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A small South Carolina town’s frustration over allegations of official misconduct reached a point of critical mass this week, when weeks of questions surrounding an abrupt firing, an alleged cover-up and a quiet consolidation of power spilled onto the floor of a standing-room-only council meeting.
The flashpoint came Tuesday evening (June 16, 2026), when the Town of South Congaree convened to vote on its proposed fiscal year budget, only to be met by nearly 70 unbowed residents with little apparent interest in pretending to trust the leaders they did — and did not — elect.
The “unrest and division,” as council designated it, was evidently expected by the town’s officialdom, as made clear by a contingent of deputies from the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department (LCSD) posted at the entrance of South Congaree’s council chambers.
The same fluorescent-lit room serves double duty as the town’s courtroom, which shares a roof with South Congaree Town Hall and the South Congaree Police Department (SCPD).
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“You will be escorted out of the building if you contribute to the disruption of this meeting,” Mayor Pro Tem Kitty Spires told the packed crowd. “You will be given two warnings to be civil, and on the third warning, you will be escorted out of the building.”
While Spires’ warnings were made abundantly clear, they did little to stop outbursts from the audience, which included comments like “What about the influence of citizens?” and “Yes, teacher, yes.”
Those comments were subsequently met with gavel strikes and blunt warnings, but some residents seemed to welcome the punishment, responding with lines like “I’ll take it” and “Thank you, I’ll take it.””
The gavel-happy Mayor Pro Tem did not, however, issue strikes to attendees who called her “rude” and her handling of the meeting “unprofessional,” specifically during one of many heated exchanges between her and Mayor Cindy Campbell.
Which brings us to issue No. 1.
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Just last month, town council voted 4-1 to remove Campbell from presiding over council meetings for at least a year. Once the vote was final, Campbell — who has served as the town’s mayor since 2020 — sought a public explanation from her council.
The only rationale offered in response came from Spires – who now serves as presiding officer over all council meetings. She stated, rather curtly, that Campbell’s removal was due to alleged “interference in town processes.”
So-called official explanations aside, a torrent of criticism across multiple Facebook groups dedicated to South Congaree residents made clear that council’s decision to reduce Campbell to a figurehead didn’t sit well with the public that elected her.
But even casual observers could see the timing to remove the mayor struck an already raw nerve with voters. The decision to oust Campbell came on the heels of a separate move in which the same council bloc had handed power to someone who was never elected at all.
Which brings us to issue No. 2.
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On May 4, 2026, following a series of special-called council meetings padded with prolonged executive sessions, council voted to grant Town Administrator Crystal Bouknight the authority to take whatever personnel actions she “deemed in the best interest of the town.”
The widely underreported move — which passed with Campbell casting the lone dissenting vote — handed even more power to Bouknight, an increasingly embattled town official who was appointed town administrator and treasurer just one year earlier.
Editor’s note: Despite eight months of emailing and calling Bouknight regarding various issues within South Congaree, FITSNews has never once received a response.
Nonetheless, with her newfound power, granted by a compliant council majority, Bouknight almost immediately terminated the town’s freshman police chief, Carl “CJ” Quinlan. The move would trigger a spiral of revelations that has since spun far beyond council’s control.
Which brings us to issue No. 3.
On May 11, Quinlan received an email from Bouknight with a letter attached, backdated to May 8, notifying the decorated U.S. Marine and 25-year law enforcement veteran that she had terminated his employment during his 90-day probationary period.
Conveniently absent from that account, according to Quinlan, is that he had launched a criminal internal affairs investigation into now-former SCPD officer James Marchant, who Bouknight appears to have been unduly close to.
Per Quinlan, who spoke exclusively with FITSNews last month, “everything changed” between him and Bouknight during his rapidly expanding probe into Marchant. That change, he alleges, culminated in Bouknight locking him out of SCPD and his official government email account.
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Only after going public with these findings, however, was his separation from South Congaree updated to include allegations of misconduct, which cited, among other things, “inappropriate interactions with the media” — effectively stripping him of his law enforcement certification.
Whether an act of “retaliation,” as widely suspected by fellow law enforcement officers, Quinlan, a South Carolina Medal of Valor recipient, is now forced to appeal his misconduct charges before the S.C. Criminal Justice Academy.
FITSNews, meanwhile, obtained the investigative notes from his ill-fated internal affairs investigation.
Which brings us to issue No. 4.
During the early morning hours of April 22, Lexington County Sheriff’s deputies responded to an emergency call for service at a home on Ramblin Road in South Congaree, only to find longtime Councilman Brian Jackson sitting inside, holding a gun.
An LCSD incident report provided to FITSNews alleges Jackson had emptied two shotguns and a pistol inside his home while hallucinating that a family was inside taking a shower. A responding deputy further noted that Jackson could “still” hear the family inside.
Jackson’s brother later told deputies that the councilman does not take his prescription medication as prescribed, “drinks way too much” and suspects he’s “using drugs.”
While the April 22 incident is alarming enough on its own, Quinlan’s investigative notes allege that he, alongside several officers from SCPD and LCSD, had responded to the same residence a day earlier following reports that Jackson was “hallucinating.”
Those same notes state that while on scene, Bouknight instructed Quinlan during a phone call to “fabricate a story,” specifically that Jackson was “going to kill himself,” so SCPD could “involuntarily commit him.”
“When I pushed back and stated I wasn’t going to lie, [Bouknight] stated, ‘Why not?'” the notes allege.
Per Quinlan’s account, Bouknight told him that lying to commit someone is “what we do when we care about someone.” Quinlan wrote that he told Bouknight he “barely knew” Jackson and “wanted nothing to do with” falsifying a police report.
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She then, per the notes, instructed him to keep Jackson’s entire mental health episode between only herself and Councilwoman Debbie McIver — one of the loudest members of the same council bloc behind both Campbell’s stripped authority and Bouknight’s inherited power.
Why both women allegedly sought to keep Jackson’s deteriorating mental condition from the rest of council remains unclear. Their effort to do so, however, did not survive Quinlan’s ouster.
Despite the gravity of the allegations spelled out in his investigative notes, neither Bouknight nor McIver responded to a request for comment ahead of FITSNews‘ publication on the matter, apparently concluding that the report did not rise to a level warranting one.
Instead, a statement was provided by the town spokesperson.
Editor’s note: Despite eight months of emailing and calling McIver regarding various issues within South Congaree, FITSNews has only received one text message from her, in which she stated she was “in an appt.”
McIver’s silence gave way only after publication, when she took to Facebook and failed to address any specific allegation. She instead railed against general “misinformation” and slammed “trash media and those trying to use fake negative content to increase followers.”
Bouknight, on the other hand, appears to have reached out to West Columbia Mayor and attorney Tem Miles, citing “defamation.”
Which brings us back to Tuesday.
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When residents packed South Congaree Town Hall for its budget discussion on Tuesday, they faced the very council that stripped Campbell of her authority, handed Bouknight the power to terminate a police chief and welcomed Jackson back to the dais after shooting up his house.
Nearly 20 minutes late to the meeting, Jackson walked in without being wanded down by deputies, unlike everyone else in attendance. He later interjected during the meeting, not to address the shooting, but instead to express the importance of supporting small businesses… like coffee shops.
And while his shootout, paired with everything else detailed above, fueled a heated public comment portion of the meeting, the budget remained the night’s most consequential vote.
Presented by Bouknight herself, South Congaree’s newly approved operating budget totals $1,296,187.75, a 21% decrease from the previous fiscal year that she hailed as a “significant step forward.”
She was also sure to note, before a very captive audience, that the budget would “improve transparency,” a curious choice of words given the many revelations preceding Tuesday.
As for the more pertinent details buried in the newly minted budget, it was up to a series of residents during the public comment portion, each limited to three minutes, to address them.
Residents went on to detail how the town’s three-person administration, consisting of Bouknight, Town Clerk Kelli Ricard and Deputy Town Clerk Susan Battles, gave itself a $11,161.47 raise, bringing their collective salaries up 4.58% to $254,661.47.
SCPD, on the other hand, saw its overall salaries slashed by $84,000, or 45.9%.
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Despite that steep reduction, the same budget anticipates the town will rake in $115,000 in police fines over the next fiscal year, a arithmetically dubious projection given SCPD is essentially down to one officer, meaning he alone will have to write $115,000 worth of tickets over that timeframe.
If that sounds impossible, it’s because it is.
Town attorney fees, meanwhile, are set to rise by $38,000, or 84.4%, to $83,000.
Like the residents who spoke, Campbell raised concerns of her own regarding the increased attorney fees, noting that a “neighboring municipality” had reduced its yearly attorney fees by $5,000, bringing its budget for legal services to $15,000.
The mayor also pointed to what she called “excessive proposed expenditures” and “undisclosed revenues” elsewhere in the budget.
Spires responded dismissively to the mayor’s concerns — which echoed those of residents — telling Campbell, “I would say, Mayor, you were in the meetings when those were discussed, so you should know that.”
McIver met that energy, also dismissing Campbell’s concerns before being interrupted by an attendee whose interjection drew applause from the room.
The budget ultimately passed on a 4-1 vote, with Campbell casting the lone dissenting vote.
Write to Andrew Fancher at andy@fitsnews.com.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Andrew Fancher is a Lone Star Emmy Award–winning journalist from Dallas, Texas. He joined FITSNews in 2023 after leaving an NBC affiliate, where he served as on-air talent. His reporting focuses on public corruption in South Carolina, with an emphasis on law enforcement misconduct and abuse of power.
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