Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
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hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right
to your smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so
much for your support. I just I need to start
by saying one thing today, what the hell is up
with the City of Charlotte's YouTube feed. I am sick
of it, absolutely sick of it. I watch the city
council meetings so you don't have to. You're welcome. I'm
a giver. And it is always breaking down, whether they're
in their chambers, and it's a live feed coming through
the YouTube from you know, fixed cameras in a fixed
studio being pumped out. This is not rocket science, okay.
And then today they took their show outside so they
could show off the PSS Security vehicles. PSS is the
contractor for the Charlotte Area transit system and they've got
themselves a couple of sweet sweet UTVs and bikes and such,
and so they put them all out there, these black
bikes with white letters on them, and black little SUVs
and UTVs and white letters say pss security. Is this
the militarization thing that the left was always concerned about.
Is everybody on the left okay, with the site of
these vehicles because they look kind of like military vehicles.
I just want to put that out there too, Okay.
So when I saw that they were outside, I'm driving
into work. I pull up on the phone so I
can monitor this news conference on the way in before
I can get into the studio. Because it started at
eleven am. This was the bike and UTV rollout briefing.
That was what they called it. I did not make
up that headline. They called it this. And I knew
when I saw that this thing was taking place outside,
I said, oh, this feed is going to be so
jacked up, so jacked up. And I was right. I
was right. It just crapped out multiple times and then
just stopped. And now you go to the YouTube page
and you only get the last like one minute of
Ed Driggs when he made a late appearance councilman. Ed
Driggs that's the only thing that loads up right now.
It's just ridiculous. But luckily I am a professional. I
have been doing this a long time, so I knew
that the City of Charlotte also has a Facebook page.
So I went over to the Facebook and look at that.
They've got themselves recording on the Facebook, I guess because
it's streamed to Facebook as well. And it ran and
they took questions. And from a PR damage control crisis
management standpoint, what should have occurred here was you stand
up there and you answer every question until every reporter
has no more questions to ask. That did not happen.
They cut the questions off. They gave a limit. I
think they were probably shooting for half an hour. It
went forty minutes, and so they were like, no, no
more questions, no more questions. Meanwhile, reporters are still shouting questions,
and then the mayor closes it out by saying something
completely ridiculous, like, thirty seconds after they shut down the questions,
she says, that's why we came out here to answer
all your questions. But you didn't answer all their questions.
They're literally still screaming them at you. Alrighty, So there
was a chunk here that I have not been able
to view because I was on the road and I
couldn't get the YouTube live stream. And no, I'm not
going to you know, text and drive and try to
find the video feed while I'm driving. So there's a
portion I missed. So this is going to be new
information for me as well as you. So here is
I have a suspicion from what I have already heard
that there are going to be some nuggets in here
that I shall be able to mine. Here's Mayor Violiles.
Speaker 2: Thank you for being here today.
Speaker 1: You're welcome.
Speaker 3: I want to recognize the members of the Charlotte City
Council as well as the members of the MTC that
are here today, So raise your hand if you're I.
Speaker 1: Don't care about that, let's skip ahead.
Speaker 3: You know that I I have been in this situation
before and having to have this loss by my arena.
It's been a terrible time for all of us. We
know the violence was on our like rail, but we
also know that our city is mourning this loss and
will likely never forget it. No one in Charlotte should
feel unsafe about getting to work, school, or home to
their family. Safety has been and will continue to be
our top priority. And we have been working with the
White House, our federal offices and assistants and all of
this that we want to do. We definitely want to
be sure that we are taking the right steps forward.
All Right.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I get the sense, because I've been in this
industry for a while now, sometimes I can get a
feel for whether or not somebody has read the speech
before they are delivering it, and maybe they like kind
of skimmed it a little bit. Like famously, Pat McCrory
would never like they would give him a speech and
like he usually wouldn't even read it. And I've talked
to Pat McCory, the former mayor, former governor, and so
like he would have people write speeches for him and
he would be like, yeah, this isn't very good, and
he would toss it, he would wing it, or he
would write his own speeches. And if you write your
own speech, you're going to remember it better because it's yours.
It's written in your voice. And so far right out
of the gate here, I'm wondering if somebody else wrote
this for her, because she's she's mispronouncing just normal words,
And yeah, I'm not really clear as to why that's occurring.
Speaker 3: We've expanded the jurisdiction of our transit security provider, Professional
Police Services PSS, known to most of us, so that
they can patrol more of our transit facilities and adjacent areas.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank goodness, Oh.
Speaker 3: The Charlotte Transit Center, rail trail, among others are all
now included. KATZ has been able to add additional patrol units,
including bike teams and urban terrain vehicles. These are not
things that we're promised. These are the things that we
are doing. These steps are in motion. Right.
Speaker 1: This was from Charlotte City Council meeting what week ago,
two weeks ago, where they expanded the contract to do this.
Then it was unanimous vote. And again she is reading
this right off of a piece of paper in front
of her.
Speaker 3: Our city departments, CATS leadership, and federal and state partners
are sitting at the same table, sharing information and coordinating
and collaborating.
Speaker 2: Each step of the way.
Speaker 3: Safety is taking care if all of us work together.
Speaker 2: And I want to be clear that I hear often from.
Speaker 3: Our neighbors, our residents, the people that live in this
great city who just want to feel safe.
Speaker 1: Turn that page.
Speaker 2: I live in the city.
Speaker 3: I've lived in this city since I was in college,
and I understand what it means to be safe.
Speaker 2: I take this personally.
Speaker 3: I want my grandchildren to grow up and be a
part of this city, and that means that we have
to change and make things possible for them and the
next generation and the next generation after that. We owe
that not just to those of us that are here today,
but wed us, to IRENA's family, and to every person
that ever thought about we should ride the bus or
the train for whatever reason. I'm committed to this work
and we won't stop until our system is as safe
as it can possibly be. Part of making sure the
system is safe is making sure that everyone who uses
the system needs to pay their fair share.
Speaker 2: Everyone in this region.
Speaker 3: Is being asked to support the transit system with the
one Sense Mobility referendum on November fourth. If our community
invest in our transit system, then our writers must pay fares.
The MTC members have spoken at length regarding the need
to increase fair enforcement and reduce fair invasion.
Speaker 1: Wait what fair invasion?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Evasion, I think is what she probably meant to say,
or maybe the AI generated speech said invasion, or maybe
her staffer who wrote it said invasion, or maybe she
just messed it up fair evasion not invasion. You know,
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dot com all right. From the WBT text line driven
by Liberty Buick gmc daisy says, why weren't all of
these measures taken before the murder on the light rail line.
Obviously she never went to college. I don't know if
that's obvious, but it does raise some doubts. This speech,
this is from anonymous the speech wow, just wow, nine
eight zero number says she is so very bad at
this good grief, and Brian says cats will not be
safe until the streets are safe. All right, let's pick
it back up here. This is Mayor vy Lyles, mayor
of Charlotte, at this press event talking about the new
bikes and utility vehicles that the private contractor will now
be able to ride around the rail trail and the
go between the different stations and stuff. And by the way,
the media is not there for the vehicles. Okay, they're
not there. This is okay. If this was if the
murder of Arenas Zoritzka had not happened, and this was
just an event like, hey, we've got some new vehicles
we're rolling out, this would be something that news departments
would send a single photographer to. They would what they
call spray the event, they would just go and just
shoot a bunch of video, get some shots. They'll, you know,
one of the guys will get on the bike and
ride around and they'll shoot some of that video. It's
just b roll for a voiceover during the newscast. Okay,
that is the if they even send anybody at all
to cover the event. Okay, So the only reason that
everybody is there at this press availability is because of
the murder and the safety issues and the crime on
the buses and on the trains. And now you've got
the local FOP requesting that the National Guard be brought
in to help the Charlotte mcklaburg police officers because the
department is understaffed. So that's why everybody is here. But
she's she's talking here about fair invasion or evasion is
what it is. It's not invasions what she said.
Speaker 3: I and the MTC are committed to this work. I
plan to work with members of the MTC to introduce
a resolution at our next meeting assuring that we are
actually going to have fair evasion and working towards making
sure everyone pays fair share of our transit system.
Speaker 1: Okay, oh my gosh, that's not a resolution to ensure
you have fair evasion. We don't want fair evasion, we
want enforcement. Who wrote this speech? This makes me feel
like we're bush league, you know, I feel like we're
one of the top fifteen major cities in America at
this point. We need to get we need to get
our act together here.
Speaker 2: Okay, it won't be easy.
Speaker 3: We'll need to make some investments. But at the same time,
we have to approach this process and this plan for
fair evasion. Because fair evasion is often a symptom of
different challenges. We can't ignore that, so we will have
to work out how to best do it.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: In the study of fair evasion that I read last week,
you know who evades the fairs the most, Besides the
homeless people, it's actually wealthier people. Wealthier people evade fair
more because the fines if they even get caught, are
worth it to them because they will they will not
pay the fare for so long and they didn't they
get caught. It's a one time cost. They're wealthy enough
to afford the fine, and then they'll just keep evading fares.
That's what the study showed from New York City's fair evasion.
And you're going to hear this stat get thrown out
again when I went over all the stats about how
much different systems are losing with fair evasion. Right, it's
usually the people who are lower income and who use
mass transit the most. They are the ones who never
evade fairs because they know if they get caught, they
can't come back on and they need the transportation to
get to where they need to go. So what are
these challenges that she's talking about? Once again here it
is this whole equity conversation. She's trying to shoehorn into
this issue. She just can't help her self. It's no
just if you're riding the train or the bus, then
you pay. That's it. That's the deal. And if you
don't pay, you don't get to ride. And you treat
everybody equally, not equitably, but equally. And by the way,
you can buy fares or tickets for like long term use,
for discounted rates like this is part of their structure.
So this is like to me, I cannot explain her.
I just I can't explain her. 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.
Speaker 3: Why.
Speaker 1: Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is
why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an
app and it's a website and it combines news from
around the world in one place so you can compare
coverage and verify information. You can check it out at
check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the
link in the podcast description too. I started using ground
News a few months ago and more recently chose to
work with them as an affiliate because it lets me
see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The
blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by
the left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground,
dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll
get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage
plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription
then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports
ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent.
And this from Robbie from the text line, who needs
bikes and utility vehicles? We need more armed patrol officers
on each car of the light rail that is not
going to happen.
Speaker 4: That was asked.
Speaker 1: I heard part of the Q and A at the
end of this thing that's not going to happen, we'll
hear it. This is from Deborah. I worked uptown for
almost thirty years. We used to walk to lunch, to
the library, department stores, etc. Always felt safe. Recently, I
took my grandson to Discovery Place in broad daylight. As
soon as we walked out the door to go to
the parking deck, a homeless man came up to me
and hit me up for money. I felt very vulnerable
with a child with me, so I gave him five
dollars just to get him off my case. Uptown is
not safe yet, and that's illegal. You're not allowed to
go up to people and start panhandling soliciting. Verbally, you're
not allowed to do that. You can fly a sign,
you can have a sign, but you cannot start soliciting
money from people like that. But yeah, my wife went
with a friend and a little kid. They went to
Discovery Place probably a month or so ago. Same experience.
Our mayor just wants more money to put in her pocket. Okay,
that's from Michelle. I realized that a mayor has limited
capabilities and can only promise so much. But all I
heard in her speech was keeping people safe. Nothing about
keeping these thugs in jail. Governor did say he's going
to make changes with the judges to make sure these
guys stay in jail. But with as long a rap
sheet as these guys have, the mayor should say something
about that. All right, Well, we don't know. She's not
done with her speech. She's only eight minutes in.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Maybe she does address the revolving door of our criminal
justice system.
Speaker 3: I want to say, in outreach and education and policies
that meet people where they are, we believe that we
can have a system that is safe.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't do this alone.
Speaker 3: You. Many of you have been with us on the
ride since that we've been talking about how do we
maintain having transportation initiatives for this great city. And I
want to say to you that I am really proud
that we've been able to dress these issues candidly and openly.
And I want you to do that because I know
that behind me is the co chair of the MTC,
Davidson Mayor Rusty Knox. I would like to welcome him
to the podium to address what the work we've been
doing as MTC leaders.
Speaker 1: She kind of strikes me as sort of like a
mini Kamala Harris. You know, she's given me that kind
of a vibe like Kamala's sister, you know. Anyway, here's Davidson,
Mayor Rusty Knox.
Speaker 4: Good morning. I'm Rusty Knox.
Speaker 5: I'm the mayor Davidson, oles serve as vice chair of
the MTC. He has no speech, and I want to
tell you republic transportation is safe in Mecklemburg County.
Speaker 4: I am from Davidson.
Speaker 5: I'm one of those rare people that was born and
raised in Davidson. My wife is from Charlotte. We come
to Charlotte often. We are on the Blue Line regularly.
I take the express bus to Charlotte from meetings. I've
never felt unsafe. The tragic death of Rina Zariska was
something that was spontaneous and probably unpreventable.
Speaker 1: All right, So hang on a second. If you've never
seen Rusty Knox, the guy stands I don't know about
six foot one or so maybe or six foot bald,
big gray, fluffy go tee. He's a big guy, so
that might that might I don't know, be part of
the reason that you've never felt unsafe. You know, you're
not a ninety eight pound, twenty two year old girl
alone at ten o'clock at night. Maybe just throwing that out.
Speaker 4: There, that's the sad part about it.
Speaker 5: Can we learn from that, yes, or additional measures being
taken to ensure that the public feels they're in a
more safe environment. Absolutely, But I just want everybody to
know that the MTC is going to do everything in
our power, with the resources that we're providing to both
PPS and to CMPD to ensure that safety is priority
one for anyone that chooses to use public transportation, but
also anyone that has to to navigate the city. So
just be assured that as long as we're a structured
organization in MTC, we will do all that we can
and that message will carry through. If the one sent
sales tax passes in November and the new transit.
Speaker 4: Authority is created.
Speaker 5: Safety has to be paramont It has to be the
most important thing besides just making sure that the trains
run on the ten minute cycle and the buses run
on a fifteen minute cycle.
Speaker 4: Those are just givens.
Speaker 5: I think with the new initiatives that you're going to see,
we're going to be in a better place. But you know,
I will promise you know, the one thing that Mayor
Lyles alluded to was fair evasion. That's one thing that
we've got to solve and I think taking those measures
will be first and foremost at our next MTC meeting
coming up this month. So okay, with that, I'm going
to defer to City Manager Marcus Jones at this time. Again,
thank you for being here, thank you for the interest,
and know that you can reach out to myself and
the other board members if you have any further questions.
Speaker 4: Thank you, so thank you. Mayor and Mayor.
Speaker 6: I'm Marcus Jones, city Manager of Charlotte, and I wanted
to start off by just saying how important important public
safety is to our city.
Speaker 4: It's what we do.
Speaker 6: The City Council has spent the better part of the
last year and a half having discussions around public safety,
and which is very clear is that while there are
many things that we can do, there's more that has
to be done. We have multiple city departments and multiple
agencies that play a role in safety. But in terms
of the City of Charlotte, about forty percent of our
general fund budget is solely for police, says forty percent
of our general fund budget supports police.
Speaker 4: When you add fire.
Speaker 6: To it, it's about sixty percent of our general fund budget.
Over the past several years, we have made tremendous investments
in public safety, and we would go back to even
twenty nineteen. What I do is I have opportunities with
our Public Safety Pay Plan Committee, which is made of
a police and fire and we talk about what's important
for attracting great people in public safety as well as
retaining them. So since twenty nineteen, we have increased the
starting salary for police by thirty four percent and the
top out salary by forty one percent. What we had
to do is undo a bunch of things that happened
and during the Great Our recession where it took longer
for police officers in firefight just talk out. So we
were able to have through different policies and initiatives and
police officers. Why is he talking about tops out earlier,
which is very significant for CMPD, But we also did
things around second and third shift where we provide it
more funding.
Speaker 1: All right, why are you going over the pay plans
for CMPD right now. I understand that that is a
part of the public safety debate and discussion, but that's
not part of this particular issue. This is specific to
the Charlotte Area transit system. But if you would like
to talk about public safety at a larger level, then
I'm your huckleberry for that. How about you start with
some I don't know observations about the court system. How
about that? How about the fact that when the cops
arrest somebody like the Carlos Brown Junior fourteen times and
they just keep releasing him back out into the public,
and he is just one example of hundreds over the years.
Do you have any comments on the court system that
makes it more difficult for your officers to do their jobs?
And how about this. You're trying to retain officers for
longer periods of time so you don't lose the investment
that you made in training them up and stuff and
hiring them. You know what, You know what makes a
cop want to leave feeling like the work they do
doesn't matter? Because, as we heard in the hearing on Monday,
when Congress came to town, you got cops that are arresting
people and the guys are walking out back onto the
street before the police have even finished the paperwork, So
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Got a bunch of messages here, tons of messages. Do
people not work? So, Russ says the PSS vehicle presser
reminds me of the saying all hat no cowboy. I
thought it was all had no cattle, All had no
cowboy anyway. City leaders seem to misunderstand the state motto
and think it's inverted to seem rather than to be right,
because the state motto is actually the Latin for to
be rather than to seem goodwa who says Charlotte has
become the latest goose that laid the golden egg and
Democrats have been able to take complete control with the
help of people, including many Democrats fleeing their own mess
and blue states. Charlotte only survives the horrible mismanagement because
so many other places are worse and provide an almost
endless supply of new suckers, error residents and taxpayer while
most of the native Charlotteans that helped make Charlotte so
attractive have long ago fled with all Ponzi schemes. This too,
will end, and end very badly if people don't wake
up and vote to save Charlotte from these incompetent and
often corrupt lunatics running the city. I've said this before.
It's a Jordan Peterson quote that you know, an un
guarded store of value will succumb to parasites. That's a truism.
And the City of Charlotte and its institutions have value
and if they are unguarded, they will be devoured. Mark says,
Viiles has been doing her best Kamala Harris impression for
as long as she's been in politics. Now her chickens
have come home to roost. It's all a distraction, It's
a Pete tweet, she says. The audacity of the mayor
using the murder of the arena Zerutzska to push attacks
in increase for the light rail. Well, and look, part
of it is that the local leadership is very concerned
that the magnitude of this story, the international reach of
the Arena Zarutzka murder story, that that is going to
jeopardize the referendum. That's what is animating a lot of
these decisions. There's a bit of a panic because the
vote is just what a month away, and they've got
to assure everybody we're taking it seriously. We hear you,
you are seen. We are going to do all of
this stuff. But if you approve the one cent, we're
going to make it into this different entity, this Transit Authority, which,
by the way, like now we have, there are going
to be elected representatives I don't believe if I'm remembering correctly,
They're going to be appointees that govern and manage the
transit authority. So there will be another layer of insulation
between the rider and elected officials. Right now, the MTC,
those are all people almost all are elected officials from
the towns, from the county. They're city council members, the
mayors there. So you've got elected officials that are on
the MTC. So that model is going to change. Like
this may be the most responsive I know, I know,
but this may be the most responsive governing model between
the two so just keep that in mind when you're
going to vote. Does this Rusty Knox mayor feel it
is safe for his wife to ride the rails alone? Yeah,
because he said he feels safe. Jeff says, Charlotte Transit
is spending eighteen million for security. For that price, we
should be able to provide an security to keep people
from riding free and getting stabbed. I don't think transit
security was a priority until now that it's become a
national story. I tend to agree with that. Yes, let
me see here. This is the city manager, Marcus Jones.
We'll see how much he's got left here.
Speaker 6: We hadit more recruit classes.
Speaker 1: He's still talking about.
Speaker 4: We're seeing police.
Speaker 6: Retention trend in the right direction, and we're seeing vacancies
trend in the right direction also, but no data. But
also we've taking some steps to make sure that those
jobs and positions that police officers were handling, for instance,
like a captain who was overseeing the nine one one center,
how can we change those to civilians? And we were
able to take vacant positions, change those to civilian positions
so that we can have more officers patrolling the streets.
You may have seen the sixteen civilian crash investes that
we have again freeing up ours for police officers to patrol.
The same thing with forty sworn faked musicians that we've
converted into civilian positions. We will continue to work with
our partners. During the past several months, we've worked with
community leaders, We've worked with the business community with a
focus on a comprehensive plan as relates to public safety.
Speaker 1: So question, he initially said that forty percent of the
budget goes to CMPD goes for police personnel. Right, so
at forty percent of the budget, does that include the
civilian crash investigators? Do they count as as a CMPD
line item or is that something separate? See this is why,
like when I sit at these press conferences, I bristle
when they tell me we're only going to take five
or six questions, because when you say stuff like this,
I've got tons of follow ups or follows up, follow up. Yes,
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
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them too and tell them you heard it here. You
can also become a patron at my Patreon page or
go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much
for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.