Mooresville mayor sued by ex-assistant police chief over late-night encounters
A whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former Mooresville assistant police chief alleges he was forced to retire for raising concerns about two late-night incidents involving Mayor Chris Carney.
Frank Falzone, an officer with the department since 1996, says he was threatened with the loss of his pension if he didn’t retire, “depriving him of his career, reputation, and livelihood,” according to his lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Statesville.
The 37-page lawsuit stems “from a deliberate and coordinated campaign by senior officials of the Town of Mooresville to silence, discredit and remove” Falzone for refusing “to participate in or remain silent about serious governmental misconduct,” according to the complaint.
The allegations of misconduct involved Carney and Police Chief Ron Campurciani and “efforts of senior Town leadership to conceal that misconduct,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit cites a late-night traffic stop involving the mayor and the police chief on Jan. 30, 2024, and Carney being in town hall with a woman one overnight in October 2024.
In each incident, according to the complaint, Falzone “identified electronic evidence ... that should have existed and been preserved, or properly classified, but which was instead missing, misclassified, incomplete, or rendered inaccessible under the supervision of senior officials.”
Evidence included records, body-worn camera metadata and audit data, access-control logs, alarm data and surveillance footage, the lawsuit states.
“Rather than investigate the Mayor’s conduct or address the serious irregularities Falzone identified, many of which directly implicated the Police Chief’s supervisory and administrative responsibilities, Defendants turned the machinery of government inward.”
A town spokeswoman didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment by The Charlotte Observer on Tuesday. Carney said he intends to provide comment later .
Late-night traffic stop
According to the lawsuit, a Mooresville police captain at the scene of the late-night traffic stop told Falzone confidentially that he activated his body-worn camera “and observed behavior and circumstances suggesting the Mayor may have been impaired.”
The police captain, Russell Clark, said Campurciani was at the scene and “exercised supervisory control over the handling of the encounter.”
When Falzone investigated the stop, body-camera and other evidence was missing, according to the lawsuit. That “reflected intentional manipulation or suppression of records designed to shield the Mayor from scrutiny and conceal the true nature of the encounter,” the complaint states.
Late-night town hall encounter
The lawsuit also alleges security and other concerns about the mayor being in town hall with a woman overnight and triggering alarms to which police responded in October 2024.
The incident prompted a lawsuit in January by Jeffrey Noble, a former IT employee who said he was fired in retaliation for reporting misconduct by the mayor that overnight, including video showing Carney pantless.
In January, Carney told The Charlotte Observer that he and town officials hadn’t been served with the lawsuit, and he was limited in what he could say in response.
He called the claims “sensational,” however, and said he looked forward to the truth coming out.
In Monday’s lawsuit, Falzone said the incident “immediately raised concerns about building security, authorization to access municipal facilities, and adherence to proper police response protocols.”
Instead of preserving electronic evidence and investigating the incident, senior town officials and police leadership “discouraged scrutiny, minimized the significance of the event, and took steps to avoid, delay, suppress, or control review of the available electronic evidence,” according to the lawsuit.
Falzone also said his involuntary retirement “occurred without due process, without a fair or neutral hearing, without any meaningful opportunity to clear his name, and without a pre-deprivation hearing before a neutral decision-maker,” all of which violated his constitutional rights.
He wants a jury to determine damages, including for lost pay and benefits and ruined future job prospects.
This story was originally published February 10, 2026 at 12:35 PM with the headline "Mooresville mayor sued by ex-assistant police chief over late-night encounters."