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, so I did follow the news
while I was on vacation because ABP always be prepping
and I have a lot so and of course I
have now way more prep than I can get to.
But I want to start with the story here because
today is December first, and that means today is day
one of Arena's law being implemented, well part of it.
The other part will be implemented next year, which is
the involuntary commitment component of the law that's designed to
basically tell the local jurisdictions the state is telling the
local jurisdictions your priorities suck. Okay, That's basically what this
is all about.
Speaker 2: And if you don't.
Speaker 1: Believe me, you will hear it in the audio that
I have obtained exclusively from the public meeting that was
broadcast over the YouTube. It was the Mecklinberg County Commission.
And they brought up the director of the Criminal Justice
Services Agency in Mecklinberg County. They brought up Chief Judge Wiggins,
They brought up Sheriff Gary not my fault McFadden. They
brought up the District Attorney, they brought up the public defender,
they brought up the Clerk of Court, all to tell
us the same thing, which is, one, we're going to
need a lot more money to do the things that
now we are required to do under state law, this
new state law number one. Number two, we don't have
the money from We're not getting any new money from
the state. Also, number three, we don't know exactly how
much money we're going to need or how well of
this is going.
Speaker 2: To impact us yet. Okay, so we need more money.
Speaker 1: It's not coming from the state, and we don't know
how much we're going to be asking for. We don't
know what the impact is going to be, but we
do expect there to be an increase in the number
of people being processed through the jail and the number
of people that are going to be housed at the jail,
or as our sheriff calls them, residents of the jail.
And by the way, he said, it's not his fault.
So this from the Charlotte Observer from last week, the
way they wrote it up, Mary Ramsey, the Reporter. A
new state law named for the Ukrainian refugee fatally stabbed
on Charlotte's light rail will increase staffing and funding needs
for Mecklenberg County's criminal justice system, official say, but exactly
how much remains unclear. County commissioners heard an update from
Sheriff Gary not my fault McFadden, Chief District Judge Roy Wiggins,
and Criminal Justice Services Director Sonya Harper on the local
impacts of Arena's law. Many provisions in the new law
were named after that was named after twenty three year
old Arena Zarutzka. Take effect today on Monday today. So
I did what you I'm sure don't want to, which
is I watched the hour long meeting, which, by the way,
this is now a pattern. I've identified this before with
the Charlotte city officials. They have begun doing this. This
never used to happen. I shouldn't say never. This would
rarely occur When I was a reporter for WBT News.
This would have been from like two thousand through two
thousand and eight. And the Charlotte City officials I noticed
they are doing this now. They are holding these press conferences.
They don't take questions from the media, but they will
allow media representatives. They'll allow reporters to after the press
conference is over, they'll let a reporter go and pull
one of the participants in the press conference. They'll pull
them off to the side and you can do a
one on one. Which this is a TV construct, by
the way, like that whole thing. It's just it's a
TV construct because TV people in like the management and
the assignment editor desks and the producer and all of that,
they don't like the look of a person standing at
a podium taking questions and reading statements.
Speaker 2: They don't like the visual.
Speaker 1: They prefer a more you know, close in shot, close
up of the guy's face or the gal's face that
you're interviewing, and you know, the MIC flag and only
the mic flag of the TV station in their face
and then answering a question. It's a complete construct. Okay,
you're going to get better answers when the media acts
as a pack. That was always the case, and so
that's why they don't do it anymore. Right, they are
the local city officials. By doing their press conferences this way,
they are controlling the way the media is able to
behave in getting answers out of these elected officials. Now,
whether they know that or not, I'm not sure. My
bet would be of course they do so. At this
County commission meeting, same sort of artificial construct. They set
the meeting and they set it for one hour, and
they say, well, we got somebody else that needs the room,
and we got to go to do this other thing,
and so we only have one hour. And by limiting
the meeting to one hour, with presentations from Judge Wiggins,
Sheriff McFadden, and the Director of the Criminal Justice Services,
Sonya Harper, they each gave their presentation, each one ran
about ten minutes.
Speaker 2: And then all the county.
Speaker 1: Commissioners, there are nine of them, they basically get one
or two questions and they put all of the county
commissioners on a clock. And that's because of Vilmalik. Okay,
all right, let's just be honest about that. That's because
of Commissioner vill Malik, who would just ask questions for
six hours if you gave her the opportunity. They've had
to deal with this when she was on school board.
They've had to deal with it when she's on county commission.
She just doesn't stop with the questions, and she always
asks them. I guess for clarity for the people that
are out there. Not that she doesn't know what she's
asking about, it's just that she thinks other people may
not know, so she's going to ask a really stupid
obvious question. So anyway, they got all the county commissioners
on a clock.
Speaker 2: I didn't think it was like.
Speaker 1: A two minute' clock, and that means you only get
like one or two minutes or sorry, one or two questions.
So it wasn't it wasn't a deep dive. You don't
get a deep dive here. Now, maybe they're doing the
deep dives off camera outside of a public meeting, and
they're figuring this stuff out in their own way. Maybe
I just note the way you structure these types of events,
you induce certain outcomes. So let me start with Sonya Harper,
and she is again the director of me Umber County
Criminal Justice Services, and she says that the biggest impacts
will be seen in the pre trial process. Okay, So
that includes from the moment you are brought into the
processing center for arrest and then your first appearance in
front of a judicial official.
Speaker 3: It identifies that an arresting law enforcement, a pre trial
services program, or a district attorney must provide a criminal
history for judicial offendant defendant. I will say for us
at CJS, the work that we conduct already in this
space is currently we conduct public safety assessments as well
as run criminal records for each person who is booked
into the Mecklenberg County Jail. So we fully intend to
continue providing those records in the public safety assessments again
for those booked into the jail. But this does expand
and again requires that record to be run for each
each person who is arrested and presented at at an
arrest processing center. It also includes here when that record
is produced, it does require that a judicial official consider
the full criminal history, not just the convictions when they're
setting conditions of pre trial release.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
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The arena's law takes effect today and Mecklemburg County judicial
and government officials are very concerned. Capital v Capital c
trademark on that one very concerned at the impact that's
going to have on the criminal justice system. Why I
would submit it's because they have been misprioritizing public safety
for a very very long time funding all these other
things that now they are complaining they're not going to
be able to fund because they put them as a
higher priority. We'll get to that though. So according to
the the director of the County Criminal Justice Services, Sonya Harper,
she says, like they're already doing, you know, the complete
record as part of their safety assessments for the people
coming through the jail and all of that, but not
all of them because they've been operating what they called
the risk model versus a charging model. So a lot
of people would never make their first appearances. They would
they would just be released unsecured, and so they'd spend
very little time in the jail. And so while the
CJS would compile these reports or these records rather, they say,
there's not going to be a big difference for them.
Speaker 2: But here's the key.
Speaker 1: Judges will now have to consider all arrests in a
defendant's history, not just the convictions.
Speaker 2: Okay, so can you.
Speaker 1: See here how plea deals that drop a bunch of
charges that how this has helped to create the turnstyle,
the catch and release in our judicial system, right, because
you're not ever seeing as the judge, you're not seeing
their record.
Speaker 2: The CJS is.
Speaker 1: It's not giving you all of the arrests going back
a decade, going back fifteen years, going back twenty years.
All they're doing is giving you the convictions. And if
you get popped for five or six charges, initially from
the from the police, right they arrest you, They're like,
we got you on five or six items here they
bring you in, but then you eventually go through the
court process and the DA drops four of the five charges. Well,
now you just have one conviction for one thing, and
that's an easier record to compile, and the judge just
sees that they just see, oh, one conviction from six
year years ago. What they don't see is that you've
been arrested two dozen times since that conviction, but you've
walked on all of those charges. In the interim, Sonya
Harper then goes on to say here that the new
law eliminates the written promise to appear.
Speaker 3: There had been quite a bit of language out in
the media talking about you cashless bail North Carolina. We've
never really had cashless bail in our state, but written
promised to appear is also in a lot of states
referred to being released on your own recognitances, And so
under this effective on December first, that will no longer
be an option here in North Carolina. The other changes
here is it does not permit for the imposition of
unsecured bonds or custody releases for any defendant charge with
the violent offense.
Speaker 1: So when you hear people use the term cashless bail,
she's saying that we don't really have that. What we
have had is the written promise to appear, which is
basically the same thing. Basically like I promise I will
show up in court for my first appearance. And that's
what the magistrates have been doing. They've been you know,
they get the person in front of them and they're like,
do I need to hold this person? They're not charged
with a serious offense or a violent defense, and all
I have to do as a magistrate is to make
sure that they show up for their first appearance. If
they are not a threat to the public, if they
don't pose some sort of danger, if they're not a
flight risk, that's it. Well, they look at a schedule
of charges, and if the schedule of charges has the
charge that you know, you know, I'm in front of
a magistrate and I'm charged with stalking. They look at
the list and they say stalking. You're not a danger
to the public because that's on the list, which by
the way, it now is on the list. That was
part of the law change also as well as arson.
So now those things go off the list and now
they have to hold me, whereas before I could walk. Also,
anybody who has been convicted of three or more offensive
in the previous ten years is not eligible for the
unsecured bond. And so this is a difference between the
secured bond and unsecured bond. Secured bond, does I understand
it means you got to pay the you gotta pay
the whole thing, right, and then an unsecured bond is
where you pay a portion of it or something like
this gets into the whole the bail system and everything
like that. And one of the bail bondsmen spoke at
the congressional hearing in Charlotte and he was talking about how,
you know, the unsecured bond is is a huge problem
because there's nobody to go after. There's nobody to hold
that defendant accountable because usually some family member or the
person themselves, The defendant themselves have to put up the
ten percent towards the bond right in order to bail out,
and that keeps them connected to the local jurisdiction because
they're family or they themselves have to Then they would
have to be on the hook for the rest of
the ninety percent if the person were to skip down.
Speaker 2: So no more unsecured bonds.
Speaker 1: If you've got three or more convictions over the last
ten years, that's essentially like a three strikes rule, right,
three convictions serious crimes, ten years, you don't get you
don't get an unsecured bond.
Speaker 2: You got to pay it all. You got to go
secure it all.
Speaker 1: 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
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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 combined news from around
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clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind
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then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports
ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Already,
from the Mecklinberg County Commission meeting last week, the Director
of Mecklenburg County Criminal Justice Services, Sonya Harper, told the
commissioners what the new law Arena's Law, what it would do,
and some of the impact it's going to have on
the judicial system here in Mecklinburg County. One of the
things is that if any judicial official, so a magistrate
or a judge, anybody releases a defendant. They now have
to provide a written finding of facts to explain their decision. Okay,
And that's an inversion, that is a flip. If you
were holding them, you had to have the findings effect.
Now it's turned over. Now if you're going to release,
you have to explain why you are releasing people that
are now categorized under Arena's law. And in those cases,
a secure bond or house arrest are the only options
available to the judge. Secured bond or house arrest. She
expects that this is going to slow down the process
for everybody involved at all stages.
Speaker 3: You know, with the violent offenses and again those requirements
with certain offenses for folks to bypass initial appearance and
be required to be booked into the jail. We are
in fact of expecting increased volume at the arrest processing
center or at AP. Attached to this obviously is going
to increase workloads in a few different spaces they are
at arrest processing. We would expect increases in the magistrate workload.
There are also some requirements with criminal record checks and
things that will also come into effect with magistrates, which
again are just additional steps within the process. Also kind
of tied to that, we are expecting longer delays at
the arrest processing center for law enforcement officers. So again,
just with that increased volume, it's going to take our
officers longer to have cases processed, arrest process there at
AP that.
Speaker 2: Arrest processing center AP.
Speaker 1: So she says that her agency, the Criminal Justice Services,
they ran more than twelve thousand safety assessments last year, okay,
as part of these cases going to the judges. Twelve
thousand safety assessments. But get this in another part later on,
about half hour later in the presentation, she said, there
were twenty two thousand bookings at the jail, so you
have almost twice as many bookings at the jail. Then
you have the safety assessments being run. Twelve thousand safety
assessments twenty two thousand bookings, so a delta there of
about ten thousand. She expects the number of these assessments
to increase significantly, but they don't know how large it
will be. They also expect an increase in the jail capacity,
an increase in the dockets for first appearances, as well
as an increase in the need for ankle monitoring because
if you go through you and you're a judge or
a magistrate and you want to you want to release somebody,
you have to explain why, and then your only options
are secured bond or house arrest. And so they anticipate
a lot of the judges and magistrates are going to
send the people back home on house arrest, especially with
Gary McFadden crying about not having enough room in the jail, which, oh,
by the way, I might want to point this out,
perhaps maybe we should have built a new jail by now.
We hear all of these reports about how many people
are moving to Charlotte every single day, the explosive growth
that we have seen in Mecklemburg County for the past
forty years. And the last time that a new jail
was built here was when ninety seven, and then the
tower was added in two thousand and two. So we've
gone twenty years without a new jail being built. Have
there been more people coming to Charlotte Mecklelberg in the
last twenty years, of course, but there's been no capacity added.
Why not, Well, so this way you can release more
defendants because we don't have the bedspace. See, so they
expect an increase in the jail capacity they expected an
increase in the ankle monitoring, which is a Charlotte Mecklenberg
Police program, that's a CMPD program, and CMPD has said that,
like they're basically almost maxed out on ankle monitoring, so
we're going to have to probably look at spending more
money to buy more ankles and more monitoring or ankle monitors.
We're not buying ankles, we're just buying the monitors for
the ankles. They expect an increase in pre trial supervision
in certain cases as well. But the involuntary commitment procedures
that were originally part of the bill of part of
this law that we was supposed to take effect today,
those have been pushed off one so those will go
into effect December one, six, which she says will give
them time to at least prepare.
Speaker 3: For it, which is which is a good thing, because
this piece here is also going to be is also
going to take some time and some work for us
to build out to be able to support it. So
with THEVC commitment IVC processes or in voluntary commitment proceedings
under this section of HB three oh seven, it does
create a new pre trial release procedure that requires a
judicial official to initiate an IVC automatically for any person
again who's charged with a violent offense and have been
subject to an IBC within the previous three years.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is going to create a new procedural
step because it's going to require a search of a
record to determine if a defendant has had an involuntary
commitment order in the previous three years. Also, an IVC
proceeding is to be initiated if a judicial official believes
that a defendant is a danger to himself or others.
Mechlenberg has four examiners who would be required to conduct
these assessments for the involuntary commitment orders the ivcs. The
arresting officers will then have to transport the IVC defendants,
and so that's going to create an additional burden on
the officers. So judges will no longer have discretion on
whether to allow release for violent offenses. There is now
a presumption for violent felonies that there are no conditions
of release that can ensure the safety of the public.
That is a key change. Okay, the presumption if you
are brought in as a defendant, you are charged with
this list of these certain serious violent crimes. There is
the presumption now is that there isn't any condition for
your release. It's presumed that you are a danger of
you being charged with the violent felonies. Now this is
what they call rebuttable by the defense. So the public
defender or defense attorney can say, no, no, no, they're
not a danger. But there's some timing issue there that's
going to make that difficult. The public defender says, for
the violent felonies, the written findings by the judge used
to be for a secured bond, but now it's flipped.
As I mentioned, judges have to provide written findings for
unsecured bonds. The incentive was to do unsecured bonds to
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the way that we used to do before today, the
way that in the system that judges would have to
provide written findings for secured bond. If they were going
to issue secured bond, they would have to issue their
a written set of findings as to why that that
was an incentive for them to do unsecured bonds because
it meant they didn't have to write up anything. I'm
not accusing any specific judges of anything here. I'm just
saying the natural incentive would be that if you can
find a reason to let somebody walk, that means you
don't have to write up all of the findings. You
don't have to do all of that case management work. Right,
the criminal justice services people, they don't have to come
up with all of the same stuff. So it's just
an easier thing to do, especially when you're dealing with
and you know, an overloaded judicial system, right, you got
so many people getting arrested and you don't have time
to hear every case and all of this, and this
is this. Look, I'm not denying what these officials are saying,
that what they're saying isn't true.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that it is true.
Speaker 1: This is going to create a lot more work for
a lot more people. It's going to slow down the process,
it's going to lead to more people being in the jail.
I have no doubt about that. And I'm going to
get into the jail component here in the next hour,
and we're going to feature heavily Sheriff Gary not my fault, McFadden, okay,
as well as the county commissioners. But I would submit
that the incentive was to do unsecured bonds in order
to help speed the process and relieve the workload. Now
that has been flipped because of this new state law.
Let me jump over to the phones and get Jeff on. Hello, Jeff,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Happy that's going to make a quick comment. It just
seems like they've got a jail spell shortage apparently have
had for a while. And yet over the last ten years,
our council has found one hundreds or tens of million,
potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to redo and then
re redo the Panther Stadium and the basketball arena. You
know what, where are priorities as a city?
Speaker 2: Well, well, you know the answer, you know the answer
to your question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, Unfore it'sunly right.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like Joe Biden's dad told him, right, Joey,
Joey budget, I'll show you your priorities.
Speaker 2: Right, that's this has been their priority.
Speaker 1: Their priority is not criminal justice and public safety because
they have had the opportunity to do these things and
they have chosen not.
Speaker 2: To do them. So, yeah, those are their priorities. It's
a great point.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into that in the next hour two.
Because the numbers don't lie, Jeff, I do appreciate the call.
The numbers do not lie.
Speaker 2: Here. This is from the Charlotte Observer story.
Speaker 1: Let me see if I want to jump Okay, yeah, so,
and this is sort of a preview as to what's coming.
Multiple county commissioners describe the legislation as a quote unfunded
mandate and predicted they'll need to allocate more local money
in next year's budget without additional state financial support. Laura
Meyer said, our priorities are going to be cut into
because of this. Correct, you are correct. Spoiler here for
folks who don't know. Cities counties are administrative units of
the state.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The state is the fountain of authority from which all
of the authorities in the cities and the counties flow.
That's why Mecklimberg County has to go up to Raleigh
and ask for a referendum for a sales tax and
cree for transit go I'm sorry roads, sorry roads, but
also really mainly transit. But anyway, they're not allowed to
just do that on their own, sort of a mother
may I state. Now, not all states have the same
sort of structure, but North Carolina does, okay. And so
when you raise your property tax rates and you're spending
all this money on all of these things that you know,
as Jeff mentioned, these tourism related projects are parks and
rec health and human services, education, right, you're funding all
of these different things, and you're not funding public safety.
You're not funding new construction of jails. Because your incentive
as a Democrat politician is not to anger a base
that is against the quote coarceral state.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Your base believes that police departments are the are the
remnants of slave patrols, that they're inherently racist, systemically biased,
and discriminatory. You want to defund them. This is what
the base is telling you, and so your incentive is
to not fund those things at the higher priority level.
And what the state is telling you now with a
quote unfunded mandate, is that no, no, no, the state's
priority is this you need to be funding this now?
Oh my gosh, though, We're gonna have to We're gonna
have to cut some of the various programs that we
think are a higher priority. And yes, that is true,
that is correct. You're going to need to cut things
that you think are more important, but the state believes
are not as important. The director of the Criminal Justice Services,
Sonya Harper. She said, Mecklimberg County has for twenty years
operated a risk based system where a person's a defendant's
release was determined by the threat to the community and
the likelihood that the defendant will return to court. This law,
Arena's Law, changes this now to a charge based system.
And what does that mean. It means the Mecklenburg model
has failed. The Democrats model here in Charlotte has failed.
That's what the state is telling Mecklenburg County because that's
what the people have been telling the state lawmakers. This
model sucks, it has failed, Please fix it. And the
state said, okay, 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
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please support them too and tell them you heard it here.
You can also become a patron at my Patreon page
or go to thepetekallnershow dot com. Again, thank you so
much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.
Speaker 3: Hmm