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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smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for
your support. So the other day, the Mecklinberg County Commissioners
invited a bunch of the officials from the local judicial
system to come talk about the impact of Arena's law
law signed into a bill that was signed into law
by the Democrat governor Josh Stein. I mean, he waited
the full ten days to do so, but he signed it.
And I'm going to get now into the impacts on
the jail because Mecklinberg County Sheriff Gary not my fault.
McFadden was lamenting to the commissioners how this is going
to impact the jail. And it is going to impact
the jail, no doubt about it. Okay, no doubt about it.
It's going to impact the court system because they've been
allowing a lot of people to leave and that has
kept the jail population lower. And they admit this. They
have been using a strategy for twenty years. They called
it a risk based system, which has been another failure.
They've been using this rather than a charge based system,
as I mentioned in the last hour. And so their
model in Mecklimber County is not working. And this is
the state saying to the local jurisdictions, your model has failed.
You need to prioritize public safety in a different way,
and here's how you're going to do it. And the
local officials are upset because we have all of these
things that we want to spend the money on and
now we're not going to be able to because the
state is telling us to do this stuff and it's
going to cost us money. And that means we have
to cut stuff that we value at a higher level.
And to which I say, that is correct. Yes, this
is the state forcing you to put a higher prioritization
on criminal justice. So here is Gary not my fault, McFadden,
our illustrious but often frustrated sheriff. Ever, the hero or
the victim right, never his fault or anything. And he
complained of how he was not even consulted by the
state legislature when it drafted the law.
Speaker 2: So most of the people who have spoken, and we
will also speak, most of these going to be from paper.
And what I mean they're speaking from an aspect of
paper and function of the criminal justice system. We're going
to be functioning twenty four hours a day. It's not
nine to five to us, and it's not paper, and
it's not numbers to us. These are going to be
people lives that we are going to be entrusted with
even more.
Speaker 1: Okay, first off, are you telling me that the court
system doesn't deal with people? The absolute arrogance and hubris
of this man, like, Oh, it's much harder for us
we're having to deal with people. Yeah, because because what
the the cops aren't dealing with people when they're making
the arrests. No, they don't deal with people, right are
the judges and the district attorneys and the public defenders?
They aren't dealing with the very same people they of
course are. But you know, it's always worse for McFadden.
He's always got bigger obstacles that he has to overcome,
always the victim. This victimhood mindset that he's got.
Speaker 2: The main part is that we're going to be the
main corporate of all of this in three oh seven.
And of course it was created because of a stabbing
on a bus light I mean on a light rail,
and the law we had no put, no impact, I
mean no input. We're never invited to a meeting to
even think about how could this work through our system.
So we're just coming on the tail end of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably because they don't trust you and they don't
think you have the same priorities as they do. Right
the lawmakers and Raleigh, they know what your approach is,
they know what your priorities are, and they don't agree
with you. So there's there isn't any reason to include
you in any of this. That's just a guess. I
don't know that to be true, but that if I
had to guess, that would be why.
Speaker 2: So the current state of the detention center is those
numbers are going to change. Each time you see fifteen sixty,
now it is fifteen eighty. We fluctuate every night between
seventy seventy five people coming in and fifty going out.
And that's the fluctuation of our detention center. On the
average of every day, we cannot tell Pineview, Matthew's Midhill
and anybody else how to not to arrest somebody, so
they're going to be in and out of the facilit
a lot of times. We don't understand when we talk
about logistics, everybody now with detention center does not can
be housed together. It is by classification, and classification sometimes
is a very big burden. Also, we're going to talk
about the jail capacity. When you heard missus Harper say
functional capacity, we're at eighty five percent functional capacity today,
but we are ninety nine percent operational capacity. So this
is why you may see the issue about the word
stack of bunks. Stack of bunks is where we have
to put people on these bunk beds and their families
will call in and say they are sleeping on the floor,
but they are not actually sleeping on the floor. They're
actually on what they call a.
Speaker 1: Stack of bunk. Okay, So I've seen a picture of
these things. It's basically a plastic cot Okay. It sits
about six inches off the ground, it's got a mattress
in it, and then when you're done sleeping, you pick
it up and you can see. It's not like these
are bunk beds. Okay, that's so, that's what people complain about.
My oh, you know, my baby is sleeping on the
floor in the jail. And they're not sleeping on the floor.
They're on one of these cots, these plastic formed cots
with a mattress in it. That's what they're actually sleeping on.
Because there are capacity issues. Again, there were twenty two
thousand bookings at the jail last year and that number
is expected to increase.
Speaker 2: But we also have to remind you that we are
still fighting a House Bill three eighteen, which is the
immigration bill. And so what happens with the immigration bill
after a judicial official a magistrate has deemed that a
person has fulfilled all of their obligation to be released
from the Meccnburg County Detention Center, House Build three eighteen
now mandates us to hold them an additional forty eight hours.
So after a signed the release, they will be held
inside the detention center for an forty eight hours, and
that is going to cause some cumbersome more problems. We're
dealing with all these other people that we have to
have inside and outside, and when we're talking about IBC artists.
We will be responsible for the transportation as it stands now.
And additionally, most people do not recognize this, but my
deputies take care of people back and forth to the
hospital each and every day because of their medical conditions
that they have to have treated. So all of that
is on top of the law and also the immigration
immigration bill.
Speaker 1: Right, so what is the forty eight hour hold? Well,
that's what the state law or the bill because it
hasn't been hasn't been overridden. The veto that Josh Stein
did has not been overridden. It would require them to
hold the illegal aliens for an additional forty eight hours.
And so he's saying, this is going to be an
even bigger problem. Correct, Why you guys are artificially deflating
the capacity numbers by releasing people. Right, if you had
the space, you would house them, but you don't want
to house them, You don't have the space, you don't
want to build more space, so you're keeping the numbers
low by releasing a lot of people. Right, That's what
this That's what it sounds like to me. He says,
they're going to need more personnel, and they're going to
need more funding and that's not coming from the state,
so that's going to have to come from Mecklenburg County.
Correct commissioners then got to ask like one or two
questions a piece. Mostly they complained about the unfunded mandate
from the state. What is that additional cost? Well, they
don't know yet.
Speaker 2: We cannot tell people not to arrest anyone, but the
community has to have an input that people don't continuously
come to jail to be incarcerated. We haven't looked at
how can we decrease that, and that will decrease my workload,
that will decrease their workload, and that's definitely to increase
the courthouse workload. We have to tap into the community.
How can we be a better community and provide the
services so people will not continuously come to jail to
be incarcerated.
Speaker 1: There you go, that's the philosophy. We don't want them
to be taken to the jail in the first place.
That's the philosophy. We have to tap into the community
with more violence interrupters than such. When you understand the philosophy,
the outcome makes sense.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want there to be people in the jail
at all. And I'm not saying we should lock up
innocent people. But I am saying, though, is that if
people have proven that they cannot behave in a civilized society,
they cannot follow the general norse forms of a society,
then they need to be removed from the society. That's
my philosophy. If you engage in anti social behavior and
you're hurting other people and taking their stuff, then you
have abdicated and surrendered your rights to further participate in
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me jump over and chat with Craig. Hello, Craig, Welcome
to the show. May be Hey, what's up.
Speaker 3: I've noticed. I've noticed three things that artificially created problems
in this country that the Democrats are the ones behind it.
One is the expansion of fission based nuclear power fuel
refineries and building new prisons. They seem to always behave
that prisons are fixed, that there's a fixed number of cells,
and if we need more, we can't build more. We
could alleviate all this overcrowding problem if we were to
just build more prisons, and if we it's a supply demand.
If we have more criminals, we need more prisons.
Speaker 1: Right, one would think yeah, one would think that's obvious.
And I'm reminded of an axiom that I heard recently,
where we you know how much time could be saved
if we didn't have to deal with every single argument,
beginning with Democrats pretending not to understand the issue. It's
like it is, yeah, like, oh, we don't have enough
jail space. Okay, why don't we build a jail. I
don't understand why would we need to build a jail, Like, well,
because you just said we don't have jail space. But again,
it's like the fundamental assumption there, as you heard from
McFadden in that last clip, they don't want more people
coming to jail. They want a jail population of zero.
And some of the more radical elements of their base
they will come out and say that this is the
decarceration movement right. They don't believe there should be any
jails at all, which.
Speaker 3: Is bizarre, Yes, very bizarre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Craig, I appreciate the call, buddy, thank you. Email
from Bill he said I was attending Oh wait, this
is sorry a subject line to add to caller Jeff's
prior comments about prioritization and where's all the money going.
I attended the Panthers game yesterday. Great game, by the way,
Carolina Panthers. I was awe struck at the amount of
advertising that Blue Cross Blue Shield was spending, including warm
beanie hats for all of those in attendance. Yet we
wonder why insurance rates costs so much, insurance healthcare the
pharmaceutical company should be outlawed to advertise. Yeah, it does
make you wonder when you see that kind of because
I mean, what's a beanie cost? What even if it's
two bucks? How many people were in the stands there?
It's capacity seventy thousand? Like that adds up, you know,
not that I think there were seventy thousand people there.
They may have been. Was it sold out? I don't
even know. Yeah, all right, I got time for this clip.
Let me do this. This is not my fault. McFadden,
our sheriff, lamenting that there is no additional funding provided
in the law.
Speaker 2: If you go back, if you go back to the
forty eight hour whole rule for the House Bill three
eighteen for ice to hold and undocument a presumably undocumented
immigrant for an additional forty eight hours at the cost
to the Mecklenburg taxpayers at three hundred and ninety eight
dollars per hole. That cost is on you now. So
we're not looking to get a cost when you're talking
about numbers. When this law was mentioned, only mentioned, our
population went up one hundred and eighteen at just the
mention of it went up one hundred and eighteen, and
it was the highest that it has ever been as
me being sheriff at sixteen oh nine. That's one six
hundred and nine people in housing side of detention center.
So that's just the mention of it that caused that increase.
Speaker 1: I belive it.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what he's trying to get at there.
Just make whatever assertion you're trying to make. I don't understand.
Why was that from the hold? Was that from the
immigration bill? Was that from Marina's law?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? Wow, miss lawyer? Oh my god, Laura.
Speaker 4: Mike, thank you, thank you very much. That was my
big question was being an unfunded mandate. I just really
want the public to understand and I just want this
to be honed in on that we're being forced to
do all this without money from the state.
Speaker 1: Correct correct, Yes, okay.
Speaker 4: And so I'm assuming that in our as the budget
cycle starts, this is going to be something that we're
going to be seeing. We're going to be seeing your
request rise a little bit.
Speaker 5: Correct, correct, Okay, I just want to make I want
to mind you. Of course, today we're discussing this house
build legislation and the fiscal impact. You're kind of shifting
to the fiscal discussion, but be mindful that you're going
to have other competing needs as well, Yes, to support
your priorities also, So I just want to manage your
expectations and be mindful of that as you provide feedback
and direction and guidance that this is just one piece
of the larger pie as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, again, this is the state legislatu. You're telling you
you have not adequately prioritized this element of your responsibility
public safety, right, you have put other things above this
on a prioritization scale. And that means yes, I means
you're going to have to make some cuts to these
other priorities. Or here's my prediction. They're going to blame
the state and they're going to raise everyone's taxes and
they're going to say, not our fault. Vote out the
Republicans in Raleigh. And I say this because that's what
every single local government body that's controlled by Democrats have
done over the last fourteen years when they fail to
prioritize the number one priority that they're supposed to be funding,
and they fail to prioritize it, they then blame the
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I would like to welcome back to the program now
Don Brown. He is running for US Senate here in
North Carolina in the Republican primary. He's a former Navy
jag officer, special assistant US Attorney also, when he's not
doing all of the lawyer stuff, a national best selling author.
To boot, Hey, Don, how are you, Pete?
Speaker 6: Thanks for that. I'm doing well. You're too kind. As
a matter of fact, I'm standing in the long line
of the border elections in Raleigh and step down the
line just to talk to you, because you're doing special.
Even if I got to go back to the end
of the line, it's good to be with you.
Speaker 1: Why would you do that? Oh my gosh, we could
have booked this at a different time.
Speaker 5: Done. You know?
Speaker 6: We love BT. I've been a BT fan all my
life when I used to listen to the Tar Heels
one hundred years ago, what he Durham?
Speaker 1: So, yeah, you two p well, I appreciate it.
Speaker 6: I missed this opportunity, you bet.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't know that you're running for
US Senate. But in order to run for that federal office,
everybody's got to go to Raleigh to file.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, you've got the federal officers, in other words,
congressional candidates. The judicial candidates are here. I see Judge
mczeenie here and some others and and uh, North Countine
Legislature believes here too. So we've got quite a quite
a long line here on the very first day. But
we just wanted to get it out of the way
and continue to move on after this, so we just
came on up and here we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, alrighty, So, oh, did you see Roy Cooper, or
as I call him, my good friend Ray.
Speaker 6: I've not seeing Governor Corn cob yet, but I don't
know that he's here. But if he's here, I'll call
I'll call it in, I'll take a picture, I'll let
you know. P all right, I'll have a scoop on
them before we out.
Speaker 1: That's all right, I appreciate that. Okay, So let's talk
about today. The Arena's law was passed by the North
Carolina General Assembly and it took him all the ten days,
but the governor, Josh Stein, Democrats, signed it into law.
It takes effect today. A couple of days ago, county
commissioners had this big meeting with judicial officials talking about
the impact of this law on all of their operations,
and they're they're decrying the unfunded mandate from the state
and how it's going to impact all of them at
the local level. So I guess what's your what is
your response to this, you know, to this this complaint
that the state is now making the local jurisdiction bear
the cost of implementing these tougher on crime policies.
Speaker 6: Oh look, you have a Democrat Order of Commissions in
Meckenburg County and a Democrat sheriff wanting because they don't
have to sufficient facilities when they could have taken ice
detainers and turned them over to ice and considerably loosen
the load and have created the problem themselves to a
large degree by their approach toward you know, soft on crime,
approach toward immigration. So I don't really have a lot
of sympathy for what they are saying. We do have
to Arena's laws a step in the right direction, as
you know and your your listeners know, is designed to
stop or at least slow down this revolving door policy
of letting out you know, violent offenders, designed to end
cash this bail and ending cash us bail is a
positive step. How can the Democrats complain about that? And
it's also designed to force mental evaluations for folks that
tend to be just just you know, either mentally ill
to the point they can't function. But it's it's designed
to to address that issue as well. But we got
to go farther and we have to pee. We've got
to understand, we've got to have long term psychiatric facilities
to hold folks because the criminal justice system principal goal
must be to protect people on the street. And there
are some people that you can't try it. You can't
try them, you can't put them back on the street.
So both the federal and state governments are eventually going
to have to come together. We close down Dorothea Dickt's hospital,
we're going to have to reopen hospitals like that and
get to work on that roller sleeves up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and that's going to require obviously funding as well.
That would I would argue that would be a state
funding issue, and it would be a federal funding issue. Sure,
but how do you build the consensus to get that
stuff funded? Even though I think now there is there
may be a window of opportunity here for Democrats because
of their rhetoric against like Arena's law, saying that we
need to focus on mental health. Well, okay, the involuntary
commitment portion of the law doesn't take effect until next year,
So why not use this as an opportunity to build
some bipartisan coalition.
Speaker 6: Right? You got to have long term syscast facilities for
folks who cannot be tried. If this guy that killed
Areena had been a long term psychiatic facility, she might
be alive. But look, here's the thing. We're gonna have
to prioritize short term how we're spending money. I was
in Durham the other night and spoke with the Democrat
candidate from mayor there, and they have this thing called
the Heart program where they put a shriek in the
car with with with police officers and other words. They're putting,
you know, counselors in the car with police officers, paying
them a salary. Cut that salary and use it to
fund these more urgent criminal justice matters designed to protect people.
So the Democrats can whine, we're gonna have to cut
a lot out of the budget is designed for social
fluff and all that kind of stuff in order to
make you know, to make the dollars available for it.
It's going to be a matter of prioritizing to put
public safety first and not a bunch of this woke
mumbo jumbo to the governments are funding right now.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think this is this is the problem
is that they, you know, Michlmure County has been running
a model for about two decades now. Yeah, and they
called it a risk based system and it's now flipped
to a charge based system. And in my understanding of
listening to this presentation the other day, that just tells
me that the Mecklenburg model has failed. And that the
locals have not been prioritizing, you know, the construction of
another jail. They do not want to build. Democrats do
not want to build another jail, despite the fact that
we've got this massive population growth, and they think that well,
with all of the people coming here that were not
going to be like having you know, new criminals move
into of course we will.
Speaker 6: You know, you know, Pete Aftra Arena was murdered. Our
campaign was the only US Senate campaign to call for
President Trump to see the National Guardian. About two weeks
after that, the Charlotte Police union paternal part of a
police lodge gone also call for the National Guardian. I
talked to the president of that of that lodge, and
he was telling me that Charlotte has fewer police officers
today than in twenty eighteen with a population of sixty
thousand more so that there's a strang on law enforcements
and these fluff programs that have failed. We got to
cut the money for that and spend that money on
housing for people that need to be off the street.
You know, not every person who is who last capacity
to stand trial is dangerous, Pete, but some are, and
those folks You can't just bring them in and bring
them out because they don't have capacity. You got to
find a place for That's why long term criminal psychiatric
facilities are what we're gonna have to look at. But
for the short term, we got to cut this fluff stuff.
It is that the Democrats want to keep funding, but
they don't want to send spend any more money on
housing dangerous people.
Speaker 1: Would you consider would you consider fluff spending to include
the recording studio that Sheriff Gary not my fault McFadden
built at the jail. Is that fluff there?
Speaker 6: You go, I just throw you a little softball, Pete,
and you knock it out of the ballpark with a
basically load of don't you brother?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean that's an easy one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's the type of thing we know. We really
need a doge at the local level to go into
this county and city government and just cut the crap spending.
Just like you you describe. We we can loosen up
the money to enforce this law, but the Democrats don't
want to talk about that. The don't want to talk
about all the junk they're spending money on and all
the all these fluff programs and all these woke programs
that do nothing other than sap money from me and
you and all the other hardworking citizens of the area.
Speaker 1: Don Brown, he is a candidate for US Senate here
in North Carolina and the Republican primary. And Don, thanks
so much for your time. I feel terrible that you
got out of line, So go get back in line
and go go file to run, sir.
Speaker 3: We'll do it.
Speaker 6: Pete, my best, all my friends at BT talk to
you soon.
Speaker 1: All right, man, see him? That is all right. That's
Don Brown. By the way, you can get more information
on Don at his website, Don Brown four NC, and
that's spelled out fo R Don brownfoenc dot com. 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 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
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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. From a
Twitter message, Russ says, Sheriff Gary, not my fault. Mcfatten
makes it sound like one hundred and eighteen folks suddenly
decided to get arrested and they heard about the law,
rather than framing it as one hundred eighteen people who
would have been released who probably shouldn't be. Also, I
am so weary of government neglecting core responsibilities for shiny
new things and feel good stuff and then squeezing us
from more taxes to cover the basics. Right, And that's
how you end up with the pattern of conservatives and
Republicans moving out of urban areas as it becomes more
and more urban. Right as the city grows and gets
built up, people who and they prefer lower taxes and
focusing government spending on core services. They leave because they
see that the core services are not being funded and
their taxes keep going up to pay for stuff that
they didn't want. And then you have people who move
in because they want to take advantage of all of
the government services that are being paid for via tax
dollars off of the businesses that conservatives built. It's a cycle.
But let me talk about the budget real quick. Because
County Commissioner Lee Altman, she said she mentioned state funding
of the criminal justice system. I don't know where she
got this data point from. You're going to hear her
mention it, but she talks about state funding of criminal
justice in order to pivot to more mental health funding.
Speaker 7: Our first duty the state, federal government, local government is
public safety. That is our first obligation. And yet I
was just confirming the statistic. My understanding is the state
of North Carolina has allocated a paltry two point eight
percent of the state budget to the criminal justice system.
And you know, Sheriff McFadden said, you know, how do
we decrease workload? How do we prevent people from continuously
coming to the jail? And we know that a huge
part of the jail population have mental health issues, and
so this is really something that we need to think
about on a bipartisan basis. We want to be safe
all of us, and we need to do that by
having the resources to prevent tragedy.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I don't know what she's talking about. Two
point eight percent for the criminal justice system. The criminal
justice system actually makes a lot of money. It does.
It makes a lot of money with fines and court
costs and all of that stuff. But I'm look, you
want to increase funding for criminal justice. Sure, but let's
look at the numbers. North Carolina's budget total two point sorry,
twenty seven point nine billion dollars almost thirty billion dollars
okay per year. Education takes up like fifty nine percent
of that, Health and Human services takes up another twenty
four percent, and then coming in third at twelve and
a half percent, Justice and public safety three point five
billion dollars, okay, twelve point four percent. Let's take a
look now at the Mecklenburg County budget. Mecklenburg's total budget
two point five billion dollars. You know what they fund
more than Justice in public safety? Parks and rec. The
Justice in public safety budget in Mecklenburg County is two
hundred and eight million dollars or eight point three percent
of the total budget. Okay, two oh eight. Parks and
rec gets two Sorry, parks and rec gets two hundred
and seventeen million, So almost nine million more goes to
parks and rec than Justice in public safety. So who's
actually prioritizing more? Right? Also funded to a higher level
government facilities at three hundred and sixty million, health and
human services four hundred nine million, and education at one
billion dollars. A billion dollars a year. Mecklenberg County funds
for education to wait for justice in public safety? And
what did she just say at the beginning of that clip,
Let me rerack it. We'll take a listen. What is
it again?
Speaker 7: Our first duty the state, federal government, local government is
public safety.
Speaker 1: Your first duty is public safety, but your number one
priority is education number two, Health and human services number three,
government facilities number four, Parks and rec and number five
public safety, which is weird if that's your number one duty. Now,
I'm not advocating we spend a billion dollars on justice
in public safety. That's probably not necessary. But to make
the argument somehow that the state is the reason why
you have the public safety system that you have in
Meclimber County, that's not true. It's just not true. Once again,
local governments are administrative units of the state, and what
the state is telling you here is that your priorities
are not currently and have not been, in line with
what the state legislature is prioritizing. They want the state
lawmakers want the locals to increase the prioritization of public
safety because you have obviously proven that you don't want to.
That's why you haven't built another jail. You don't want to, right,
That's it. If you wanted to build another jail, you
would have built another jail by now. But you don't
want to build another jail, hence you haven't. In fact,
you closed one jail north.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You don't want these facilities because your incentives in the
Democrat primaries and to win the general races in Mecklimber
County as a Democrat is to appease this not small
part of your base that does not want any incarceration.
All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening. I could not do the show
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