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. So Charlotte leaders through together a news conference
yesterday to announce we're not corrupt, we are not crooks,
we are not engaging in immoral or unethical behavior. And no,
we are not going to give you any details about
a three hundred thousand dollars payout that we just gave
to the police chief because of unspecified reputational harm aka
hurt feelings. It's all above board. Obviously. I've watched the
press conference. One of the I will say, I have
not seen this before, so I don't know if this
is standard fair for city government press conferences. Now maybe
it is. I don't know, I have seen this kind
of a format before. But they all got up and
made a statement. So it was the Mayor surrounded by
Ed Driggs. These are council members. Ed Driggs the only
Republican on the body dimple Asmira Malcolm Graham, the mayor
pro Tim Dante Anderson. I think Marjorie Molina is her name.
I think Marjorie is her first name. But Councilwoman Molina
was there. Council Members Mitchell and Mayfield were not there.
James Smudgie Mitchell and Luana Slack Mayfield, they they were
not there. They were sick, but they sent along statement
saying that we would be here with you but for
us being sick, and so they were standing in support also.
So that would be one, two, three, four, five, six,
seven of the eleven council well seven of the ten
council members, because Tark Bacari is no longer in his seat.
He took a job up in the Trump administration. So
there's only ten ten seats open or sorry, ten seats filled.
There's one open, and there were three council members then
that were not present. One would be Renee Johnson, one
would be a councilman Brown, I believe, and Victoria Wattlington
whose campaign fundraising email that went out after the settlement
vote basically behind closed doors to pay off the police
chief for this unspecified reputational harm. She sent out the
campaign fundraising notice on email where she made these allegations
that the city and it's officers and it's elected officials,
that she has witnessed all of this shady behavior basically corruption,
and that's what prompted this press conference yesterday. So they
were there to push back on this and to chastise leakers.
I think if you are looking for the breakdown, like
into the camps, like which factions exist, I think you
can tell by who's not there, like those are the
three and if like I've been watching the city council
meetings since I returned to Charlotte, and it's something I
do on Monday nights, and I just have it on
and I'm watching the city council meeting, and it is
very clear that two of the members, particularly, they ask
questions in a way that make it difficult to understand
what exactly they're trying to get at, and they don't
get really they don't get really good responses, probably because
the way they frame their questions, but also I kind
of feel like people don't respect them and that's not
entirely unearned, but I can see why that would rub
them the wrong way. I think that's the breakdown. That's
and I have no inside information on this, just from
my observation of the press conference and the city council meetings.
That's the way it looks like. That's the way it
looks to me that these are very serious allegations that
Watlington leveled without any proof. So we'll play some sound
bites from the UH from the news conference yesterday. I
am looking here, hang on, so Bernie is telling me
that he has selected a new pope. Oh, I'm sorry, No,
there is a new pope selected.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: I do not have to wear my glasses. Let's put
the old spectacles on, and white smoke signals that a
new pope has been chosen. That seems kind of quick, Yeah,
it is crazy quick. Let's pull up the NBC feed,
because when I need news about Catholicism, I go to NBC.
Speaker 2: Um.
Speaker 1: No, it's the first thing that popped up in my feed.
Here Cardinals have chosen a new pope, indicated by white
smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel's chimney. Which did you
know the chimney is not permanently affixed. They just put
it up there for the conclave, so the identity of
the next pot is expected to be revealed shortly when
he appears on the balcony of Saint Peter's Basilica. One
hundred and thirty three cardinals from around the world have
cast their ballots in three rounds of voting, so I
guess this would have been the fourth round. Yesterday evening,
after more than three hours, the first inconclusive vote was
signaled by black smoke, and this morning's pair of votes
was a repeat of that. See and this is really
this is troubling to me because I didn't even get
a chance to watch the movie Conclave before all of
this went down, and so I have no idea what happened.
I'm not going to watch that movie. No, I'm not
going to watch the movie. We'll give you the updates
as they become available from the Vatican. They are barred
by the way. During the papal conclave, according to NBC,
the cardinals are barred from leaving or having any contact
with the outside world. The electors can vote in up
to thirty four rounds of voting until they select the
next leader. Of the world's one point four billion Catholics.
But everybody has been watching the chimney. Black smoke means
nothing and no pope selected, and the white smoke means
someone has been elected. And I believe it takes two thirds.
You need two thirds of the cardinals voting for a
single candidate. And my understanding also is that they're not
doing like horse trading and like lobbying and stuff while
they sit around and pray, and they just sit there
and then they vote, and it's just like we'll see
whose name rises to the surface, channeling the Holy Spirit
to work through them and arrive at a at a
consensus candidate. And it only took three votes or well three,
you know, three inconclusive votes and then a fourth one.
So are celebrating. The crowd is gathering now because obviously
they're going to come and announce the new pope soon
and we'll let you know who that is when we know.
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We'll we'll let you know, or actually, if there's a
feed of this, we may you want to try to
find a feed. I'm assuming it's going to get widespread coverage,
so we could probably just rip off any old television
station and bring you their their their live feld. Okay,
maybe we should probably go with Fox. Okay, yeah, that
sounds like that sounds like Vatican City. Be good cheering,
just non stop cheering. Right, So the white smoke billowed,
and a new pope has been uh has been selected,
uh elected, has been picked, and they will announce who
that is soon. I have now since got onto the
feed of Vatican News, the Vatican News Twitter feed, which
I feel like is probably gonna be a little bit
more you know, credible than NBC. But I I I
don't know. I mean, I want to believe to Okay, yeah,
so nothing new yet, but we will we will bring
you the We'll bring you the breaking news as it breaks,
even though I mean, I am here, so okay, I
did tell people don't break anything while I'm gone, but
I am here, so I guess this makes sense, all right,
So I can't be mad now because this whole hour
was supposed to be and when I was drawing it up,
it's supposed to be about how the Charlotte City Council.
Speaker 2: And the.
Speaker 1: And the city leaders are, you know, very obs set
at Victoria Watlington's allegations about corruption and stuff. So they
did a news conference to announce that they are not corrupt,
which is what you know, people who aren't corrupt do.
But also, I guess people who are corrupt we do that.
So okay, doesn't really tell us anything on that score.
But I have some audio. Let's start with the mayor.
Here's Mayor Viylyles kicking off the series of statements that
were presented yesterday. Oh and I forgot to mention this
that they the format was kind of odd and that
they all made some statements, and then they were like,
if you to the media, if you want to do
one on one interviews, we'll do that now. Rather than
allowing the media to just start throwing questions to all
of the leaders that are standing up there at the mic,
they just broke off and said we'll do one on ones,
which does occur, don't get me wrong. One on one interviews,
especially TV people love the one on ones because it
makes it look like you got a story that nobody
else did, and you get to, you know, get right
up on the person and ask them some questions. And
it's a different kind of visual. But there's a benefit
when you have the pack of journalists that are there
all peppering questions because you get to hear what other
reporters are asking and then you can piggyback off of
a question that they asked and maybe the person, like
the mayor, didn't answer it, or maybe her answer raises
another question, and then everybody can kind of work together
in the press pool. But by breaking up the press
pool and just doing one on ones, it eliminates that function.
I don't know if that was the intent. Here's the
mayor kicking it off.
Speaker 2: This is always a difficult thing that you have to
do that really kind of just strains you in the
way that we should behave and act and perform. But
I could not let it go. With the allegations made
by council Member Watlington against this organization, they are serious
and they damaged the repute reputation with this organization. To
be clear, these allegations are unfounded and she if she
has any proof, she needs to provide that to the
City Attorney's office, who is duty bound to investigate. You know,
we have a legal and ethical obligation in this community
and this organization to follow the law, and part of
my job as mayor is to lead with the facts.
Speaker 1: To lead with the facts which I cannot tell you
because privilege.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: After the closed session meetings that paid off the police
chief to the tune of reportedly three hundred thousand dollars,
Wallington sent out a campaign email that said, I'm extremely
concerned with the level of unethical, immoral, and frankly illegal
activities occurring within government. I have seen enough over the
last five years, five and a half years, I have
witnessed the brazen disregard for dissenting opinions and the rule
of law. Never, however, have I seen such an egregious
example as what has occurred in the last week. It
is time for a change now. The mayor also yesterday
after she kicked off the statements, she also then apologized
to Police Chief Johnny Jennings.
Speaker 2: I want to address Chief Jennings. As I've said before
and often, I believe Chief Jennings to be the best
police chief in this country. He has dedicated more than
thirty years of his life to serving this community, and
he's led, what I believe, with dignity, honesty, and integrity.
The chief was publicly attacked by a former council member
who stated his intents was to damage his reputation and
end his career. I owe the chief an apology for
not publicly supporting him.
Speaker 1: Then wait, did you know did the mayor know that
Bakari had texted that he was going to call for
his resignation and he was going to apply all sorts
of pressure for his campaign to get police officers' vests.
That's remember what this is all about, is that he
wanted cops to have better protection and better vests, and
the chief said no because he didn't like the look
of them esthetically displeasing to the eye, because it presented
this image that was too militaristic because the vest was
on the outside of the uniform. That's what it came
down to. That was literally what he said. So was
the mayor aware that Bakari had said this stuff? I
would be surprised if she wasn't, But she didn't say
anything at the time. So they let Jennings be the
face of the no vest's position. And I suggested this
yesterday when we were kind of spitball in different theories
of this case here, and this was one of the
theories that I threw out, which was, is it possible
that the council did not have the money or did
not want to allocate money for new vests because the
council thought that the vests didn't look good. That the
council didn't like those vests. Therefore they let Jennings make
the argument and then they all just clammed up and
let him take all the heat. And that kind of
makes sense now that the mayor makes her comments about
how she regrets that she didn't stand with him on
all of this. But also it kind of makes sense
as to when Harry raised the money for the vests privately,
that Jennings then caved and allowed his officers to voluntarily
request the vests and he would allow them to wear
them if it wasn't something Jennings really wanted to do himself,
but he was doing it at the behest of council
members who did very much want to block the vests.
Speaker 2: I also support the men and women of CMPD who
put their lives on the line every day. They too
have taken an oath to uphold the law and protect
our community. This Council has worked with and will continue
to support the men and women who protect this community.
Speaker 1: Here's another question. Was an apology from the mayor part
of your settlement? Oh, we don't know that because you
won't tell us what the settlement was about, right, you
won't tell us how much, You won't tell us any
of the reputational harms that he alleges. So was an
apology part of the settlement deal that council had to
come out and say they were sorry the mayor specifically
had to do this. I don't know, and we won't
know unless we actually get to see the terms of
the settlement. All right, if you're listening to this show,
you know I try to keep up with all sorts
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Let's head over to the phones and chat with Adam. Hey, Adam,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Hey, how you doing, man, I'm good?
Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 4: Hey?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 4: I actually I'm born and raped in Charlotte. I've lived
here my whole life, and I'm just really disappointed in
what has happened now. This settlement has came to a
par and I'm actually happy whoever did release the amount.
I'm more than happy that they did it, because I
don't think our city council would have ever even told.
Speaker 1: Us yeah, And I think I heard a clip during
the newscast at the top of the hour, and I'm
trying to remember who it was, but it was Brett
Jensen from WBT that was asking I think it may
have been the city attorney, Anthony Fox, asking him, uh,
you know, when would you have or would you have
released any of this information? And he's like, I'm not
talking about that, so like, to me, that's a no.
I'm with you. I don't think that council would have
ever disclosed any of the information about the settlement or
even the existence of such a settlement had it not
been for the leaks, which is honestly one of the
reasons why you would leak if you were on that council.
And yes, there's risk involved, right, but that's why you
would leak.
Speaker 4: It, absolutely absolutely, and I'm more than happy that they did.
And I'm just you know, I'm just more shocked that
the mayor came out. I mean, you are a mayor
of the City of Charlotte and you are supporting someone
doing your council. It's just unheard of. I've never heard
of this, and you know, just I feel like there's
a failed leadership on the Charlotte Council and even our mayor.
You don't see her. She makes no public appearppearances. She
will only make a public appearance when the cops gets
killed or something catering to her own kind. Other than that,
you will never see her. And I just wanted to say,
I'm really happy that that information got out. And she
will not be getting my vote when it comes to
a reelection, and so will the chief. He would not
if I have a control with.
Speaker 1: It, right, And to me, this is the odd thing
is that if the point was that he has suffered
reputational damage because of a former city councilman's campaign to
get vests for cops, what do you think this does?
Like this, Yeah, this is far more damaging to his
reputation and his legacy than anything that tark Bacari said
or did during that campaign. Most people have already forgotten.
Speaker 4: About it, and I will leave it off with this.
I have two or three friends who are in CMPD
and I voiced my frustrations to them, and all of
them have said, my friend, more than ninety eight percent
of the police department agrees with it. They are not
in favor of him winning it. And I think he
should hear it from his fellow officers of how they
actually feel. But I don't think he cares. And everyone
has done this for personal interests.
Speaker 1: Yeah now here, Adam, I appreciate the call man, not
thank you for taking me. Yes, sir, all right, take care.
Got an email from our news director here at WBT
Mark Garrison. He says, the FOP Board, the Fraternal Order
of Police, the FOP board voted no confidence in Johnny
Jennings after his council payoff, which really steamed the FOP membership.
See again, like, if the whole point was that you
were angry or hurt, or you feel like you have
suffered reputational harm because you didn't want the vests because
they look too militaristic, this has done far greater damage,
and not only to him, but to all of the
city council, the city management, and the City of Charlotte brand.
This is bad. It's bad. And I understand that the
city Council is limited in what they can say because
of personnel statutes, personnel privacy statutes. I understand that, but
you know who can talk. The chief. He can talk, unless,
of course, a non disclosure agreement was part of the deal,
but it wouldn't have to be, and the city could
release him if he asked for it. City Attorney Anthony Fox.
He then spoke briefly at yesterday's press conference and said
that the council is obligated to comply with privacy statutes.
They can go into closed sessions for specific reasons. I
went over this yesterday, things like real estate deals, personnel
matters obviously, and mitigation.
Speaker 3: The law also provides that when you go into closed session,
that that information is confidential. It's not to be shared,
and it actually imposes criminal sanctions against any divided any
individual that's found to have violated that law.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he instructed, he said, he instructed council not
to speak about the matter that everybody's talking about. You're
not allowed to talk about it. But again, Jennings could
if he wanted to, they could find a way to
disclose what occurred. Note the deflection there is the core
issue of this settlement of why the city council would
pay it. That's the root of this issue. Why would
the city council pay an employee three hundred thousand dollars,
which is like a little bit more than his his
annual salary. So basically they're giving him a free year's
worth of a salary and they won't tell us the
terms of that, why they're doing it. They won't talk
at all about any of it, just that he was attacked. Okay,
but what was the harm done? He's claiming some damage.
What was the damage? What was the harm did he
like he had to go to therapy or something he
got like he had to run he ran up medical bills?
Is that the personnel issue? And that's the privacy issue
they don't want to have to go into or whatever, like,
you don't have to go into all of that. You
can just say he suffered you know, distress, emotional distress
or whatever like. You can word that in a way
that explains what the harms he's claiming were. Because they
obviously convinced you guys to spend three hundred thousand dollars
to make him whole, right, But instead now we're getting
the because Watlington's campaign email, we are now getting this
argument over how dare you call us corrupt? This is
damaging to the city, right, So now they're focusing on that,
and they want you to focus on the leaks, like
as if these are bigger issues, I understand the branding
of the city of Charlotte, that's an important thing. What
Watlington did jeopardizes what many many, probably thousands of people
have been working for decades to build, and what she
did jeopardizes that brand. I get that, totally understand. But
the core issue is still the same thing. It's why
are you paying out three hundred thousand dollars to an
employee when he didn't even sue you. He just said
he was considering it. He's considering a lawsuit because of
unspecified harms, And you're like, here, take my money. Well,
actually take this other person's money. You owe us an explanation,
You owe us more detail than your giving as a taxpayer.
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if you're just joining us there. They have elected a
new pope, but we don't know who it is, and
we will tell you who it is when we find out.
We are monitoring the situation from Rome from the Vatican.
There are a lot of people hanging out waiting to
see who emerges on that balcony, and I did not
My cardinal trading cards did not arrive from Amazon yet,
so I don't actually have all of the stat sheet
on all of the potential candidates. So let me read
a couple of messages. This is from Well I will
withhold her name. She says, I have friends whose child
went to high school with Johnny Jennings's child, and they
said he and his family were wonderful people, and they
were very happy when he was made police chief. They
actually said he was a very reasonable person and not
wildly conservative or liberal. It's a shame that this is
hurting his reputation so badly, and I would submit that
the next person he needs to sue is himself, because
he has caused way more damage to his reputation than
his original opposition to the vests. That's I never had
any negative opinion of Chief Jennings before all of this.
I thought he was a perfectly capable acceptable I heard
his interviews on BT over the years. Brett Jensen has
talked with him numerous times, and I agree. I found
him to be reasonable. He didn't seem like an ideologue,
seemed like he had the best interests of his officers
in mind and stuff. He was deeply sad and and
moved at the you know last year's homicides of the
four law enforcement officers on Galway Drive any Charlotte, when
they were serving a warrant. I mean, I never had
any bad opinion of him. That's why this is so surprising,
Like this move is shocking, and then it makes me
wonder what was real?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: I was one thing, an image of public persona, and
was something else going on behind the scenes. Yes, it's disappointing.
John says, apparently there is a new pope, but nobody
has called me, so I assume they did not pick me.
That is correct. This has really hurt my feelings and
damaged my reputation and possibly advancement in the Catholic hierarchy.
Does anybody know who Chief Johnny's lawyer was? I think
I have a case. Well, how close are you to
the to the College of Cardinals, because you might not
even need a lawyer. You might just threaten a lawsuit
and then get paid. Jay wants to know is the
three hundred thousand dollars payoff net or gross? I believe
it's gross, and it's also gross, so yeah, It's part
of the problem here is we don't know the details.
Terry says, I have no sense of the thoughts and
feelings of Charlotte City Council. I do know the council
a solid Democrat. My theory is that the council did
not want to fund the vests, but did not want
to have an on the record vote. They used the
chief as a frontman to oppose the vests, and when
he delivered but got dinged by his stance, they thanked
him for taking the flack by awarding him a juicy
bonus for hazardous duty and for not ratting them out.
I think it's that simple. Very well could be terry.
This is one of the theories that we kicked around yesterday.
Was he working on behalf of council members who did
not want to have that vote, Because that's when this
that's when it all kind of started getting traction was
during the budget process straw voting last year. Straw voting
is when they kind of go around the table and
they do a show of hands for like individual line
items and programs and stuff, and they're like, all right,
are we keeping this in, are we taking this out,
or we're going to keep it at current funding, increase
a decrease it whatever, and they do the straw votes
and it's not a binding vote, so you can change
your vote later on during the budget workshopping process, and
it was during that was it May thirtieth straw vote,
and that's when Bakari sort of laid down the gauntlet.
I'm going to be doubling down on this because he
didn't have the votes on council, so he pulls it, right,
He pulls it rather than force his colleagues to vote
on it, so they get to hide behind the lack
of a vote so they can claim that they liked
the idea. But you know, Bikari pulled it himself or whatever.
That's politics, man, And so did council members or the
mayor did they like, Hey, Chief, you need to oppose this.
You know you'll be a better spokesperson for your officers
than any of us could possibly be on council. So
you should do this because we don't want to be
the one saying we can't afford five hundred thousand dollars
for vests out of a two billion dollar budget. Right,
so you make the case. And I don't know who
came up with this, this argument that they're too militaristic looking.
It was a weak argument to say the least, but
that's what he went with. It wasn't persuasive and it
also sent a message that he was putting style over
substance or esthetics over safety, and his officers saw that.
The FOP saw that. And maybe the problem was that
they believed him. They took him at face value when
he made those arguments. They believed that those were arguments
he himself was making. He believed those to be true,
and that's still possible. I don't know. But now you
have this other element because of all of this settlement
and the payoff and all of that. Now it raises
this other element of well, wait a minute, did he
actually believe that? Was he simply the frontman for this
position to oppose the vests. They did not want to
give Bikari a win, right because he had alienated members
of the council. People didn't like him. He had argued
with them before, and he can be abrasive, obviously, So
there's that element. There's the element that we don't want
to be seen voting against the vests, and so you
do it. And then they just let him take all
the slings and arrows, and he thought he was going
to have their back, and maybe he reached out to them.
I've seen no messages that indicate he did. Maybe they
had conversations or something, but like, hey, I'm getting nailed here,
can I get a little backup? And nobody gave him
any backup. But yesterday at the press conference yesterday, there
were I think two or three different members including the mayor,
who apologized for not standing up stronger for him last year.
And that's what makes me think that maybe there's some
apology requirement as part of the settlement. Maybe not. Again,
I have to keep saying this, I don't know what
the terms of the settlement are. Nobody does except the
council jennings and the city staffers that worked on it,
and everybody is like, no, sorry, I can't talk about it.
Personnel matters. It's private. So it leaves us in this
position of having to spin out theories as to what
the freak is going on. All right, that'll do it
for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I
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