What’s really behind the North Myrtle Beach city manager’s bodycam? | Opinion

It’s just … weird. For some unknown (or secret) reason, North Myrtle Beach City Manager Mike Mahaney equipped himself with a bodycam and wore it to a Pepsi groundbreaking ceremony late last month. What’s more, he’s decided not to tell anyone why or what he recorded, if anything.

When approached by The Sun News at the event for the new 165,000-square-foot plant at the Palmetto Coast Industrial Park where he was among more than 100 people, Mahaney said “If you do a story, you can say the city manager has no comment.”

His compatriots have pretty much followed suit, offering up a series of non-answer answers or no responses at all.

North Myrtle Beach Mayor Marilyn Hatley: “I’m sure it was for some safety measure, but I don’t know,” she said. “There’s no mandate for him to wear one.”

Other council members and the city’s spokesman were also tight-lipped, at least publicly.

Could it be that Mahaney expected the Chinese to send another balloon overhead – this time over North Myrtle Beach instead of Myrtle Beach, and maybe armed with missiles – and wanted to ensure he’d have a clear recording of any resulting action without having to lift a finger to his camera phone? Mahaney likely knows something we don’t, that the one shot out of the air a few weeks ago by an F-22 was just a trial balloon, that the Chinese have been planning and plotting to come back, more stealthily this time, and that they’d target a public event full of dignitaries such as himself. It was, after all, such a high-profile dangerous event Mahaney had to don the gear of cops despite the gaggle of police officers on the scene.

Or maybe the groundbreaking for, wink, wink, Pepsi Bottling Ventures at Palmetto State Industrial Park was just a bogus cover story, which is why no one wanted to go on the record about the bodycam. That plot of land will soon be the new Area 51. That’s why Mahaney has been so tight-lipped about his bizarre decision. What he knows is so Super-Duper Top Secret, he’d have to kill us if he told us. He’s keeping the secret for our own good, y’all. He’s protecting us from dangers we can’t handle.

Or maybe the odd secrecy is based on something more straightforward. Last year, Mahaney was involved in an altercation with Glass Bottom Kayak Tours co-owner Laura Weaver during a City Hall meeting. The S.C. Law Enforcement Division found that he had made physical contact with Weaver, but 15th Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson didn’t believe there was enough evidence to pursue charges. Mahaney could have been anticipating another such confrontation and wore the bodycam just in case. That explanation matches up best with the murky non-statement statements given by the city so far, about “safety measures” they don’t want to disclose.

As of now, there’s no evidence of malfeasance or major wrongdoing. Mahaney isn’t a cop who turned off his bodycam during a fatal altercation during an arrest, for instance. This isn’t a huge scandal, or shouldn’t be. But that’s what makes it all the more odd. Why undermine your credibility on basic transparency issues for something that feels, at the moment, so frivolous? Is this really the hill you want to die on? And why would other North Myrtle Beach officials go along, given that it affects the perception of what they do and will tolerate from fellow officials?

Listen, if President Joe Biden and Gov. Henry McMaster don’t have to wear a bodycam to feel safe, it’s hard to imagine why the city manager of North Myrtle Beach needs one. Then again, they didn’t put hands on a critic. I mean, you never can be too careful. It’s tough out here on these streets.

This story was originally published March 3, 2023 at 12:02 PM.