Chief Timothy R. Knight, 51, along with former McBee Police Chief Michael A. Irvin, 52, and former McBee Police Cpt. Gregory P. Block, 41, were arrested this week, SLED said in a news release.

On Monday, the three current and former police officers each were charged with criminal conspiracy and misconduct in office, according to the release.

On Tuesday, Odom was charged with criminal conspiracy and three counts of misconduct in office, SLED said.

Following their arrests, all four were booked into the Chesterfield County Detention Center, according to the release.

Odom, Knight, Irvin and Block each were issued $5,000 personal recognizance bonds for each of the charges, all of which were posted on either Monday or Tuesday, Chesterfield County court records show.

The scheme

The charges are connected to a scheme that began in March 2023 and to the present time, according to an affidavit shared by SLED. During that time, the arrested officials were involved in imposing ticket quotas and fines designed to make money for the town of McBee, the affidavit said.

Odom was sworn in as mayor in February 2023 after serving on town council for the previous 5 years, according to McBee’s website.

In 2023, the mayor asked former Chief Irvin to get officers to issue more tickets to help pay for two federal loans that totaled about $178,300, according to an affidavit. Text messages showed Odom telling Irvin to make sure a specific officer kept busy issuing tickets and to “stay out of town hall,” while also imploring the chief himself to write four or five tickets a day, the affidavit shows.

During the investigation, multiple McBee police officers were interviewed and said they were under constant pressure to write a high volume of tickets, with a March 2024 text from Odom to Irvin asking for 12 tickets a month from six officers, according to the affidavit. From 2024 through 2025, the minimum amount of tickets required by each officer was 10 per shift, the affidavit said.

South Carolina law prohibits a law enforcement agency from requiring any of its officer to issue a specific number of citations during a designated period of time.

Speeding tickets

And speeding tickets were Odom’s focus, according to the affidavit. One officer said that the mayor sent Irvin to their home to ask why that officer was writing more seatbelt violations than speeding tickets, the affidavit said. The officer said that Odom was upset because speeding tickets generated up to $440, while seatbelt violations were $25 per ticket, according to the affidavit.

This officer went on to say that Odom manipulated their work. That included increasing the amount of fines, getting the officer to rewrite tickets, telling the officer not to take a driver to jail because that would be a loss of money and telling the officer to leave a non-traffic related arrest to write more traffic tickets — all while keeping an eagle eye on the amount of tickets the officer was writing, the affidavit shows.

The officer said that in August 2024, they were asked by Knight to write tickets in Block’s name, and Block soon contacted the officer and told them to lie about helping him if asked about the situation, according to the affidavit.

More than traffic tickets

On June 8, the officer was paid by Odom while the mayor told two other officers “to procure votes in the 2024 Republican Primary Election for candidates specified by Mayor Odom, including his cousin,” the affidavit said.

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“Can you get your family to vote in Republican primary …. I’ll give you gas money $100 to haul as many as you can,” Odom said in a text to the officer, according to the affidavit.

More texts to Irvin and another officer showed that Odom told those subordinates also to get more votes for the candidates of his choice, the affidavit shows.

Odom is also accused of “misappropriating funds seized from a private individual by the McBee Police Department,” another affidavit said.

During a June 6, 2024 traffic stop, officers seized suspected drugs and $37,584 in cash from the driver, who said the money was legitimate income, according to the affidavit. Odom then transferred $35,000 of that money to Narcotics Savings Account, the affidavit shows.

On Jan. 8, 2025, Odom called the bank controlling the Narcotics Savings Account and transferred the $35,000 to the McBee General Fund, according to the affidavit. Following that transfer, the balance in the McBee general Fund dropped to $871.97, meaning that at least $34,128.03 of the $35,000 was spent, the affidavit said.

Information about how that money was spent was not available. There was no word if an investigation is ongoing.

The case against Odom, Knight, Irvin and Block will be prosecuted by the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office.

Not the first time

Irvin also was arrested on another misconduct in office charge on July 20, court records show. A $5,000 personal recognizance bond was posted that same day, according to court records.

In August 2025, Block was charged with obstruction of justice and misconduct in office, court records show. He was released on a combined $5,000 personal recognizance bond, according to court records.

No previous criminal charges were filed against Odom in Chesterfield County, but court records show he has been involved in dozens of civil cases, as both defendant and plaintiff, in the past 20 years.

McBee also has a history of being a speed trap.

In 2006, the (Myrtle Beach) Sun News reported that then McBee Police Chief Joseph McLemore and Town Judge Fred Stephens were indicted by a state grand jury on public corruption charges. According to the S.C. Attorney General’s Office, the town would drop criminal cases if accused wrongdoers would pay cash or deed over their cars.

Some McBee residents told the Sun News that police were overzealous during traffic stops along U.S. 1 and S.C. 151, a shortcut from the Charlotte area to Myrtle Beach.

And several years before that, McBee officials got into a dispute with a resident over a sign he had posted near the city limit warning drivers about the town’s aggressive efforts to stop speeding, the Sun News reported.