Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. And going over some of the audio from
this field hearing that was held today in Charlotte by
the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight. Topic was violent crime,
and there was a comment made by a Congressman, Kevin Kylie.
He's a Republican from California. They do exist, and he
talked about this shooting at an ABC television affiliate station
in Sacramento as an example of the failure of the
criminal justice system that's happening in predominantly, if not exclusively,
in large Democrat run cities. That is not a coincidence. Okay,
it's not a coincidence. Let me play one more snippet
of his comments here before I get to the ABC story.
Speaker 2: The good news is public opinion has turned sharply against
these sort of radical policies that have gotten to this
to this point. Even in California. Last year, Californians passed
a proposition to make a crime illegal again by restoring
appropriate consequences. That passed with almost seventy percent of the vote,
despite opposition from the governor and the political establishment. We
also saw some of these reckless and district attorneys in
our state removed from office and became Because of that,
we've actually seen a modest improvement in crime that is
starting to be felt in our state. So, mister chair,
I think this is precisely at the time when we
can say, and we're seeing it in Washington, d c.
By the way, where we have a controlled experiment going
on where you can at least turn a couple of
the levers to increase the certainty of punishment, and what
do you know, crime goes down. I think that we
need to use that as an example for how we
can bring public safety to communities across this country. And
I think that starts, by the way, first and foremost
with supporting our law enforcement. So thank you to all
the law enforcement with us here today.
Speaker 1: All right, that's Kevin Kylie, and he is precisely correct.
And by the way, we're now going to see another
experiment Portland. They're getting some National Guard troops too, or no, well,
not the National Guard. I think this is actually US
military that's getting sent there. I've I've got the story
somewhere in the stack of stuff. Let's get ray on. Hello, Ray,
Welcome to the.
Speaker 3: Showp My comment and question is I would like to,
if they can hear this, offer my deepest condolences, as
a father of two daughters to this grandfather, I mean
grandmother and father of these victims. And I can only
imagine what they went through. Only imagine. And the question
to you is concerning her not being able to go
to her granddaughter. I think Mary Logan's funeral because of
Governor Cooper's shutdowns. Back when that happened, I think, Cooper,
We're going to shut it down for two weeks, and
then it just went on and on and on. And
after that was done, I heard some talk about the
legislature of passing a law that's saying the governor can
only cut things down for a couple of weeks and
then if it's extended, the legislature has to do that.
Do you know if that ever passed?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that did pass. Okay, yeah, so he has
to keep coming back. Well, the original I mean, the
original law that he just completely ignored, was to go
through the Council of State, but he was not going
to get the support to keep everything shut down, and
so he just issued it on his own. So, like
I would contend that he violated the state law when
he did the emergency declaration or as I call it,
Roy Cooper's D.
Speaker 3: So from in the future, any governor of North Carolina
can't do it except for two weeks and then the
legislature has this whether to extend it or not. Is
that correct, I believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if it's I would have to
go back and read the law again to find out
if it's two weeks or what kind of time period.
But yes, the kind of you know, indefinite extensions of
these emergency declarations and lockdowns and stuff. They need legislative
approval to keep going.
Speaker 3: Right. Well, thanks a.
Speaker 1: Lot for taking Yeah, yes, sir, Ray, good here from you.
Speaker 3: Bye, take care.
Speaker 1: So here is this story out of the Sacramento. I
mentioned it at the end of the last hour, but
here are the details about this guy and what he did. Allegedly.
Prosecutors believe that the suspect who allegedly opened fire on
the ABC ten station in Sacramento was politically motivated. Sacramento
County DA theen Hoe told National Review, explaining that a
search of the suspects vehicle yielded a note that criticized
members of the Trump administration and appeared to reference the
recent assassination of Charlie Kirk. The Sacramento Police Department executed
a search of sixty four year old Annibal Hernandez Sentana's home,
where they found not only the semi auto nine millimeter
handgun he allegedly used to fire into the station multiple times,
but also various pieces of evidence that suggest he was
motivated by anti Trump animus. The arraignment originally was set
for they moved it up. That's just a scheduling thing,
and then he bailed out. They found a calendar that
was attached to his refrigerator. On that particular calendar for
the date of September the nineteenth, he had written the
following message for that date of the shooting, quote, do
the next scary thing as we put on his calendar
the day he went and shot at the station, there
was another search warrant executed inside his Inside of his
vehicle where more evidence was uncovered. Authorities discovered an anti
Trump book as well as a handwritten note which read
for hiding Epstein and ignoring red flags do not support Patel,
Bongino and ag Bondi. There Next, the handwritten note was
signed with the initials c K and then the words
from above. The DA's office believed that CK stands for
Charlie Kirk, leading officials to believe that there is evidence
this individual engaged in attacks on the media and the
free press for political purposes. The DA said that his
office is bringing three charges against Hernandez Santana, including shooting
into an occupied building, assault with a semi automatic handgun,
both of which are felonies, and several counts related to
the illegal possession of a firearm. Hernandez Santana is also
facing federal charges, including possessing a firearm within a school zone,
discharging a firearm within a school zone, and interfering with
a radio communication station. The maximum penalty for the state
charges is seventeen years, which is much more than the
suspect will face federally. However, the federal charges allowed the
Feds to go pick him up after he bailed out.
He was released after posting two hundred thousand dollars bail,
but then got rearrested by the FBI later that day.
Hernandez Santana a lawyer, retired lobbyist, and quote educated liberal.
Why is that important because that's what his lawyer is
claiming is the reason why he's being politically persecuted. This
is the lawyer Mark Rischell, arguing that the federal charges
brought against his client represent political persecution motivated motivated by
the fact that his client is quote an educated liberal.
A LinkedIn account matching his name indicates he previously was
a legislative director for the California Federation of Teachers and
is now retired and engaged in full time parenting. Dude
was the legislative director for the Teachers' union in California
and went and shot up a police station with an
illegal firearm and that's how he had the money to
post the bail. I guess it's unreal, absolutely unreal. Oh
not as unreal as what happened up in New York City.
Did you see this video of this woman punching an
interviewer interface they dropped all the charges. So when I
was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before
he died, my mom and my dad took care of
him as he got worse. Forty years ago, there were
no treatments and not much support for caregivers and family.
But things are different today because of the work of
so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina.
It's a great organization with awesome people with huge hearts.
I've been a supporter for twenty five years. This cause
means a lot to me. I participate in the annual
Walk to end Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team
again this year, and it's called once again Pete's Pack.
You can sign up and you can join the team
and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth that truest
field sign up at alz dot org Slam Walk and
then you could search for my team name Pete's Peck.
There's also a link at thepetepod dot com. There's also
a link in the description of this podcast. Also, I'll
be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh. Then,
so you can make a team and join that one too,
or make a donation and help me hit my goal
of five thousand dollars. If you do, I really appreciate it.
There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas.
You can go to alz dot org slash walk for
all the dates and locations. We're closer than ever to
stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you
walk with me? For a different future, for families, for
more time for treatments. This is why we walk. So
this is from the New York Post. The bronx woman
caught on camera sucker punching a pro life activist has
dodged criminal charges in the case because the Manhattan District
Attorney's office failed to meet a legal deadline instead of
remorse actor victim again. So the puncher is Brianna Jay Rivers.
She had been facing a second degree assault charge for
the incident, which took place in April in Harlem. She
walked over to Savannah Craven and Tao, who had a
microphone and is doing like person on the street interviews
talking about abortion and Brianna Rivers approaches her to talk
with her for an interview that is clearly being recorded,
right they're on camera, and let's see here and jump
ahead to the Okay, here it is Craven and Tao
asked whether foster kids, because this the attacker Rivers, she
made the she was pro abortion and Craven Anto is
pro life, and so Antoo asks her whether foster kids
should be killed because they're not wanted, and Rivers responded
why not, which is shocking. So then they go back
and forth for about a minute, and then Antoo says, well,
I'm not the one who admitted they'd be okay with
killing babies and foster care and killing children that have
been abused, at which point Rivers says, that's not the
point what I'm saying is and then just bashes her
in the face on camera, very clear, can't miss it,
punches her like two or three times, and then storms off,
flipping the bird at the at the camera and telling
the camera got to perform a sex act on her,
which would be impossible because she doesn't have the anatomy required,
but whatever. She later apologized on social media for socking
her interviewer, but claimed the antagonistic victim goaded her into violence.
This is the classic scene from the documentary Forrest Gump
when Jenny's abusive boyfriend right hits her and then blames
just this war in that SLB Johnson like, that's the reason.
The brute has since posted a string of videos online
gloating about the assault, telling critics to back off now
that the case has been dismissed. She also launched an
online fundraiser begging for cash to pay her legal bills. Now,
she's not out of the woods. Just because Alvin Bragg's
office missed their deadline for providing discovery and so they
had to drop the case doesn't mean that the victim
has no more recourse.
Speaker 2: She says.
Speaker 1: That she's now looking into filing a lawsuit against Rivers.
I feel like people with real common sense know exactly
what's going on. She's just fishing for more clicks and
empathy and targeting me for harassment. So yeah, I don't
really feel anything about it, said the attacker. She's thirty
years old. By the way, I was apologetic to her.
I felt sorry about the situation. She wants to continue
to just kind of drag it out. Yeah, because you've
suffered no punishment for it. You you punched a person
in the face on camera, and you are escaping any
kind of criminal charge for that. Antao said she wasn't
surprised by River's response and doesn't believe her assailant felt
any remorse for the attack. She says, I have dozens
of screenshots of her liking comments saying things like you
ain't hit that girl hard enough, or you did the
community of service. She a thousand percent deserved it. Never
doubt yourself, queen. Apparently this woman made a rap song
blaming the victim for the assault. The DA's office confirmed
what it called an unacceptable error in this case, which
occurred after the case was transferred to a different prosecutor.
The bungled case is now being reviewed by the Chicago
based firm Thomas Moore Society, which plans to sue Rivers
on the activist's behalf. I mean, she had like several
thousand dollars worth of legal bills, and there's the whole
accountability element here. Christopher Ferrara, senior counsel with the Thomas
Moore Society, said, quote, people need to learn accountability for
what is happening in this country over the last year,
which is the wave of violence by left wing activists
to think that the appropriate response to an opinion they
don't like is punching, kicking, assaulting, or shooting somebody. The
DA's office also failed to update the victim when the
case got tossed, when the charges were dropped, and the
Thomas Moore Society has been trying to communicate with the
DA's office and they're just ignoring all the calls and emails.
Antell said she didn't know the case was dismissed until
she saw her assailant flaunting the news on her Instagram posts.
Diana Florence veteran prosecutor who worked as an assistant district
attorney under Bragg's predecessor, Cy Vance, and now she's running
as an independent for Bragg's seat. She said, violence of
any sort is absolutely abhorrent and shouldn't and should be
prosecuted here. This was an extremely strong case. It was
caught on video. There's no question about what happened. Like
it doesn't get any easier than this case. It's all
right there, it's all recorded. You got the victim's name,
you got the assailant's name, everything's there. Just unbelievable. What's
going on with these prosecutors.
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dot com. It's just clearing out some of the emails.
I get a lot of emails, so I try to
clear him out. But I found this one from the
other day from Joe who says I worked in a
Mountain County court system for thirty five years. I watched
the assistant district attorneys change from prosecutors to social workers,
striving to increase the number of closed cases. Assistant das
have seven years of higher education from our poisoned woke
institutions too, which is it's a fair assessment as well.
This was from John. I agree that. And by the way,
we are waiting on Tim Moore, congressman from North Carolina.
We had booked him a couple of days ago. Yeah,
so we're waiting on him to call in. If he
calls him, we'll get him on and says I agree
that when there are suspects with a long prior criminal record,
that should be taken into account. But here's my concern.
What happens if somebody is charged with murder in Mecklimburg
County since they are like five years behind schedule and
going to trial, and that person is then denied bond
because it's a murder charge, but then they're found not guilty.
That means they were imprisoned for five years for a
crime they did not commit. I don't know the balance there,
because obviously these career criminal types know that just get
picked up in her back out. Okay, spell check your people, please.
I think he's saying that the career criminals know that.
You know, they get picked up, they're right back out
the next day. And that's a serious problem. But that's
I mean, that's why, like the judges that make these
decisions have the latitude right to make k specific defendant
specific decisions. And you know, when you start getting into
the territory where you're directing at you know, the legislative level,
and you're directing sentencing or bail requirements and stuff like that,
and you're pushing that down, there's no way that you
are going to foresee every single type of a case, right,
And so when you make these broad blanket laws, that
becomes problematic for that kind of a situation that John
just described. So the alternative has been to allow the
judges the discretion to look at the facts of a
particular case, weigh the risk of letting this person back
out onto the streets. Are they going to reoffend? And
therein lies the problem is that the judges discretion oftentimes
is terrible. So this is where we are. And we
went over this last week when they were debate leading
Arena's law in the North Carolina legislature, and that former
judge from Durham County, Marshall Morey, was talking about and
she's now a representative, she's been up there for years,
and she's saying, well, you know, I, as a district
court judge, I set all of the bail guidelines for
all the magistrates. So you can't blame the magistrate in
Mecklenburg County for Arena Zarutzka's murder because she was just
following the guidelines, right, But they are developed by who
then our district judges, So Wiggins, Judge Wiggins, So okay,
blame him. Then what are the guidelines? She didn't go
over those guidelines. But at the hearing today, Congressman Tim Moore,
do you remember the story? Let me see here, actually,
let me see if I can pull it up. Yeah,
well dollars, yeah, so that this person will be in card.
All right, So I'm going to back this up a
little bit. This is there's Mark Harris and he's done
there and then Tim Moore starts speaking here here.
Speaker 4: I certainly hate the circumstances under which that the committee
has to be here to our tour our witnesses here.
I have no words. Some of you I have talked
to before. Some this is the first time, and the
tragic deaths that you all have discussed that you have
lied that you're living through Officer Campbell, your injuries are
things that should never ever have happened. And I do
want to push back on some of the argument that
this is a money issue. This is not a money issue. Uh.
This is a policy issue. UH. This is a choice
that is made by often by magistrates. And I can
give you some examples. One is reason just a couple
of weeks ago, uh, two of the district attorneys and
two of the neighboring counties. I represent Travis Page from
Gaston County, Mike Miller from Cleveland County or here. And
I can tell you a story that I think is
very telling. And this happened just September third, so this
is very recent. A guy by the name of John
Alexander was accused of breaking into a Belmont Abbey College
dorm room and sexually assaulting a student that happened in
Gaston County. However, he was initially arrested here in Mecklenburg County.
Guess what his bond was, mister chairman. Here, the bond
was set at fifty thousand dollars. He made bond once
the case. Once he the case got transferred over to
Gaston County, the district attorney and the judge there raised
the bond to five hundred thousand dollars so that this
person will be incarcerated. That's an example from just a
few weeks ago, right here showing the difference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these are choices that these judges and magistrates are making.
District attorney, Yes, look I am open and you've got
my support, Democrats, you've got my support to fund more
prosecutor positions at the DA.
Speaker 2: One of the.
Speaker 1: Stats, because Democrats got to invite a couple of witnesses
as well. They brought in a statistics guy that made
the case that violent crime is down over the last
two years, historic declines in violent crime after the historic
increases from twenty twenty. But we don't like to talk
about that. But anyway, so it's gone down again, so good.
But their other witness was Dina King, former US Attorney
for the Western District of North Carolina. Of course, she
was replaced by a Republican when Trump won again, so
now it's Russ Ferguson. So Dina King she used to
be a a Mecklemberg assistant da as well, and she
said that for a population of our size in Mecklimburg County,
we should have one hundred and forty four prosecutors. Okay,
one forty four. We have eighty four, So we're sixty
positions short of what full staffing should be according to
whatever this analysis was that she was citing. Now there
is an additional ten that is included in Arena's law
that the legislature just passed, so that'll go up to
ninety four, but we're still fifty below where we should be. Now,
I don't know if one forty four is actually the
correct number, but probably we should be getting closer to it,
because I think she makes a compelling case that the
fewer prosecutors you've got, the greater the workload is, which
means they are incentivized to do plea deals, to push
cases out of the system, to just close them, get
them out of there, and also burn out these assistant
das will burn out and then they leave and they go,
you know, make make, you know, some real money in
the private sector. That's a problem. So yes, like, I'm
okay with hiring more prosecutors. Absolutely. This is from the
text line the grumpy major who says, I am retired
from CMPD with thirty two years within that organization. Seven
of those years were spent as a commander of several
different felony investigation bureaus. One part of this slow to
prosecute major cases is that that's never mentioned is the
role the defense attorneys play. It is a common practice
for defense attorneys to seek as many delays and continuances
in these cases as their friendly judges will give them.
This is done to put as much time as possible
between the crime and the court, so that witnesses are lost,
case detectives retire and move away the shock of the
crime has passed. It also puts extra strain on the
prosecutors as cases pile up, leading them to be more
willing to offer a soft plea bargain to get the
case resolved. I have yet to see the heroic defense
attorney often portrayed in media, just ones who are getting
as many billable hours as they can charge with no
interest in justice. Yeah, I would say that's I'd say
that's a big problem too. That's a very big part
of the problem as well. Because even one of the
witnesses that testified today at this hearing, she said that
the DA's office told her in that like she's waited
five and a half years, they still haven't gone to
trial for three of the four charged with her granddaughter's murder,
and the DA's office told her time is not your
friend because the longer it goes right, like witnesses disappear,
move away, they die. Just people's memory isn't as sharp,
they forget things. Whatever. Five and a half years to
go to trial is unacceptable. It's just unacceptable. Game on
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Tickets slash terms limited timeoffer. Let me get to some
more messages here from people who have been tweeting and
texting and emailing. This from Eric on Twitter. It's a
peat tweet as I take no pleasure in saying this, pete,
but the suffering will continue until Charlotte voters make a
different choice. I completely agree. And this from Mammaituded says
I have an idea as an area to help prevent
these shootings. Maybe stop teaching SEL social emotional learning SEO
in schools that pit students and children up against each
other and cause animosity towards other students victimhood, mentality, class envy, etc.
At such an early age. No wonder this festers in
their minds from childhood from our schools. Yeah, I mean
they The long march through the institutions has been a
long march. It's been going on for sixty years. Russ As.
I suppose the difference between whining and commentary really does
come down to the microphone and the paycheck. Yes, right,
Because if I was just standing on a corner or
like hanging out in your living room saying everything that
I say on the air, you'd just be like, oh man,
Pete just doesn't stop talking and it just whinds about everything.
But yes, you get a paycheck and a microphone, and
then that means that I'm a commentator. That's how that works.
Let me see here do some are very scared of
angering these criminals by calling police on them. I've been
servicing locations in Charlotte for ten years through all through COVID.
Majority of businesses have given up on calling the police.
It's the same people over and over back in their
business that very day. They just deal with the larceny
and the chaos. Yeah, that's part of one of the
critic criticisms of the crime stat data is that people
have stopped calling police for service calls. So which is
you should not do that, you should call the police,
but people stop because they're like, it doesn't do anything,
it doesn't matter, and that has an impact on the
crime stats.
Speaker 4: Um.
Speaker 1: President Trump, by the way, ordered the Department of War
what is it good for to dispatch quote all necessary
troops to Portlandia, Oregon to secure the city and safeguard ICE.
Trump also confirmed that he is quote authorizing full force
if necessary. Amid a spate of daily protests against the
federalized detention facility in Portland that have intensified since June
the president's announcement. This is from the New York Post
article by Ryan King. The president's announcement comes on the
heels of multiple high profile attacks against ICE officers and
steps announced by US Attorney General and BONDI to crack
down on those who attack federal personnel Portland. I'm not
sure if you're aware of this or not, but Portland
has long been a hotbed of Antifa activities. It's true.
Rioters there have repeatedly attacked and laid siege to the
ICE facility in Portland. This includes instances where some sicko
directed a laser beam into the eyes of an ICE officer.
They threw smoke grenades at multiple cops that tried to
damage equipment at the facility. All of this has led
to an increased federal presence in Portland, which has prompted
pleas from local officials for protesters to remain peaceful. Please
remain peaceful. On Friday, at grand jury indicted three women
for following an ICE agent back to their home and
live streaming the address on Instagram. See that's why they
wear the masks. People. 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
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them you heard it here. You can also become a
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thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.