Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. All Right, I gotta tell you I'm a
little I'm a little excited. I'm well, okay, I'm cautiously optimistic.
Let me temper my expectations here, because I got a
little bit of good news. It's a little bit of
good news as reported at the Charlotte Observer by Ryan
Orley that Mecklenburg County Sheriff Gary not my fault. McFadden
still has not decided whether he will seek re election.
Please please, O, please please please, there's still a chance.
We still have a chance. And I have an idea,
because you know me, I'm all about solutions, and so
I have I have an idea on how we might
be able to improve the situation at the Sheriff's office.
I mean, I don't want to say we're going to
save lives here, but we're basically going to save some
lives this if we can pull this off. Okay, all right,
so hang on, but let me get to the details
here in the story. There are three other Democrat candidates
that have entered the race. The filing deadline is December nineteenth.
So if sheriff not my fault, McFadden is going to
run again, then he will have to file before December nineteenth.
The primary is on March third. He said that he
to decide sometime this autumn when he visits his childhood
home in South Carolina and praise and reflects. Okay, and
then he says, quote, is it necessary for me to
still do this work?
Speaker 2: No? No, it is absolutely not necessary.
Speaker 1: You have earned your flowers, you have earned your retirement.
You should take the w and ride off into the sunset,
back to like wherever it is you're gonna retire, or
if you're going back to your childhood home, or wherever
it is that you see yourself go like write the
next chapter of your life. You have won all of
the awards that you can win. Really, at this point,
I've seen. It's all about me wall. I've seen it,
even though you did not. During that interview with the
Charlotte Optimist publication the other day, like I don't when
he was saying, I don't need all the recognition on
my wall, and then he points to the wall where
there is like and just innumerable number of awards hanging
on the wall. So but yeah, so like you've already
won all of these awards. You've you've been recognized, right,
you've done all this great work. I mean, not any
sheriff would have been able to put up a recording
studio in the jail, right, I mean that was a
big deal. You set up a bookmobile, I think, right,
it's like that, Just bang up, work man. There's nothing
else left to do. You've done it all. You've done
it all, so best to go out while you're on top.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 1: He is weighing the parts of the job that he likes,
namely being in the community. That's the that's the part
of the jobs. And apparently you are. You're just not
able to be in the community if you're not a sheriff.
I was not aware of this, But that's a pretty
big deal. Now that I think about it, like, yeah,
if you you know, you're really juiced up about being
in the community and the only way to be in
the community is to be a sheriff, then I mean
it makes sense then that you would have to be
a sheriff.
Speaker 2: So that's tough.
Speaker 1: Like, that's definitely one of the factors to consider here.
He says, quote, I love what I do. I don't
love being the sheriff.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: That is a heck of a campaign slogan. If you
are going to run for reelection, I would advise you
don't use that. That might send the wrong message there
that you don't love being the sheriff, the job that
you asked voters to give you, and you would be
asking voters to return you to right, so you probably actually,
you probably should.
Speaker 2: Not have said that. Do you know?
Speaker 1: That's he says, I love what I do, I don't
love being the sheriff because you come with this crazy title.
I don't even know what that means. Okay, I'm sorry,
I don't even know what that means. You come with
this crazy title. Sheriff is crazy. That's a crazy title.
That's not a crazy title. What are he's talking about?
I'm confused. Look, you said I don't love being the sheriff.
You have now given all of the other Democrat candidates,
and if there's a Republican that's running as well, you've
given them all mailer material. That is, that's billboard material,
as they say in the sports world.
Speaker 2: That stuff is going.
Speaker 1: To be That line is going to get hung on
every campaign office wall, It's going to be put in
all of the mailers, it's going to be put in
any commercials, any digital ads.
Speaker 2: I love what I do.
Speaker 1: I don't love being the sheriff, which does kind of
actually confirm Yeah, it confirms my suspicion. For almost a
year now, former high ranking employees have publicly quit, sued McFadden,
and complained about what they describe as a toxic workplace.
The Sheriff's wife is not well and has spent time
in the hospital recently, he said, and negative news coverage
has been taxing on his family. He again called criticism
from his former chief of detention quote the ultimate betrayal,
which that is an improvement because he said the word
ultimate instead of the ultipole, which we were not clear
if that was a word. And then we later on
that no it's not a word, unlike the word flustrated,
which he did use also, but that actually is a word.
I mean, it hasn't been used in like one hundred
and fifty years, but it was. It's a combo word
of like fluss straight or frustrated and flustered, word frustrated
and so.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So see he's teaching people new stuff, and you taught
me a new word. Although ultipole is not a word
but ultimate, so he's using that where the ultimate betrayal, unless,
of course the reporter cleaned that up for him.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure to join a race now.
Speaker 1: And add to it all, quote, why don't we just
sit in our backyard and cook, he said of he
and his wife. Yes, I like this idea for you.
This is a fantastic next chapter for you, Sheriff Gary McFadden.
Great idea, just to hang out, sit on the porch,
watch the sunset, play with the grand kids. You can
still it may take some doing. Maybe you can get
like a special citation or something, or a permit to
go out in the community without the title of sheriff
or as you call it, the crazy title of sheriff.
But you can probably find some place to do that,
you know, somewhere where you can go into the community
and do the work that you love. I mean, not
being the sheriff, because you don't love being the sheriff,
but you are considering staying the sheriff. So anyway, so
I had this idea. He says, let's just sit in
our backyard and cook. I'm thinking gas grill. I'm thinking
we gift him a gas grill contingent upon his retirement.
So if you want it, and I'm not saying just
any gas grill, I'm saying like or I guess it
could be charcoal or something. Maybe a fire pit, maybe
a big fire bit that you could cook over. Oh,
maybe like an oven like the pizza ovens, you know,
the outdoor pizza oven thing that people built with the
it's got the fire place in it, it's got a
brick oven in it. We can get a gas line
in there. I mean, we could go all out. We're
gonna have to get some sponsors, probably raise some money.
Oh you know that probably Actually we're probably not allowed
to gift an elected officials something like this. It might
be considered a bribe, which in this case it actually
would be.
Speaker 2: That would be what we would be.
Speaker 1: Doing is to say, if you leave, we will give
you this grill as part as a retirement gift. Yeah,
it's probably not allowed. Cautiously optimistic. I am though cautiously optimistic.
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is Government of Fail associate and grassroots Outreach coordinator at
the John Locke Foundation John Locke dot org, conservative think tank,
and he had a piece on a solution because once again,
I am all about solutions, and I don't know if
you're aware of this or not, but there's been some
focus on Charlotte and North Carolina recently about our public
safety concerns, which are mere perceptions. I am told by
Charlotte city officials that people just have this perception of
a lack of safety, and what they really want to
say is that you have a misperception that you actually
are safe, but you just erroneously believe you're not.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's what they say.
Speaker 1: When there's this perception that people have that they're not safe,
and that means that they're not safe, Like, we don't
want to minimize the fact that you don't feel safe,
but you act actually are safe. So we're basically saying
you're a liar, you're a bit paranoid.
Speaker 2: And it's the media's fault and all that.
Speaker 1: So he has some ideas the murders of the Ukrainian
refugee and an aspiring teacher, brought to lightholes in the
judicial system, including a lack of bail bond guides from magistrates.
I've been talking about this for gosh, now it's actually
been two months. Yeah, A let's see here. I got
a press release from the Mechlammer County Republican Party that
I guess an hour ago they held a press conference
at the Government Center to mark the sixty day.
Speaker 2: Anniversary.
Speaker 1: I don't like that word for this, but to mark
sixty days since the murder of Arena Zarutzka and the
subsequent wave of violent crime that has plagued Charlotte.
Speaker 2: They mentioned the the murder of four year old Jace Edwards.
Speaker 1: That's the little boy that was sleeping at I think
his grandma's house and some repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat
offenders showed up to steal a car in the parking lot.
Somebody in the house turned a light on or something,
and then some repeat offender just fired off a bunch
of shots at the house and struck and.
Speaker 2: Killed this little boy, killed him.
Speaker 1: And what did we hear the other day the fifteen
year old with one hundred and eleven crimes in two years,
and those are just the ones that they charged him with. Yeah,
so it seems like a bit of a problem. On Monday,
I went through the MacArthur Foundation and their grants that
have helped to codify and train people in these quote
soft on crime policies, and I talked about how the
bail guidelines are set at the local level, and this
is done by the judges that are in charge of
the local district. Some judicial officials may be overwhelmed by
the number of arrestees that are brought before them, so
that could be why they're not you know, if it's
a magistrate or something, and there they've got, you know,
seventy people in front of them that got arrested on
a Friday night and they're trying to blow through the
paperwork and get people, you know, through the system as
quickly as possible. Maybe they're not doing background checks on
all these people. Maybe they're not looking at all of
the information to make a better decision about whether somebody
is or is not a threat to the community. Right,
that's possible, But also some of these people might be
lax in conducting a criminal background check on the arrestees.
Speaker 2: Why would they be lax?
Speaker 1: Well, the MacArthur found A has been doing trainings for
people in the court system, helping them identify their implicit bias, right,
and so what does that mean? Your implicit bias training
is usually if like you are a white magistrate and
a black person comes before you, or if you're a
black magistrate and a black person comes before you, or
if you're a Hispanic magistrate and a black person comes
before you. Oh, I'm kidding, but that's basically what this
stuff is. It's like, hey, you know what, this is
a historically oppressed or aggrieved population. They've had all you know,
as a race, they have had all of these problems
against them. And so this individual who appears before us,
we are going to go lighter on this person because
some other people that shared some genetic similarity with this
person in the past, hundreds of years ago, they were oppressed.
So therefore this person now is going to get off
on his you know, one hundred and ninth arrest. North
Carolina needs to implement here's the recommend or one of
the recommendations from William Allen. North Carolina needs to implement
a statewide systematic guide for magistrates to use when assigning
bail to an arrestee, and mandate that all magistrates conduct
criminal background checks, including prior charges, prior arrests, and prior
convictions on all arrestees that are brought before them. Right,
so give it to him, like like I want this
thing to look like a grid, you know, like here
is the grid. This is like find the charge on
the left side, how many priors? Here are the different circumstances.
But here it doesn't need like this can all be
done digitally. Like I am at the point now with
this topic where like I would always want to kind
of defer to the judges because you never know, like
every case is different. You're dealing with an individual before you.
So I get that magistrates are dealing with this individual,
and the magistrate is just there to make sure that
the person shows up for their first appearance, right, that's
the point. They're not the judge. They just are there
to ensure that this person shows up for court. And
they may not have all the information, or the judge
in charge of their district may tell them, Hey, if
somebody comes in for this and it's a misdemeanor stalking charge,
well you know, what Just give them a give them
a release, cashless spail with a promise to appear, and
I'm done with this. I'm sorry, guys, you've abused your discretion.
And now I think the state needs to come in
and actually set guidelines. And once you set all the guidelines,
plug them into some program, let AI do its thing
or whatever. And then somebody comes in, you pull up
their rap sheet, feed it into the program and it'll
tell you this is how much to charge for bond.
And that takes all the racial bias.
Speaker 2: Out of this stuff. You don't need to do implicit
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A text frum, Skip, he says, Pete the sheriff of
Mecklemburg County, Gary, not my fault. McFadden is saying that
he likes the power of the job, but not the
accountability of being sheriff.
Speaker 2: I think that is accurate.
Speaker 1: Skip, Wayne says, you are killing it and making me
laugh out loud about not my fault, McFadden. Well, thank you, Wayne,
Glad Glad I could provide some comic relief. Here's a
random seven oh four number who says, maybe that McFadden
could use three hundred thousand dollars worth of one dollar
bills to fire up to the grill.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see that's the Chief Jennings.
Speaker 1: Ah, the gas grill would probably be cheaper than the
severance retirement go away hush money whatever that the Charlotte
City Council paid to its police chief. I don't know
if McFadden would get a similar kind of a bonus
like that from the Mecklimburg County commissioners, because his is
an elected position after all.
Speaker 2: All right, so.
Speaker 1: This is over at the John Locke Foundation by William Allen,
offering a proposal statewide bail guidelines as well as background checks.
He said, you know, last month the legislature passed House
Bill three seven, called Arena's Law, named after Arena Zarutzka,
murdered on the light rail line. Josh Stein did eventually
sign it into law on the very last day that
he could, and Alan says, while Arena's Law is a
great first step in protecting the citizens of North Carolina.
More needs to be done. Two critical needs would be
to implement a statewide systematic bail slash bond guide. This
would be a standardized evidence based reference with offense categories.
It would give recommended bail ranges, and then it would
give risk factors as part of it. See, and that's
the thing. Once you compile all of that data and
you put it into an algorithm of some kind and AI,
as the kids would say, once you put it into
a program like that, it could draw from the court records,
the arrest records, the risk factors based on those you know,
prior convictions, based on the nature of the charges they
are facing. Right, it would pull that stuff in, and
it would not pull in racial information, age information. Right,
It wouldn't pull in that stuff, So you wouldn't have
the human bias that we are told is institutional and systemic,
even in and maybe more so in Democrat controlled court systems,
which is a bit of a head scratcher. I thought
they were the party that's against the racism, but yeah,
I don't know. Then again, it was the Democrats, the
ACLU that went and argued at the Supreme Court that
white Democrats refuse to vote for black Democrats in primaries,
and so they have to they have to have the
protection of the Equal Rights Act there for the racist
white Democrats in Louisiana. Anyway, I like this idea statewide guide.
I would say, put it into some sort of a
computer program. Somebody needs to develop this, somebody smarter than me,
although it is my idea. So I'm copywriting it right now.
Timestamp this audio, Nick, thank you very much, So it's
right now.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So now, if anybody does this, I'm going to get
a residual. I think that's how that works. I've watched
a lot of Shark Tank over the years.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Also, he says, mandate that all magistrates in North Carolina
conduct a criminal background check of each arrestee that is
brought before them. Now, that obviously is going to impact
turnaround times. Right, He does recognize that. He goes on
to say the current process that magistrates in North Carolina
used to set bail is often based on their own discretion,
sometimes with very little data. This process can lead to
inconsistent bail amounts, release of repeat offenders, and public safety concerns.
Some counties in North Carolina have policies in place regarding
bail ranges for certain felonies and misdemeanors, although they still
allow magistrates to use their discretion. The sitting Superior Court
judge and chief district Judge are the ones responsible for
setting pre trial release policies for all of the magistrates
that are in their district right. And if you listen
to this program, you know this because I covered this
two weeks ago, I think or three weeks ago. I
went over some of the things I mentioned. How you
stalking is something that you can just walk free on
to continue stalking like that, That's absurd to me. If
somebody is stalking a victim, you don't let them back
out to continue the stalking. You need to be giving
them some sort of a secured bond. He says that
the judges are responsible for setting these policies so long
as they do not extend beyond the provisions of the
Eighth Amendment, which prohibits successive bail and fines as well
as cruel and unusual punishments. This process, though, is a
bit problematic because number One, these policies can vary widely
across jurisdictions, and we heard this also when there was
the Congressional field hearing held in Charlotte, and there was
a story told by I think it may have been
it may have been Tim Moore, the former Speaker of
the House now a member of Congress, and he talked
about how somebody got arrested. Oh, it was him, And
when he came into the studio and he told us
the story about the guy who was arrested on the
sexual assault charge at Belmont Abbey College, and he was
first picked up in Mecklemburg County, and then when they
went and brought him back to Gaston, he started crying
because he knew it was a different structure in Gaston County.
They were not going to let this guy back out
onto the street. He thought he would be returning to
the street in Mecklenburg. So that's number one. Number two,
the policies are often vague enough to allow for broad
discretion by the magistrates, and so either through incompetence or
they're just harried, you know, they don't have enough time
to go do the background checks on everybody or whatever,
or they have an ideology that's like turn them loose, turn.
Speaker 2: Everybody loose for justice. Social justice.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There have to be some guardrails.
Speaker 1: Now, 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.
Speaker 2: See for yourself.
Speaker 1: 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. Russ writes in on the Twitter machine, how
about this pete we can offer, not my fault McFadden,
a big green egg. Everybody I know who gets one
goes all in on grilling and smoking like everything, and
they pretty much disappear into their backyard. It's so true.
That is so true. The big green egg. We could
give Gary the egg. And it's green, so it's the
same color as the as the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's office colors. Right,
it's green and gold, I think. On the bail stuff,
Russ says, is it crazy to say bail is only
for first time offenders? If you have a criminal history,
no bail. If it's a violent first defense, we could
hold them at least until we can have a preliminary
hearing like in self defense cases, and then decide if
we are comfortable with them being out on preach trial release. Yeah,
like I'm I'm okay with this idea. Yeah, if you're
you're brought in and you've got a criminal record within
the last say five years, you don't get to walk.
You got to post some money. That is a ramification
for your prior arrests. Especially And here's the thing too,
people are getting arrested so often that their cases aren't
even adjudicated, and they just keep racking up more and
more and more arrests. So the idea from William Allen
at the John Locke Foundation is number one, uh you uh,
We've got to create a statewide bail bond guide. And
number two, we have to make the magistrates conduct a
criminal background check of every person that is arrested and
brought before them. And he highlights the the reasons why
the limitations of the current system. He says, even though
current law does not provide a simple checklist for determining bail,
it does mandate judicial officials to consider a specific list
of factors when setting pre trial conditions pre trial release conditions.
Those include the nature of the offense, evidence against the defendant,
family ties, great show, financial resources, employment, character, mental condition, intoxication,
length of residence, criminal record, history of avoiding prosecution in
any other relevant evidence. While the decision for bail is
always individualized, a few judicial districts use their own worksheets
as a tool for structured decision making. And it sounds
like that's what Mecklenberg does. I've seen the chart, so
and I gave give you some of this stuff from
the chart. During a bail hearing, the judge or the
magistrate is supposed to evaluate public safety risks the defendant's
likelihood of appearing in court, in other words, are they
a flight risk or not, as well as arguments from
the defense regarding community ties, why they're not going to flee,
they have a job, or there are certain details.
Speaker 2: Of the case.
Speaker 1: Right to impose a secured bond, a judge or magistrate
has to first consider the less restrictive options like unsecured
bond or just personal recognizance release, and then the magistrate
has to document the reasons for requiring a secured bond,
especially if it is mandated by local policy. They're supposed
to fill out this form, but sometimes magistrates don't have
time to conduct the background check, and sometimes they simply
choose not to do so.
Speaker 2: Mandating that would close this loophole.
Speaker 1: All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening. I could not do the show
without your support and the support of the businesses that
advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support
them too and tell them you heard it here. You
can also become a patron at my Patreon page or
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for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.