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much for your support. All righty, so we have some
more details in the latest stabbing on Charlotte's light rail train.
And I was thinking about this because the story has
gotten now some national attention, not as much as the
Arena Zarutzka murder did, but there has been national attention
once again on Charlotte for another act of violence on
the light rail line. And there really are so much
any different aspects to the story. It's a confluence of
Joe Biden's immigration policies, this radical open borders belief among
a lot of the radical left, soft on crime policies
at the local level, but also espoused by the radical left,
and not even the radical left, a lot of just
quote unquote moderate or you know, mainstream Democrat politicians, maybe
because they're too afraid to cross that radical left base.
I don't know all of the you know, quote unquote
reforms since the summer of fiery but mostly peaceful riots.
There's the confluence of budget prioritization, right, that's part of
this story. We talked about that yesterday with the you know,
the Mechlenberg Can Sheriff Gary not my fault McFadden crying
about how Arena's law is going to put all sorts
of pressure on the jail because he's going to have
all you know, more people waiting for their court appearances
because they're not going to be able to just release
them back out in their catch and release turnstile system
of justice that they have been meeting out for about
twenty years. Which is another angle, right, single party control.
Oh but one last thing on the budget angle, which
is that you know, whatever staffing and capacity issues the
jail has, the sheriff has, it's because of budget decisions
and prioritization that county commissioners have made and the sheriff
has made. That's on them. They've been going down this
path for twenty years. They don't want to build new jails, right,
they close jail North, they mothballed expansion of the jail.
So these are their priorities. I keep hammering away. They
spend more money out of their budget at the county
level on parks and rec than they do public safety.
That's a budget priority for them. And now they're going
to have to be forced to re examine their priorities,
as they should, you know, because when conservatives and Republicans
pointed out that your primary role as a government is
to provide public safety, have an operational and legitimate court system, right,
that's the core service, that's the highest priority. That is,
that is the primary reason for government to exist in
the first place. Everything else is secondary, because otherwise there's
no reason why I would trade all the liberty and
money that I trade. I don't trade that for parks.
I don't trade liberty for maintaining government facilities. I don't
trade it for education funding. I don't. Right, all of
those things can be taken care of in the private sector.
And indeed, there are you know, some anarchists out there,
And I don't mean like violent Antifah type people. I'm saying, like,
you know people who are like no, no, no, like
radical libertarian anarchists kind of folks who who think we
should just get rid of all of the police force
all together and just have private security. That is, and
that is the most radical position. Obviously I don't adhere
to that, but that's the reason why societies order themselves.
It's to provide for the common defense, primarily first and foremost.
And if you can't fulfill your end of this contract,
then the contract is null and your tyranny. So they've
lost sight of that. Another angle, single party control of
a local government. Right. This is also what happens when
you don't have any of the voices expressing what I
just expressed. You have nobody else making that argument. In
these rooms, it's a blind spot. They are working off
of certain ideological and partisan assumptions and they're never challenged
on them. And as I always say, unchallenged ideas are
easy to hold. And there's also you know, part of
the problem is the fact that they are democrats, and
their response when it comes to budgets is, you know,
see a penny, spend a penny, But it's also to
throw more money at a problem rather than fix the
actual problem. And I'm going to get into this hopefully
later in the show. With regard to Obamacare, their answer
is always just more money, even when there's waste, fraud,
and abuse. And you would think that the people who
espouse these programs to help the least among us, you
would think they would be the biggest hawks for every
single penny spin because every penny that's diverted to waste
or fraud is a penny that doesn't go to the
least among us, the very people that the Left claims
to care about, but they don't seem to care when
the money gets siphoned off. So that's another angle, is
a single party control. And then of course there is
the local efforts at nullification of federal law. And that's
what this story is about. Headline in the Charlotte Observer,
Charlotte light rail suspect had knife on platform months earlier.
Records say so. The man who is accused of stabbing
another man on a Charlotte light rail train on Friday
had been previously charged but not jailed, back in October,
so that would be two months after the murder of
Arena Zerutzka. He had a large knife on katz property,
according to your records, raising more questions about how the
city is ensuring that its train system is safe. So
think about this, right, Zerutska is murdered on the train,
and then six weeks later, and by this point, the
story's gone viral, the video is out, International news is
covering this story. Even the mayor is forced to finally
give some sort of a statement that's not you know,
how did we fail the attacker? Six weeks after Arena
Zerutzka's murder, this guy is on a platform on the
light rail line with a large knife. What would you
do in that situation? It wasn't a cop that responded no, no,
This was just Katz's private security firm pss Oscar Solarzano,
thirty three years old, was arrested on October eighth at
six oh four pm on light rail property at eighty
three twelve North Trion Street the mccaullis station, charged with
misdemeanor carrying a concealed weapon. That's according to a police
report and a citation filed in court. Now I'm unclear
because it says here in the Charlotte Observer story that
Solarzano was arrested. There was a police report, there was
a citation filed in court. The charge was issued by
a security guard, not a Charlotte police officer. So when
you say he was arrested, does that just mean like
a citation technically counts as an arrest, that he was
never taken into custody. We heard from the sheriff that
they have no record of him ever going through Mecklenburg
County Detention Center, So he was not taken into custody.
That's what it seems like. And it seems like the
citation that he got was technically an arrest, but not
an arrest in the way that we all think of
it as in, put the cuffs on them, take them downtown,
book them, dan oh kind of a thing. So this
is part of the other problem. We don't check immigration
status during these types of interactions. And this has been
going on for twenty plus years. Right, local politicians and
police authorities, they all say, we are not here to
enforce immigration law. We're not checking to see if you're
an illegal immigrant. If we pull you over, if you
get a tick, you're not being taken in because you
came into the country illegally. We're not checking any of that.
Please keep reporting crime to us. We don't want to
cause the illegal alien community not to work with police,
So we're going to look the other way. And that's
what this is. This is local officials, local law enforcers.
Whether it's the private security firm or local police or
the sheriff's department, regardless, they all take the same approach,
which is that's not our purview. We're not going to
check on immigration status. Don't worry. And that's why this
guy was free to be on the train two months
later drunk and stab a guy. I don't even know
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So from the WBT text line, Bubba wants to know
where is the knife from the first encounter. That's the
evidence for the court case. I agree, Yeah, did they
take possession of the knife? It's just a citation for
carrying a concealed weapon. It's just a citation, that's it.
Do you pay a fine or something? And that's what
supposedly got him banned from the light rail line from
the transit system. I assume it was for the buses. Also,
the charge was issued by a security guard, not a
Charlotte mcklenburg police officer. Now at the time, again, this
is October eighth. October eighth, Oscar Salarzano is found to
be in possession of a knife at a light rail platform.
He has issued a citation by the security guard that
is contracted with the city with the Charlotte Area Area
Transit System. The company is called PSS Professional Security Services
and at the time, Salarzano had been convicted of crimes
and had illegally re entered the country after being removed
in twenty eighteen, as well as twenty twenty one. He
had been convicted of numerous crimes in New Jersey and
in Florida. But when you don't check a person's immigration status,
because that's not our job, that's federal law enforcement, we
refuse to assist because we are you know, we're in
the community. We want to build trust, we are inclusive.
We have to maintain our criteria checklist to be to
be a certified welcoming city, so we don't ask these
questions which means that a twice deported, multiple times convicted
criminal illegal alien was confronted on the light rail line,
found to have a knife and was given a citation
until now don't you come back here, which you know
this guy isn't going to listen to because he didn't
listen to the federal authorities when they deported him twice
and convicted him of illegal re entry, which was what
Sheriff McFadden was saying at his press conference on Monday.
You know, maybe you should ask them why they don't,
you know, charge him criminally with re entry. They did,
he was convicted, but your President Joe Biden kept letting
everybody back in, So we don't know when the guy
came back across the border. He crossed illegally, but we
wouldn't know any of this. The security guard wouldn't know
any of this information. The citation was written by a
security guard with Professional Security Services, the private company contracted
by CATS. The security guard citation described the weapon as
a quote large red knife. CMPD has an incident report
about this interaction and the citation, and it describes the
weapon as a knife with a red handle. Don't know
if that's the same weapon used in the attack on Friday.
It was not clear if the security guard seized the
knife on October eighth, or if Solizano was allowed to
leave with it along with his written citation. He was
not taken to jail, but ordered to show up in
court October thirtieth on the misdemeanor charge. See, this is
what we're talking about when we say it's a catch
and release system, and the message you are sending is
that this kind of behavior is totally acceptable. It's not
that bad. See, oh you got a nay if you're
drunk on the platform, what evs? It's just a misdemeanor.
Show up in court, which, oh, by the way, he
did not. He did not show up for court. I
wonder if that's one of the warrants, one of the
bench warrants that McFadden was saying, they got hundreds of
warrants in the repository. I wonder if that was one
of them. All Right, if you're listening to this show,
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Let me read a couple of the messages that I
have received on the WBT text line driven by Liberty Buick.
Gmc stan says, if we've got a problem with people
carrying knives in public, maybe we need to have knife control,
including background checks. And permits for purchasing them. I'm sure
this will solve the problem. Yes, And of course, make
the trains a knife zone with signs. Gotta have signs,
make sure everybody is aware that nobody on the train
has a knife. Chris says, uh. Last week I got
the impression City council member dimple ash Miro was skeptical
about the council spending money on promoting a safe light
rail for the public, But last night she seems to
be all in on the blatant deception of the issue.
Your thoughts, well, I mean, I look, I don't think
you're gonna okay, let me say it this way. Mmm.
At the city council level, it is a staff driven process,
has been for decades, okay, because it's a council manager
form of government. And so what that means is, despite
the fact that the city council members gave themselves full
time pay for a part time job because they said
it was more than a part time job, they have
offloaded and they're not the first council to do so.
They've offloaded a lot of the critical thinking and examination
and the exploration of issues. They've offloaded a lot of
that stuff. To the staff. They are reliant on staff,
and staff is always protected by the city manager. And
so what happens and the city manager is hired by
and works at the pleasure of the city council. Okay,
so council hires manager. Manager protects staff, but council relies
on staff. So you see what happens here is that
then the manager, by being seen as the protector of
the staff, they have the allegiance and loyalty of the staff.
And so then the manager can direct staff or help
guide them or shade issues in ways that direct the
council to arrive at a particular decision. Not to mention
the fact that the manager is empowered to do certain things.
One of the first things Marcus Jones did when he
became manager was to get the council to raise the cap,
for example, on contracts that he can sign off on
that do not require city council approval. I believe they
took that cap up to five hundred thousand dollars. So
they've empowered the council, or sorry, the council has empowered
the manager over years and years to be the person
that runs the city. This actually ties into another topic
that I've got lined up and now I'm thinking, I mean,
I get to but I'm going to try. Is the
oral arguments that were made and heard at the Supreme
Court in the case about whether Trump can fire an
FTC commissioner, Because in the progressive philosophy, their worldview, or
i should say, their view of governance, they want technocrats, bureau,
they want a professional class of experts to set policy
to run the government. Right. This is a very Wilsonian
from Woodrow Wilson, a Wilsonian view, a progressive view of
the way GOV co operates. And so that's what the
city council manager form of government leans on, is that
kind of a worldview. And so with a city council
that's completely packed with Democrats who generally share that worldview,
they're happy to offload a lot of that responsibility onto
the manager and staff and then rely on staff to
answer questions if they've got a more some resident comes
to the council member with a complaint. The council member
then takes the complaint to staff. And if you don't
have if you're a council member and you don't have
a good relationship with staff, you're not going to get
stuff done for your constituents and you're going to lose.
So that's the dynamic going on there. So you do
not want to cross the manager very often, and you
don't want to cross city staff, and you don't want
to be seen as antagonistic towards staff or the manager.
And I suspect that's what we're seeing here. And I
mentioned this yesterday, the contract approval for the three million
dollars for a PR firm run by some woke lefty
social justice warrior type that firm, that contract that was
put on that agenda before the stabbing. It's just, you know,
it's not great timing for the city council. They are
facing mockery for it, of course, but they didn't know
that this maniac would stab somebody on a train on Friday.
That that agenda was built prior to Friday, so they
were going to get they were going to do the
contract anyway, right.
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dot com. Let me jump over to the phone lines
here chat with Michael. Hello Michael, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hey, good afternoon.
Speaker 1: Hey, what's up?
Speaker 2: One question, As you said, the agenda was said for
them for the million dollars being sent out in Dallas, Texas.
Why couldn't they have changed the menu and the the agenda?
Why couldn't they have canceled that part of it.
Speaker 1: Well, they could have, yeah, they could have. It was
put right. It was so on the agenda. There's a
portion called the consent agenda where they pack a whole
bunch of supposedly non controversial items into one big consent
agenda and then you vote on all of those at
the same time. Just a motion to approve the consent agenda,
and then they vote, and then everything gets passed unless
a city council member goes through that consent agenda that's
got you know, thirty forty fifty sixty items in it.
You go through the agen which you're supposed to you're
the city council member. You're supposed to read through that,
and they can pull an item out of the consent
agenda for discussion or even a separate vote and going
back and watching the consent agenda approval From Monday night,
there was a council member, the new member jd Arias
I believe is his name, the one who were not
really sure if he got married in order to get
his green card, but whatever, he pulled for discussion part
of the cats items. But he did not discuss the
three point four million dollar pr contract. He did not
he didn't pull it for that reason, and nobody talked
about it at all. So when they approved the consent agenda,
that's how they approved that contract. There was no debate
that I saw.
Speaker 2: So that's in other words, in other words, you know,
just like Washington had it somewhere and nobody will notice.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean, that's the thing. These council members
are supposed to read through their agenda. They're suppose to
read through all of this stuff. And if they all did,
not a single one of them saw a problem with
hiring a PR firm to convince people that the light
rail line is safe. And maybe they are on board
with that. Maybe they think that that's necessary in the
wake of the Zarutzka murder, and then in the wake
of this stabbing, maybe they thought, hey, you know what,
we should do a PR campaign. But nobody pulled it
for a separate vote or discussion. But they could have. Yeah, Michael,
I appreciate the call, sir, Thank you. One last part
here from the Charlotte Observer story by Jeff chamber Solarzano.
The attacker from Friday had been banned from Cats property.
Bret Baldeck, a spokesperson for Cats, declined to answer on
Monday why Solarzano was banned. Okay, kats and city leadership
have come on scrutiny about what security measures have been
taken to keep train safe for the public, especially since
Zarutzka's death and violence this year at the Uptown Transit Center,
as well as I would add other attacks that have
occurred along the rail trail along the light rail system.
KATZ is currently led by interim CEO Brent Kagel. It
has declined and he has declined to comment on security
staffing levels and declined to say how many security guards
were working on the day of Friday stabbing or where
they were. And Katz has declined to share any details
about efforts to enforce the requirement that all light rail
passengers purchase a ticket. Right. So when they said we're
rolling out all of these improvements ahead of the referendum, right,
they were asking all of us in early November to
approve the sales tax. But people were kind of worried because, man,
there's a lot of violence happening on the light rail
line and the bus system, so maybe we should shouldn't
be throwing a whole bunch more money at Cats City
leaders got very worried. Right. The whole ad campaign for
the sales tax focused on road improvements, convincing people lying
to them, I would submit that this is going to
improve traffic. We're going to build more roads. It gave
this impression that if you vote for the sales tax increase,
it'll make your commute shorter, and that's I believe that's
a lie. Most of the money is going to transit.
That was the whole point of the referendum. So it
got them all worried, and so they rolled out the
security plan. We're going to have more personnel, right, and
we're going to do We're going to step up fair enforcement,
make sure people are paying to get on the trains
and the buses. Well, what was implemented before Friday?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: This guy got popped with a knife on a platform
in early October, a full month before the referendum, while
you were talking about rolling out all of these improvements.
What improvements actually were implemented? How did this guy without
paying the fare? How did he get on the train?
What's been implemented so far? Salizano, by the way, is
currently being held without bond at the Mecklenburg County jail,
which is a good thing. Otherwise, you know, Gary, not
my fault. Macfatten may very well release the guy, but
he's he's being held without bond. But once again, there
is a confluence of all of these different issues that
are coming together. They come together in this story, specifically
because the fact that this guy was a twice deported criminal,
illegal alien with multiple convictions, a rap sheet across two
different states at least, and we don't know did they
take the knife from him when they first encountered him
back in October. They gave him a citation and that
was it. He never showed for court. That was it, right,
A lot of different angles to this story. All right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
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