Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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your support. I'd like to welcome back to the program
the auditor for the State of North Carolina, Dave Bullock.
Speaker 2: How are you, Auditor Bullock peek.
Speaker 3: I'm doing great. It's a great day to be a
North Carolinian.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: So you put out your office put out this special report.
This is a preliminary report, not the final report on
the Charlotte area transit systems security. And as is the
case with these audits, these reports, you give the agency
or government that you auditing the opportunity to respond. You
give them an advance copy and then they can address
things in it that gets put out as part of
your report. And the Mayor of Charlotte vy Lyles wrote
in her letter in response, to the preliminary report that
the report appears to suggest that the private security company
is not qualified, but fails to offer specific evidence to
support this conclusion. So I guess I'll ask, is your
office suggesting that this firm PSS is not qualified to
be the security contractor and provide that service for Charlotte
Area transit system.
Speaker 3: Nowhere in our report do we say the firm that's
currently contracted is not qualified. That's the mayor reaching, in
my opinion, I think anybody who reads the report. In fact,
there is a line in our report that says we've
not made a determination on the results or qualifications or
quality service that the contractor who is currently contracted with
the city to provide security on the CAT system is
qualified or not. We haven't made that determination yet. Now
we're going to ask questions about the actual service delivery
as we dive deeper into the security that the City
of Charlotte is providing to writers of CATS.
Speaker 2: Now and the I guess.
Speaker 3: She's made that up. She made that up.
Speaker 1: She made it, yeah, because and she gives her She
gave herself some I guess wiggle room here by saying
the report appears to suggest, right, So it's not like
a direct assertion. I think she's leaving herself some wiggle room,
but I just wanted to give you the opportunity to respond.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and I appreciate that, but I think that
that comes from the fact that we did point out
and we've not made a judgment. Look, it's up to
the political leadership of the City of Charlotte, who are
elected by the people to make certain policy decisions, and
is spears from the contract that the leadership and managing
and the Charlotte decided that at least a large part
of the security contract that was executed in twenty twenty
two would be limited to only firms that qualified under
the Charlett Business Inclusion Program, which quite frankly is DEI right.
Speaker 1: So they split the contract and this is really and
maybe I'm in the weeds on this, but I used
to cover this city council so as a reporter years ago,
so I've sat through a lot of these contract RFPs
and stuff. And it's so they split the contract for
armed security versus unarmed security. They made the armed security contract,
which appears to be the larger contract the unarmed security contract.
They then said that had to be essentially an MWBE
minority women owned business enterprise, and then the armed component
that would just be open bid for anybody with the qualifications.
But then after a year they fired the armed security
contractor and they just folded it into the contract that
existed for the unarmed service provider and there was no
competitive Get it.
Speaker 3: Right, You've got it right. That's the preliminary finding, and
it's important, I think, for the people of Charlotte to
have the full story, which is why we preliminarily released
this as we develop our full report. Because the City
of Charlotte's making rapid changes to the way they provide
security and the way they're doing things on CASS, we
felt it was important for the people of Charlotte to
have some context as to maybe why some of these
changes were necessary. Go back to twenty and eighteen. In
our report, it shows that the city spent five point
nine million dollars on sixty eight to eighty eight armed
security officers. The twenty twenty two contract, which was the
successor contract to the twenty eighteen contract, the split contract
you just aptly described. They tripled the budget to more
than eighteen million dollars, but decreased the number of armed
guards by at least half. At least forty percent was
our conclusion because it was sixty eight to eighty eight
armed guards, but could have been slashed by as much
as half because the new contract only provides as many
as thirty nine armed security guards, with one hundred and
eighty unarmed security personnel.
Speaker 1: Right and armed in this case, you identifying the report
means armed with a firearm or a taser, so it's
not even not even guns.
Speaker 3: So well could be it, couldn't you know? From our
preliminary review, it appears that most of the armed security
personnel do carry glocks, and so that would be a
fire arm, but the contract allows for an armed security
guard to also carry a taser. The conclusion that I
think is easy to make here is that in twenty
twenty two there was a clear policy change by the
political leadership in Charlotte away from the use of armed
security on the CAT system.
Speaker 1: So the on the contract that was not competitively bid
when it was folded into the existing unarmed security contract
is there are there requirements that the city is supposed
to go out and get competitive bids. Isn't that? Isn't
it always the case? Or are there some exemptions or
exceptions where they don't have.
Speaker 2: To do that.
Speaker 3: Well, Pete, it's a little unclear because of the peers
that after eight months of having this split contract that
that's when they indeed folded the armed portion end to
the primary contractor who is on the job currently. So
that's unclear and in full disclosure. We're digging into the
mechanics of that. Again. We've released this preliminarily primarily because
there have been a lot of changes and a lot
of announts changes from the City of Charlotte, and is
really important because a lot of these details have not
previously been released to the public.
Speaker 1: Right well, at the Charlotte City Council meeting from I
think the twenty second I believe it was the co owner.
So the owners are Lee Ratliffe, who is a former
public information officer for CMPD and his wife, longtime CMPD
officer as well.
Speaker 2: They owned PSS.
Speaker 1: She was there and she left the impression that everybody
that they hire on at PSS goes through the same
law enforcement training as CMPD. Do you know that to
be the case or not, because it doesn't seem like
what you found in the audit that does not seem
to be the case.
Speaker 3: Well, preliminarily found is that the minority of the eighteen
point four million dollars or so a year that is
spent on security of the CAT system is clearly spent
on unarmed personnel. So if they go through the Charlotte
Police training, they're doing so, but at the same time
not carrying a firearm. Again, that's a policy choice that
is clear the City of Charlotte has made. Now to
your point, that's one of the questions we're digging into deeper,
is exactly the deliverables, because I want to point one
thing out is is that you know what raises questions
what are the metrics right that the City of Charlotte expects.
The mayor has said they're performing. In fact, I think
there was a release this morning that they're performing exceptionally
and doing everything. They're performing as they are expected to perform.
I think what is the real question that's been raised
heraped is what are the metrics? Give us the numbers,
give the specifics of how you say they're performing.
Speaker 1: There's a Charlotte City councilman, Edwin Peacock asked for the
crime stats and asked for sort of a crime map,
a heat map, like where are the hot spots of crime?
And they and cats could not provide that and said,
but PSS, they know those areas. But PSS then didn't
tell us where those areas are. So it's kind of like,
how are you making decisions? To your point, like, how
are you making staffing decisions if you're not tracking where
the hot spots are? And you don't because you obviously
don't have the information to provide to the city council,
Like this would seem to me to be a pretty
obvious stat that you would be able to deliver, but
they're not.
Speaker 3: Well, that's part of the questions that I think have
been raised here and that's why we wanted to deliver
this preliminary report, is to get it into the arena
of public discussion, because the public deserves answered. Look, we're
doing this audit and this investigation on cash on behalf
of the service workers, the students, the fans of the
panthers that use this system all the time, and quite frankly,
the parents of Areno Zuliska asked in their public statement
for additional oversight on this contract. So we're hoping to
answer that call as well.
Speaker 1: North Carolina Auditor Day Bullock. Anything else you want to
add that you think is important for people to know
before we let you go.
Speaker 3: I do, I really think that. I hope this provides
an opportunity for the City of Charlotte to move forward
with security and not double down and say everything's okay,
because clearly there was a policy change and the people
of Charlotte and the writers of Cats deserved the maximum
security possible. So I look at this as an opportunity,
a point in time where the community can move forward
to make the City of Charlotte and the Transistor is
some better moving for them.
Speaker 1: North Carolina Auditor Dave Bollock, thanks so much for your time, sir,
Thanks for the work, and we look forward to the
final report when it's completed.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, thanks Tate, all right, take care, thank you.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this show, you know I try
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the auditor put out the Auditor's office put out this
preliminary report. I have read it twice because you always
get something extra, you know, when you read through it
the second time, So I read it first last night
when it came out. I read it again this morning,
marked it up with way too much highlighter, which really
works to my disadvantage because I end up highlighting so
much that I don't get to it's if everything is
a top priority, nothing is the top priority anyway. So
this is from the press release from the Auditor's office.
They site well, they say the solicitation for the security
contracts was guided by a Charlotte Business Inclusion Requirement CBI
okay CBI, which is essentially the program that Charlotte has
had for thirty years or so to try to award
contracts to mwbs minority women businesses, enterprises right women owned
and minority owned businesses, and they try to In the past,
they set quotas and they were worried about getting sued
over that, so they changed the law. And that was
back in the early two thousands. This was a big,
big debate on council and so they have these targets
that they always try to hit. This is a pretty
explicit contract that was put out for proposal, an RFP
request for proposal, and I'm going to get to it.
I'm just kind of giving you the broad scope of
it first. And they went back to the Auditor's office,
went back to twenty eighteen and started tracking the contracts
and the personnel. That's really what this is focusing on
is the contracts and the personnel, Like, there's no data
in here. So somebody asking me if there was any
kind of accounting for fair collection, and no, there's nothing
in here about fair collection. Right, there's no comparison. Like
I was curious when I started reading, I was like, Oh,
are they going to have any kind of comparison to
transit systems of our size? What's their security footprint? How
many armed versus unarmed personnel do these other transit systems
have That would be you know, of a comparable nature
an open system like we have, not like a turnstile system.
How many people do they use to police those systems?
Speaker 2: Don't know?
Speaker 1: So from twenty eighteen through twenty twenty, there were three
different security firms that CATS had contracted and so the
original contract was with G four S Secure Solutions. G
four S Secure Solutions, I'm just going to call them
G four S, and they, as you heard Dave Bollock say,
they had a contract that provided for between sixty eight
to eighty eight armed guards, armed security. The current contract
with PSS and we heard some disagreement at the city
council level. Lawana Mayfield was like it's not PSS, it's PPS.
And I thought Brett Kagel was making a mistake, the
interim CEO of CATS, I thought he was making a mistake,
just mixing up the acronym. But no, in fact he
was correct. PSS is the company that because it's a
PPS doing business as PSS, So.
Speaker 2: Either one is fine.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So the current contract has the armed security figure
at just thirty nine. So it went from between sixty
eight to eighty eight, so let's just call it seventy eight.
It went from seventy eight to thirty nine. Meanwhile, the
contract value went from six million to eighteen million, So
you have a twelve million dollar increase in the contract
cost and a decrease in the armed security personnel figure.
Why is that important? In my mind, that's important because
armed personnel would theoretically cost more money. Right, They're going
to cost more money to train, more money and equipment.
So why now the mayor has said, well, we have
increased security personnel by over one hundred percent, right, but
the focus of that has been on the unarmed guards,
the unarmed component, right. And this is what this is
what stuck out to me, and I mentioned this with
the auditor is that. In the city council presentation, the
representative from PSS said that the training they go through
is the same or greater than Charlotte Mecklenburg Police. And
at one point, I believe it was Councilwoman Renee Johnson asked,
how are you able to recruit so many people for
your company? We're having a hard time staffing up CMPD.
How are you able to recruit so many people so quickly?
And she never got an answer to that, but now
we know why. It's because you're not actually at the
level of CMPD. I don't know who you're comparing in
your two hundred and nineteen total personnel footprint. I don't
know who is qualified at that law enforcement level. You
said they all go through the same training, So how
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memories that'll last a lifetime. Here's a message from the
text line. If city Council was truly interested in increasing
security for the transit system, they could increase the proposed
sales text to one and a half cents, and dedicate
those extra funds to pay for CMPD officers and security
related technology in the Transportation division. Not sure if they
could hire and retain enough officers given the current shortage,
but it would be better than what they are proposing now. Also,
the statement from Miss Ratliffe from PSS that she made
about her sworn officers receiving the same training the CMPD
officers received was misleading. While it's true they may be
bled certified as CMPD officers are CMPD officers receive approximately
one hundred and fifty additional hours of training and are
required to complete twelve weeks of additional train and devaluation
after graduation. They are not cleared to patrol on their
own until they successfully completed those extra twelve weeks. That's
not to mention the ongoing training that CMPD officers complete
each year. That is above and beyond what private company
police do. You get what you pay for. The city
made strategic financial decisions to provide security.
Speaker 2: On the cheap. That is what it looks like.
Speaker 1: Also, the way the contract was not rebid competitively, but
rather just folded into the contract for PSS.
Speaker 2: It just reeks of cronyism.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna I'm gonna say, like, I don't know
that to be true, but that's what it looks like.
That's what it reeks of. Smells like it. I guess
I should say, looks like it and smells like it. Okay,
you have first the decision. Hang on, let me go,
let me go to They provided a helpful timeline in
the preliminary report. Twenty eighteen, City of Charlotte enters into
the contract with G four S. They then amend that
contract in twenty twenty one, so three years later. Then
two months after that amendment they amended again because at
that point G four S became Allied Universal, so I
think they got bought out by another company. A year later,
less than about six months later, that contract gets amended
and then amended again in April. Then the email goes
out in June of twenty twenty two on new security
solicitation notes that unarmed security services are only open to
CBI firms. This is like minority women business owned firms.
So this is when they split the contracts, saying the
bigger contract is for the unarmed portion for the armed
portion that's going to be a separate contract. So in
other words, they knew and they said this. There are
quotes in here from meetings where they touted this as
a good thing. This is going to be a really
good way to get minority owned businesses city contracts. So
it seemed like they and I don't know this, but
this is what it seems like, is that they split
the contract in order to award it to a company
based on race or sex, right, and they touted it. Now,
did they know it was going to go to PSS.
I don't know that. I don't know that, but PSS
had done work for the city before. And this is
a pretty standard thing in the city of Charlotte, where
you have like one or two firms in these different
areas like architectures. Harvey Gant's firm, Harvey Gant would get
contracts all the time from the city because his firm, he's,
you know, the former mayor of Charlotte, but also he's black,
and so he would then check the box for a
black owned business. And I've heard stories too about how
he would kind of lend himself to other businesses so
they could score the contract, and he didn't he would
just take a fee and then they would do the work.
I believe Leeper Construction is another one, also a former
Charlotte City councilman, Ron Leeper. He was gone by the
time I started covering the city. And so is that
the same sort of dynamic going on here? I don't know.
I don't know how many other firms were qualified and
actually could bid on the work and could you know,
had the capacity to do this kind of of a contract.
But in June of twenty two they split the contracts.
They then put them out for a request for proposals.
They do an amendment with the allied contract that they
still have. They then approve a new contract two contracts
because they're split, one for PSS for the unarmed and
a company called Strategic Security Corporation. Strategic they got the
arm the armed guards contract. PSS enters the contract for
the unarmed security in July of twenty three. Two months later,
Strategic enters into its contract. A month after that, the
contract is amended with PSS where they add more unarmed guards.
Then the contract amendment gives PSS for the contract amenden
gives PSS the contract for armed security services in June
of twenty twenty four, so it seems like Strategic didn't
even have a full year. Okay, now, according to this
report from the auditor, they basically terminated Strategic for failure
to perform.
Speaker 2: But we don't know why.
Speaker 1: There isn't any it says here in twenty twenty two,
the request for proposal for unarmed security was targeted only
to businesses registered with CBI, But then when they scrapped
it with Strategic, they never explained. There's no record, at
least in the report that they had. They're still trying
to figure out what exactly did they not perform?
Speaker 2: What was that due to? What was the failure to perform?
Speaker 1: Because if they're not doing the contract, then yes you
can fire them, but at that point you should have
put it out for another competitive bid to get somebody
else involved. But they did not do that. They just
handed it off to PSS, and that smacks of favoritism.
So in twenty two they are told you're that you
are you're going to be taken over this contract or
I'm sorry in a twenty four In June of twenty
twenty four, the contract amendment gives PSS the contract for
the armed component, but they don't actually take over until
fourteen months later.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, hang on, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: They take over six months later, and then eight months
after that is when Arena Zarotzka's murdered. So they had
fourteen month window from when they were told they're getting
the contract for the armed security, so they needed to
start ramping up at that point, right, They had six
months to prepare. They take over the contract in December
twenty twenty four, and Arena Zarutskas murdered in August of
twenty five, so that is a fourteen month window. And
in that fourteen months they never ramped up enough security
personnel that they were still behind when they went before
Charlotte City Council last month to say we're still trying
to hire to get to the two nineteen. They had
a fourteen month window to ramp up and they didn't
before Arena's death and they didn't do so they didn't
get it done. And they only have thirty nine armed guards.
That's not enough for one per train. They're forty eight
light rail trains and maybe more. Voters give them more
money to build some more lines. You know, stories are powerful,
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Dave who says, Pete, what is it you said before?
That liberals muscle their way in blow everything up? And
then want the same respect. That sure sounds like Charlotte
eighteen million. I don't know how many pockets that went into,
at least that's what it looks like. So you've talked
about this the you know, the the Fabian Society, which was,
you know, we're gonna give, We're gonna we're gonna turn
Western society socialist, but we're gonna do it slowly. Their
original mascot was literally a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Speaker 2: That was on their banner.
Speaker 1: They literally had that on their banner, and then they
were like, maybe this is a little too overt, let's
take that off.
Speaker 2: But yeah, this is the way that.
Speaker 1: This is the way that Marxists operate is they go
into an institution that has built up credibility and reputation
over you know, a long period of time with people
doing good work of all political stripes. But they go in,
they build up you know, the worth, the value of
this institution, and if left unguarded, parasites then descend and
they they destroy all of the stored value and then
they will move on to another institution. You see this
happening in the churches, where you've got this parasitic mind
as Goad said calls it. They don't go and start
their own churches. They go into yours and they hollow
it out, and then they walk around with the shell
of the institution as like a skin suit and demand
the level of respect that the institution deservedly had prior
to the hollowing out right, And I kind of get
the sense that that's what we're looking at in all
of these big cities that are run by democrats.
Speaker 2: This is what happens.
Speaker 1: You get people that are in there and look a
lot of people that go into you know, go into politics.
They score pretty high on sociopathy, okay, and psychopathy. They
do politics, media law, those are like the big categories.
So I say that as one who is in media.
So yeah, there's a personality type that goes in there,
and the politics really doesn't matter. If you've got people
that are in there with the dark tech trad personality traits,
they don't care about the politics. The ideology doesn't matter
to them. It's the power that's all, and they'll just
shed whatever ideology they need to shed in order to
achieve more power. Which is why it's always kind of
interesting to me that you get democrats that run these
big cities and they claim like, you know, we're the
party of government and all this, and it's like, well,
then why do you run it so poorly? Why does
it not seem to work anywhere you guys operate it?
Kimberly said, this makes me sick. Dude, Hang on a second.
This is from Andrew, but this is from yesterday. This
is from today. Oh okay, so no, no, not in Charlotte.
Almost like doing a payout behind closed doors to a
chief of police. Yeah, that would never happen. That would
never happen. This is from a random number. Glad to
know we are the tenth safest city. Just wonder how
those numbers work with the city having shootings every day.
Nowhere in this discussion about security on the transit, do
I hear that we hired the best? I did hear
we hired based on race?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And that is also an element to this story. Now,
because of this kind of DEI policy that the City
of Charlotte has been engaged in for thirty years, it
makes the normal person, any normal person aware that this
system exists now has to ask because of the policy,
not because of the individuals or the winner of the
contract for no other reason, just by the mere existence
of the program. Now the question is asked of every
single MWBE did they actually earn it? And that's not
fair to them. That's the trade off here, right, As
Thomas Soule says, there are no solutions, only trade offs.
This is one of the trade offs. By the way,
this is also one of the lies that people are
telling on the left about Charlie Kirk his comments and
I've played it a couple of weeks ago about the
Black Airline pilots. He was talking about the use of
United Airlines they were going to hire based on dei quotas,
and what that does is then it forces anybody getting
on the plane. It now raises the question in their minds, like,
wait a minute, is this guy actually qualified to fly
the plane or was he just somebody that they hired
based on race or sex or whatever. And people shouldn't
think that way. We don't want people to think that way.
I don't want people thinking that way. But when you
have these programs, people start thinking that way because that's
what the pro makes you do. So now that's part
of this discussion as well. Does PSS actually have the
capacity to fulfill the contract requirements. Why did they go
from under the G four S company when they were
running the security and they had one hundred and eight
security personnel one hundred and eight and between sixty eight
and eighty eight of them were armed one oh eight
up to eighty eight of the one oh eight were armed.
Now thirty nine out of two hundred and nineteen are armed.
That is a decision, right, That is obviously an explicit
intentional decision that was made. Now who made that decision,
we don't know. The auditor doesn't know either. The office
that his office that did this report, they don't know
that either. But that remains to be investigated. How much
of a role did the did this CBI program play
in the decision? Was PSS actually qualified to take on
both contracts or.
Speaker 2: Maybe one but not the other. We don't know. We're
gonna find out. We're gonna find out.
Speaker 1: And I think the City or Cats was supposed to
do a press conference today but they pushed that off,
which is not a great sign. All right, that'll do
it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
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thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.