NATCHEZ — A member of the Adams County Search and Rescue team resigned publicly on social media Tuesday, saying Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten had “ordered” his resignation.

“Well, I have been ‘ordered’ by the sheriff to resign from ‘Search and Rescue,’” Charles Harrigill wrote in the Tuesday afternoon social media post. “I did so today! I was not intimidated by him! I did so to keep politics out of this fine organization! Travis did not! So yet another example of him Ruling by fear and intimidation! I thought it was a free ‘Speech’ country! I was wrong! Keep trying travis, all you are doing is showing the public how much of a lowlife you truly are! I must be a big threat to you and I’m not even a candidate! What level will you stoop to with them or the public to get what you want!”

Harrigill, who retired from the Adams County Sheriff’s office after 16 years of service in 2016, said he had been a member of the all-volunteer Adams County Search and Rescue Team for approximately three years and believes Patten asked him to resign because Harrigill supports another candidate for sheriff.

“Because I openly oppose him, and he don’t like it,” Harrigill said of why Patten asked him to resign. “That is the only thing I can tell you. … I’m supporting another man for sheriff and I guess — I don’t know. You’d have to ask him. I can’t tell you.”

Harrigill said he believes Patten asking him to resign over social media posts was an infringement of his First Amendment rights.

Patten said he did ask Harrigill to resign but does not believe he infringed on Harrigill’s First Amendment rights.

“What First Amendment rights of his am I violating by asking him to step down off a volunteer team?” Patten said. “But if he felt like I violated his first amendment right, he should have never stepped down if that is the case.”

Patten said his decision to ask Harrigill to resign came after Harrigill had spent weeks attacking his character on social media.

“It really just came to a head when he came on my Patten for Sheriff Facebook page calling me a POS and that I’m wrong and all this stuff that he was saying,” Patten said.

Patten said Harrigill first began posting negative comments about him on social media after Harrigill resigned from the sheriff’s office in 2016, saying Harrigill had told people he resigned, “because he could not work with me.”

Patten said Harrigill refused to return some of the sheriff’s office equipment until his final check was withheld and then Harrigill returned the equipment and threw money at a major’s chest.

“Later on after that he came to my office and asked me could he be a dogcatcher for the sheriff’s office, because he just wants to work,” Patten said. “After all that had transpired I just wanted to keep everything kosher with the man and I told him we did not have a position for dogcatcher or anything else right now at the sheriff’s office so we moved on.”

After that, Patten said Harrigill began supporting another candidate for sheriff.

“That’s when all the negative posts about me being a narcissist and a POS began …,” Patten said.

Harrigill said he joined the search and rescue team because he was looking for something to do after he retired.

“I’ve got a lot of the qualifications they were looking for,” Harrigill said. “I was in the Coast Guard for five years, familiar with boats. I’m a certified scuba diver. I’d been in the military for nine years. It was just something to do.”

Harrigill said he was just a volunteer.

“I was asked to resign,” Harrigill said. “I did so peacefully and I asked for a letter from the sheriff and he refused to give it to me and if he wants to come back and say, ‘I made a mistake,’ fine, I’ll go back to search and rescue. Otherwise, I’m going to keep attacking him on Facebook. If you will look at my Facebook page, everybody is positive for me and I’m raking him over the coals right now. He made a mistake.”

Patten said he asked Harrigill to step down because he doesn’t believe Harrigill is a good representative of the sheriff’s office, which is over the Adams County Search and Rescue team.

“For me that is not conduct becoming of an officer,” Patten said. “That is not conduct becoming of anybody who falls under the auspices of the sheriff’s office.”