Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It
is heard live every day from noon to three on
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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. So okay, we've got a new report from
Queen City News based off of a release of details
by the Charlotte Area Transit System. The CEO, Brent Cagele,
or interim CEO, released new details yesterday about the man
accused in the latest stabbing on the Blue Line, and
also he addressed concerns about cats safety and security. According
to Queen CityNews qcnews dot com piece by Sierra Langford
and Andy Weber Katz confirmed that Oscar Solarzano should have
been barred from the system indefinitely, but a clerical mistake
prevented that from happening. Kat said that he had received
a one year exclusion on October eighth for a weapon
violation and a six month exclusion the very next day
for public intoxication. Right, so we have two interactions, one
on October eighth, one on October ninth, two interactions with
Cat's security NCMPD. The first for having a knife on
the train or on the platform, and that got him
a one year excresclusion banned for one year the very
next day, though he's publicly drunk on a platform or
on the train, and because of a clerical mistake or something,
I guess, they did not know on October ninth that
they had just had an interaction with him the prior
day for having a weapon. Katz says that a data
entry error during training meant that officers on October ninth
did not have visibility into the prior day's exclusion. Without
that information, Katz said, the indefinite band should have been applied,
but it never happened because they didn't know about the
prior day's interaction. Katz also emphasized transit bans are legal restrictions,
not physical barrier, and that's part of the issue is
that they can ban you from the train, whether it's
a year or six months or permanently, but that's not
going to stop you from getting on a train, especially
for somebody like this guy, Oscar Solarzano, who was caught
twice coming into the country illegally. Well, I guess now
three times he was deported twice. He obviously does not
care when people tell him you're not allowed to be someplace,
he doesn't care. He goes and exists in that place.
Katz explained that there is no practical way to identify
and excluded a band individual as they get on board,
because the system does not have controlled entrances, right, So
how do you police this?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't think CATS knows either, Like this is going
to be a very big challenge for them to try
to figure this out, to try to figure out a
way to actually enforce a band. There was a story
I heard in one of the newscasts here at WBT
quoting I guess she was an employee or maybe a
former employee of CATS who talked about.
Speaker 1: How the band people are.
Speaker 2: Like how or how drivers are told like, hey, watch
out for this person, and it's like in the break
room they have a they got like a bulletin board
and they post people's faces up there, like hey, don't
let this guy on the train. That's not going to work.
Folks like that's that's not an effective system. It really
is shocking that the Blue Line was able to operate
for as long as it has been without more of
these types of incidents. When you see like the system
that they have been using, it is kind of amazing.
Speaker 1: We've only seen two of these types of attacks.
Speaker 2: Officials added they do not yet know whether Solarzano had
a valid ticket, but it's presumed that he did not.
Oh no, yes, really shocking. Katz also confirmed that security
was not inside the light rail in the car when
the stabbing occurred, which, honestly, that's the best option. I'm
not saying that's I'm not saying like you shouldn't staff security.
What I'm saying is that, in light of what transpired,
it would be far worse if there was a security
guard on the train, because that would have meant that
the security guard did not intervene and did not try
to deeac escalate or did not try to, you know,
stop this guy from accosting people on the train, which
then precipitated the the altercation with Kenyandbe who got a
knife in the chest for his efforts. And speaking of
Kenyan Dobe. He is the victim in this light rail
stabbing and he was arrested yesterday. He got out of
the hospital and police took him into custody. Now I
will say I found because I'm this kind of person.
I went, I went and ran his name through the
Mecklemburg County Jail.
Speaker 1: I did this.
Speaker 2: I guess it would let's say Thursday, so it would
have been Tuesday evening and it popped up. He's got
a record, which is why I have n't been promoting
his go fund me. He was arrested. According to the
jail's website. He was committed to the jail February twenty
fifth this year, released the next day, and the charges
misdemeanor crime of domestic violence and assault on a female.
For the domestic violence charge, he was released on a
five thousand dollars unsecured bond, and for the assault on
a female he was released with no bond because I
guess it was consolidated with the other charge. So that's
what I found on Tuesday night.
Speaker 1: That's why.
Speaker 2: And I wrestled with this because because I don't know
any of the details when I found this record, I
don't know any details of what happened, if there's some
sort of domestic issue going on, as it possible his
girlfriend or his wife or somebody you know, filed some
fake charges against him because they had a fight or whatever.
Speaker 1: You just you don't know. I don't know, And so
because I don't know, like I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to, you know, I don't want to slander
the guy or anything. But on the other hand, if
it turns out that he did do something bad, I
don't want people.
Speaker 1: I don't want to direct.
Speaker 2: People to go to a GoFundMe and give this guy money,
which a lot of people have now done. He has
raised like one hundred thousand dollars because of the stabbing,
and he can spend that money on yes, medical bills,
but he can also spend them on his legal bills. Now,
So this was the ethical dilemma I was kind of
wrestling with. And then this morning I saw that the
story now has some more details, and I feel a
lot better about not telling people to go donate to
his GoFundMe. All right, if you're listening to this show,
you know I try to keep up with all sorts
of current events, and I know you do too, And
you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why, well,
because it's how you detect media bias, which is why
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and it's a website and it combines news from around
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Let me jump get Clay to jump on here. Hello Clay,
Welcome to the program.
Speaker 1: Hey boss man, what's up?
Speaker 3: I think I just got a comment on this stabbing
and all I think that that people were afraid sometimes
to defend themselves because they know the ramifications of if
a guy stabbed you, and your shooting and you're killing,
which I don't can done killing somebody, but if you
have to to defend your life, then they got to
go through all the legal ramifications. And I think it's
a fact of if I would have been on the train,
I probably would have. You know, we're not going to
out shot the.
Speaker 2: Guy, but well you're not allowed to have a gun
on the train, no concealed carry. You can't have weapons
on the train, and that's why, well that's why criminals
don't carry any weapons either.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, well he had a knife. But if I
would have pulled a knife out and stabbed him, then
I would have been just as much, if not more
trouble than he was. I think the fact that people
can't defend themselves anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, well this is the Daniel Penny effect, right,
And Daniel Penny didn't even use any kind of weapons.
He just subdued a man that was threatening people on
the train in New York City, and he got charged
because the guy that he subdued he died, and so
they charged Daniel Penny, and I think, yeah, that's going
to make that's going to make people think again about
about whether or not to get involved and to try
to protect themselves or other people.
Speaker 3: Sure, yes, sir, Well thanks for listening. I love your
show and keep going all.
Speaker 1: Right, thanks Clay, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: So the guy who got stabbed, now, remember Kenyon Dobe
is the victim here at twenty four years old, and
he claimed in that video from his hospital bed as
he's got tubes draining blood out of his lungs. And
he put out a video and he said that he
was not going to allow this guy to attack random
people for no reason, especially the elderly. How could he
hear you defend themselves? Right, So he's, according to him, Solarzano,
drunk is going around and accosting elderly people on the train.
And Kenyon Dobe, twenty four year old guy, seems to
be pretty fit, pretty strong, and he stands up to
this bully, right to this maniac that's threatening people on
the train, which is what we would want people to
do if it was your grandma, grandpa sitting on the
train in fear of their life because some drunk crazy
person is threatening them. You would hope that somebody like
Kenyon Dobe would stand up to protect them. But it
turns out that Kenyandbe had some outstanding warrants on him.
And here's the report from WCNC television. Mecklenberg County court
records show a man who was the victim in a
stabbing was arrested yesterday. He faces charges of assault with
serious bodily injury, assault on a pregnant woman, assault on
a female, domestic violence, and three counts of communicating threats.
Court records say that the incident happened on October eighteenth.
Speaker 1: Now remember I found his mugshot.
Speaker 2: And this says he was arrested back in February and
the charges were domestic violence, assault on a female. This
says that a warrant was issued for his arrest on
October nineteenth for serious bodily injury assault, another warrant issued
on November eighteenth for the remaining charges. Court records say
that the incident happened October eighteenth. He's accused of punching
a woman in the face, causing a facial fracture. This
is ah doesn't sound like a good guy. He did
a good thing, but he did a bad thing too.
Apparently they picked him up immediately after he was released
from the hospital. He's now held without bond. He has
a court appearance, or he had a court appearance. I
think he was supposed to appear in court this morning.
He was booked into the jail last night and he
had his first appearance.
Speaker 1: So again, like.
Speaker 2: A lot of people donated money to this guy's GoFundMe,
and I think a lot of people are going to
be upset now because they didn't know this about it
him and I think that definitely would have impacted his
ability to raise money, but maybe not. Like this is
the ethical dilemma that I was wrestling with yesterday whether
or not to you know, direct people, Hey, if you
want to help him out, here's his GoFundMe. And because
I didn't know the nature of the charges and what
that story was, I said, I'm gonna wait, I'm gonna
hold off. I'm not going to promote this GoFundMe. And
I'm glad I did, because I would not have felt
comfortable if I had if I had recommended in any
way people go give this guy money, only to find
out that he's got these kinds of charges against him.
The nature of these charges is such that I think
people would have regrets for giving money to him. Now.
I don't know what happens from here. I don't know
if you can get your money back from a GoFundMe.
I don't know, but you deserve to know that, especially
if you've donated the money back to the Queen City
News story on the Cat's response, Katz says that there
is a video of the stabbing of this incident. They
say it has not been released due to the ongoing investigation. Okay,
and just like we saw with the Arena Zarutzka murder,
you know, local media forced the issue and forced Cats
to release the video. I suspect that's going to be
the outcome here as well. The video is not going
to jeopardize the investigation. The video is what it is,
and Cats can sit on it. They can try to
withhold it for as long as they can, but at
some point they will be forced to make it public
because it is public record. Part of the story also
is the Charlotte City Council's vote on Monday night. We
talked about this yesterday on the show as well. Their
vote on Monday night to approve a three point four
million dollar marketing and communications contract with a PR firm
out of Texas.
Speaker 1: Bad timing.
Speaker 2: Obviously, they started their Request four proposal process before the
stabbing on Friday. We have more details on the timeline
because I suspected that the PR contract was sought after
the murder of Arena Zerutzka. But according to Katz, they say, no, no, no,
we put the RFP Request four proposals.
Speaker 1: We put that out in July.
Speaker 2: So Kat says they started soliciting bids for the contract
in July before Zerutzka was murdered. Now, obviously the comm's strategy,
the PR strategy is going to probably look a lot
different now. Well then it was looking in July whatever,
whatever the RFPs looked like in July, and whatever they
were thinking of these PR people. You know, they thought, oh,
we could do something, you know, with the Charlotte rail
like you know, Charlotte, Charlotte moves you or something like that. Right,
I suspect the branding is going to look a little
different now. It's probably going to say something along the
lines of ride cats, it's safer than you think, or
it's safer than you've heard, or something like that. You know,
they have to address the public safety concerns that are
that obviously exist.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Katz said there's no connection between the contract and the
stabbing on December fifth, and that it's been in the
works for several months prior. Cat's also clarified that the
three point four million dollars for the marketing and comms
will be spent over the course of the contract, which
is a one year contract with the option for three
one year renewals, so it's eight hundred fifty thousand a year.
The new contract includes community engagement. Catz said it's previous
contract for PR was three hundred thousand dollars annually. Okay,
so they're they're they're ramping up the PR campaign. They
were doing this before Arena Zerutzka's murder. The idea was
you were going to spend three hundred k or that
you were spending three hundred k a year for PR,
and then in July you're like, you know what, we
need to almost triple this budget. This needs to go
from three hundred thousand a year to eight hundred fifty
thousand dollars a year. By the way, I'm open for endorsements.
Cats if you would like to pay, I kid, I
kid the cats.
Speaker 3: You know.
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it's six pages, although the last I think the last
two are just the republication of their safety and security protocols,
says before diving into the details, I want to take
a moment to reflect on the broader context. Transit is
a microcosm of our community. It is deeply woven into
daily life and reflective of the challenges we face as
a society. Yes, I agree with Brent Cagel, interim CEO
of CATS. I agree with that much. Look, the school
district says the same thing, right, that the problems outside
in the community at large, they come into the schools.
Speaker 1: I agree with that.
Speaker 2: In this particular case with Cats and the violence that
we have seen on the and by the way, these
two stabbings, these are not the only incidents of violence.
We've been covering the various attacks on passengers for quite.
Speaker 1: A while now, and it does seem to be getting worse.
Speaker 2: More attacks, and those are the ones that we know of.
Stacy Matthews had a piece at Red State today or yesterday,
and she tells the story because she's here in Charlotte,
and she tells the story of a friend of hers
who rode the trolley and talked about how she was
sitting on the trolley and these four men get on
and they basically surround her. One of them sits right
up next to her starts making all sorts of comments about, oh,
you must be rich because you have a very nice
pocketbook or purse. Like menacing behavior towards this woman. There
was no police report for that incident, right, This sort
of thing happens all the time, and people who live
in cities like Charlotte, they get this idea that, well,
you know, that's the trade off of living in a
big city, like we just have to put up with
the random attacks. But that shouldn't be the case. It
shouldn't that that should not be something that people just
accept and as proof. You know, I originally I'm from
New York. I lived on Long Island, but our media
market was the TV stations in the city, so we
saw all of the you know, newscasts of all the
stuff going on in the city. And I grew up
at a time before Rudy Giuliani became mayor, before he
cleaned up the city, and like it was scary. You know,
you wouldn't go to Times Square, you wouldn't go down there.
Why would you go down there? Unless you wanted to
go like see the peep shows and get some drugs
or something, you wouldn't go down to Times Square. But
you clean up the city, and how do you clean
up this city? You take a zero tolerance approach to
the kinds of anti social behavior that fray the fabric
of a high trust society. The reason why we can
walk around in a city and feel safe in our
person and our belongings is because we are a high
trust society. And that comes from a belief that if
you are attacked, other people may intervene to help, but
more importantly, the person would face serious repercussions. So therefore
you have the umbrella of security that allows you to
engage in commerce and activities. If you don't have the
umbrella of security like this is like the first order,
the highest principle of any civilization, of any city, of
any tribe or village, right otherwise you're living in anarchy
or under a warlord. So when you have local officials
that abandon public safety as the primary highest order priority,
then you have the fabric of that high trust society
start to fray. And when that breaks down, you then
end up with less economic activity. People aren't going out
and visiting all of the shiny buildings that you have built,
all of the attractions, all the concert venues and such.
People don't want to go and risk their lives for
a stake for dinner in uptown.
Speaker 1: That's what you're losing. Think about and be at a front.
Speaker 2: Row seat to the push in the early two thousands
by Charlotte city leaders Democrat and Republican.
Speaker 1: They were all on board with this idea, almost all.
Speaker 2: There were a couple of people that were not, but
virtually all on board with the idea that Charlotte needs
to be a world class city. We want Charlotte to
be put in the category of all world class cities.
And they spend so much money, time, treasure right, resources
and personnel and man hours and all of the efforts
to make uptown Charlotte what it is today, but to
make it a world class city. They were very proud
of the fact that it was clean. Like they got
mocked by a former host here on WBT, Keith Larson
used to call it tidy Town because everything's got to
be so tidy and perfect and everything and somewhere along
the way, somewhere along the way, we've decided to just
whiz it all away. No, they've they've deprioritized public safety,
and that's along the that's a similar trend at a
national level as well. I mean, the amount of damage
done by the defund the police movement. We're going to
be seeing that for years, for years. The criminal justice
quote reforms abject failure. They are an abject failure, and
we are seeing the ramifications of those policies today. The
policies that were implemented five six years ago, we're seeing
them now because people who end up in the you know,
catch and release, turnstile court system, when they first embark
upon a career of criminality, it takes them a while
to escalate to the most violent types of crimes. So
that's why you keep seeing people with these rap sheets
that have like fifty sixty arrests. It's because they kept
getting released under reform, under suicidal empathy, right, Oh, they
just they're they're robbing all of these people and stealing
all these cars and shooting into town homes and such
because of poverty. No, they're they're anti social sociopaths. There
is a there is a social compact between citizens and
a government and the compact is that I will I
will uh sacrifice or surrender some of my liberty to
you gov co the government agencies. I will trade that
liberty for some security so I don't have to worry
about maintaining security for myself and family at all times.
And I don't have to worry about going out and
exacting revenge or retribution against somebody who who does something
wrong to me or my family. We have a court
system that will take revenge, that will meet out the
justice not me. They'll investigate, they'll incarcerate, right, they will
do that. And that's what I give up in exchange
for that agreement, that social compact. But if you, the government,
are not fulfilling your end of that bargain, then I
have no reason anymore to participate in this contract.
Speaker 1: Why would I?
Speaker 2: Right, This is what Charlotte is risking right now and
has been risking for a while through their attempts at
nullifying federal laws. They don't like, Oh, we're not going
to cooperate with any immigration stuff. So you don't know
who's in the county, you don't know who's in the city.
How you end up with this guy on the light
rail line multiple run ins with security deported twice rap
sheet in three different states. But nobody, nobody cares enough
to protect the law abiding citizens that are giving up
a little bit of their liberty for that security. You're
not fulfilling You're end of the bargain. Local government, you're
not doing what you need to be doing for the
contract to remain.
Speaker 1: Valid.
Speaker 2: And nobody talks like this at the city level. Nobody
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A text from Buddy says, I remember commuting to downtown
every day. That's uptown Charlotte, Buddy a Downtown every day
on the light rail when it first started. CMPD was
on there every morning checking my ticket while I was
wearing a suit. That was back when they still had
cloth seats until the homeless started staining them and they
changed them out for the medical grade plastic seats. That
must be where all the money for CMPD security went.
Do you ever wonder why the benches in uptown have
the bar right in the center of them. It's the
same reason. It's to make it uncomfortable to sleep on.
Speaker 1: Look.
Speaker 2: I mean that which is incentivized, you will get more of.
It's just very simple. Whether it's you know, trying to
address the homeless situation, trying to address crime, right, not
collecting fares right, if you are, if you are not punishing,
or even worse, you are incentivizing certain behaviors. You're going
to see more of those behaviors because you are incentivizing
them and there's no repercussions for people who violate whatever
rules you're trying to enforce or not in forcing. This
is seven oh four number. That is exactly why my
husband was fired. The thug had more rights than my husband,
who has never been in any trouble in his life.
Speaker 1: He had choked.
Speaker 2: Marks, scratches and scrapes and bruises on him. Oh sorry,
there was another text before that. My sixty five year
old husband was fired from his job after standing up
for a handicapped employee slash coworker who was being harassed
by a thug who ran a stop sign and almost
crashed into his vehicle. My husband simply pointed out that
the thug ran a stop sign. He didn't call him
a thug or any names, but he was a thug
because he jumped my husband, tried to choke him and
then threw him down on the blacktop and sped off.
Five sheriffs showed up, a report was written. They said
my husband could press charges for assault, but they never
caught him. A week later, my husband was fired. He
tried to free himself but never fought back. The thug
uh was a black eye in his forties. My husband's
sixty five year old white guy. I don't think race
should be a factor, but it obviously was because corporate
fired him.
Speaker 1: They didn't like the optics. I don't. I mean, I
don't know if you know that.
Speaker 2: But his managers and co workers were so upset they
loved him. It took six months for him to find
another job. But look, companies do this stuff all the time.
We've heard stories repeatedly for years about pizza delivery guys
right conceal caring and they get jumped, they get mugged,
somebody's trying to rob them, somebody's you know, trying to
kill them or something. They pull out the gun, they
shoot the attacker, and then corporate fires them because you're
not allowed to carry conceal when you're on the clock. Right, Well,
you're alive. You may have been fired, but you're alive.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: This is like, this is what we now have been
reduced to, this idea that if you protect yourself or
somebody else, you're going to get a bunch of poop
from your employer, from social media whatever. You could even
be charged, Pops says cats commuting around town scared, I
got you for the campaign. So from the cat's memo,
their Q and A responses, questions and responses, Why did
the suspect receive transit exclusion?
Speaker 1: So? Why did this guy Solarzano? Why was he banned?
Speaker 2: He was under an active transit exclusion at the time
of the December fifth incident. He got a one year
ban on October eighth for a weapon violation, then a
six month ban the following day for public intoxication. Due
to a data entry error that occurred during Kat's training
on the evening of October eighth, officers responding on the
ninth did not have visibility into the prior day's ban.
Had that information been available, mister Solarzano would have received
an indefinite ban on October ninth. Both PSS, which is
the private security firm, and CMPD responded promptly to both
October events, so CMPD was there. CMPD was there for
both of these events, both of these incidents in October,
but because they're never allowed to check on immigration status,
they could not determine that this guy was already convicted
of a felony re entry charge for coming into the
country after he was deported for coming into the country illegally. See,
these are the downstream impacts of policy decisions made by
elected leaders, and until those leaders start changing those policies,
and by the way, I don't think they will. I
see no indication that they're going to change course on
this stuff. But until that changes or they change, expect
to see more of this. All right, that'll do it
for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I
could not do the show without your support and the
support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so
if you'd like, please support them too and tell them
you heard it here. You can also become a patron
at my Patreon page or go to dpecleanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.