Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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your support. All righty, So, a couple of things have
occurred over the last twenty four hours with regard to
our vaunted light rail system. First off, the man charged
with murdering Arena Zarutska, the Ukrainian refugee, on the Cat's
Blue Line light rail back in August. He made his
first court appearance today. His name is de Carlos Brown Junior,
and according to the Charlotte Observer story published a little
while ago, he appeared for the first time since his
August arrest. His initial appearance this morning came more than
three months after his arrest. During the last three months
or so, his capacity to proceed has remained in question,
as attorneys waited for an evaluation by a forensic psychologist.
When US marshals brought Brown into the US District Court
for the Western District of North Carolina, this is federal,
this is a federal proceeding. He looked around the court room,
holding mostly lawyers and reporters. This happened at about eleven
am today. Typically, a judge will hold a detention hearing
after reading aloud the charges that the defendant is facing.
But since Brown is already being held on no bond
in the Mecklenburg County Detention Center, his attorney, Joshua Kendrick,
waived the detention hearing and consented to keep Brown in custody.
So he's not going anywhere, which that's good news considering
that De Carlos Brown Junior has a very lengthy criminal record.
He is, according to his family, suffering from schizophrenia, has
had violent outbursts and such, and honestly, there's not a
lot of confidence that I have in our local court
system to keep him off the streets. He's got a
criminal history dating back to two thousand and seven. WBTV
reports Back then, he was charged with three misdemeanors. His
charges ranged from simple assault to disorderly conduct to resisting
a public officer. All of those cases were dismissed. This
as part of the problem. This is why I call
it a catch and release turnstile court system that we've
got operating in Mecklenburg County. And by the way, this
is not new. When I was a reporter in the
early two thousands, this was the same story. There were
people that were released over and over and over and
over again. This is what's so frustrating about it is
that there is a small percentage of the population. They're
sort of repeat frequent flyers, you know, they keep getting arrested.
A small percentage of the people commit a disproportionate amount
of the crime. And when you just run people through,
and we've heard stories from local police officers who talk
about it takes longer for them to fill out the
paperwork after an arrest than it does for the defendant
to be released back out. They bring the person in
filling out the paperwork, and before you know it, and
before they can finish the paperwork, the guy's being released,
which then, of course sends the message that there are
no repercussions for the types of law violations that you're
engaged in, which then, of course means that oh, I
can keep doing this. There's no punishment or very little punishment.
And then if you get all of your charges dropped,
then there is no punishment. You've just been sort of
inconvenienced for a while, right, You've been taken off the street,
run through processing, then released, and then you got to
wait a while, do a couple of court appearances, and
then you get your charges dropped. What's the big deal?
And that's a problem. So last week we had a
bunch of our local officials in the court system as
well as our sheriff, and I refer to him as
Sheriff Gary. Not my fault, McFadden, because nothing is ever
his fault. He'll tell you, like all of the problems
you got, jailed, deaths and stuff, and it's not his fault.
None of this is his fault. Nothing is ever his fault.
When you know he was caught on tape using racial slurs,
not his fault, not his fault. He just became, as
he said, flustrated with his command staff, employees. They made
him use these racial slurs because they weren't doing what
he said to do. Not his fault. But with the
after the murder of Arena Zarutzska. The state legislature passed
reforms for bonds, saying no more you know, cashless bail
if you will, or what we called it in North
Carolina is released on your own personal recognizance, basically a
promise to appear in court and you don't have to
put up any money. No, no family member has to
put up any money. So if you gip the court appearance,
nobody is held responsible for that. And that's probably why,
as McFadden said the other day during his news conference,
that they've got a repository of warrants that includes hundreds
of outstanding warrants. I'm assuming for people that never showed up. See,
a way that you make people show up is you
make them responsible or they're family members responsible through bail.
But this was part of the quote reforms that we're
enacted over the last decade less than a decade to
have a sort of kinder, gentler court system. And McFadden
is arguing, hey, we have all of these new requirements.
That's going to you know, people are now going to
be held in the local jail for longer, and I
don't have the capacity because of course they're not building
any new jail in Mecklenburg County. That was their decision.
They scrapped the plan to build an annex to the
jail about a decade ago. They scraped that plan. They
closed down Jail North, that facility, they shut that down.
Those were their choices they did that. But if you've
got repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat offenders, right, the logic
would indicate that if you keep them behind bars, they're
not repeating over and over and over again. So actually
you're not going to have to worry about doing the
intake processing for these people over and over and over
again because they're still in the jail. Right. So back
to the WBTV story on de Carlos Brown Junior. His
charges ranged from simple assault to disorderly conduct to resisting
a public officer. All of those cases were dismissed. That
was going back to seven in a four year span
from twenty eleven to twenty thirteen, or sorry, a two
year span. Brown was charged with more misdemeanors because he
failed to show up for court. In twenty eleven, he
was issued a criminal summons for communicating threats, but he
was not arrested, according to court records. In twenty fourteen,
he was convicted of felony breaking and entering. He was
assigned to thirty days in jail twenty four month supervised
probation with the Sheriff's office. But then he assaulted a
man and stole a Samsung Galaxy phone and about seven
hundred and fifty dollars using a handgun, although those items
were found in his apartment. He was charged with possession
of a dangerous weapon firearm by a felon. He was
convicted and he served just over five years in the
state prison. He was released in twenty twenty put on
parole for a year, and then in twenty twenty five
this year, in January, he was charged with misusing the
nine to one to one system. And this is the
video that came out with his interaction with CMPDS officers
that showed up after he called nine to one one
and he says that that there was like a man
made material had been placed in his inside his body
and was controlling his movements, so definitely mentally ill, right,
and police said that that's a medical thing, that's not
a law enforcement thing. So then he tries to call
nine one one again as the cops are standing there,
and that's when he got the charge for misuse of
the nine one one system. Fast forward to August is
when he's on the train and completely unprovoked, he stands
up and stabs Arena Zarutzka from behind internet, killing her
within seconds. He is then apprehended and taken into custody.
That prompted House built three oh seven, known as Arena's Law.
The governor signed it into law and makes it harder
for people who have been charged with violent offenses or
those with extensive criminal histories to be released on a
promise to appear. And that takes us to these second
stabbing on the light rail line. This occurred almost a
week ago on Friday, and again. Now this is the
confluence of all of these different stories that are just
they're distilled down into this latest incident. You know, stories
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guess because I said do I sound I was asking
if I sound taller. I was told I was going
to sound taller on the FM stick, but Kevin says,
I sound wider. Also, the switch to one oh seven
point nine FM is not coincidental. Upon your return, you
need to take credit for the switch, Pete, because you
know TJ. Ritchie is going to take the credit because
of his greatness. That's yeah, he probably will let me
go over to the phones here and chat with Richard.
Hello Richard, welcome to the program.
Speaker 2: Hey Pete, how are you? Well?
Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 2: You know what you lived in New York? Well, the places.
It's no coincidence to me that what's happening with this
letting people gold, criminals, illegals, not holding them for ice.
Speaker 3: There's a pattern here that this is a democratic run.
Cities are doing this purposely and are okay with the
collateral damage.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's I mean, we just have to follow
the bouncing ball here, and people have this is an
ideological battle that they don't care about women being raped
coming into the country over the border. Let the border
wide open, illegals who are in custody, don't hold them
for ice, let them out, crazy people, criminals, et cetera,
et cetera. So, whether it's Charlotte Mecklenberg, Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland,
there's a pattern here that I think we really have
to say, well, what is their game here? What is
what is the objective that they're trying to do? And
it comes to my mind I say, well.
Speaker 1: Who is Well, who is the they that you're talking about?
Speaker 2: I'm talking about the I don't know progressive socialist Marxists.
I don't know Democrats.
Speaker 3: They're the ones that.
Speaker 2: Are in power where these things are happening.
Speaker 1: So so well, okay, right, so the people, So you're
talking about the people in power because I think, you know,
it's difficult. Look, I understand the truth is general, right,
So that's why people, you know, make generalizations. I understand that. Yeah,
but they're you know, but everybody is different. People are
motivated by different things, and so it's important, I think,
to differentiate voters from the elected officials because because there
are different motivations. And you talk to a lot of
the Democrat voters and they want, you know, they want
their streets cleaned up, you know, they want to be
safe in their neighborhoods. I think though, that they are
sold a prescription that doesn't actually treat the problem, but
they believe it does. And as far as like an
undergirding philosophy, I've talked about this for quite a while now,
this idea of suicidal empathy, right, where if you elevate
empathy as the highest order trait or characteristic of a society,
that that's the thing we value the most, is empathy
to the point where you are willing to lay down
your life or your society's life in order to attain
and to be seen as hitting that mark of empathy.
And I think that is part of what motivates people
who are otherwise good hearted. They just think that this
is the way that they can express their empathy in
the best way, which is how you end up with
the mayor saying something like after the Zarutzka murder, something
on the order of, you know, how did we fail
this this attacker? Well, that's suicidal empathy, right, because you're
elevating the criminal and how they feel and where did
we go wrong with that person? And somehow or another
it's our fault, it's society's fault. We failed him somehow.
Rather than saying no, no, no, that person did this thing.
That person is wrong. You should not feel empathy for
them simply because they committed a crime. That's suicidal empathy.
And I think that's part of what's going on. There's
also there's also a there's a nihilism at play. There's
a postmodernist view that has infected a lot of the
progressive left. And I use the term leftist for this reason.
I don't mean liberal I mean leftists postmodernism, where it's just, hey,
you know what we're gonna We're gonna tear down these
instantitutions in order to perfect them. Somehow. It's a Hegelian philosophy,
and that means essentially it ends up worshiping the state,
elevating the state. And that's how Yeah, that's how you
end up with all of these things downstream of Hegelian philosophy.
Very good piece, Richard, Hi, buddy, I appreciate, yeah, appreciate
the call. And I think and that is the connection.
There's also a point here about packing, you know, hundreds
of thousands of people into a very small area like
a city. It changes people, it does you put you
put a lot of people into a city, and a
lot of them forget about God, put them out in
the middle of nowhere. You know. It's sort of like
the atheist in the foxhole kind of a thing. I
think that is part of it as well. There there
are a lot of factors, but yes, it is something
that is for some reason most notable and most observable
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last a lifetime. So I mentioned this the stabbings on
the light rail line UH first with the murder of
Arena Zarutska, then with the stabbing on Friday of the
twenty four year old Kenyon Dobie I believe is his name,
has brought together a bunch of these different stories of
national importance but local importance as well. I touched on
this yesterday on the program. I went, actually I went
in depth on this. I'm not going to spend a
lot of time connecting all of these dots. But you've
got the immigration issue, right, the sort of a radical
open border approach to immigration that we saw during the
Biden administration. And by the way, you know, now the
truth can be told.
Speaker 1: The New York Times just did like a four thousand
word report on what people like me were pointing out
for four years that the policy implications, the repercussions of
what they were doing was acting as a magnet. And
people inside the administration, now it can be told, were
telling Biden that this is what would happen, and then
they were saying, they were saying, this is what is happening.
So they were fully aware of what they were doing before,
they did it, as they were doing it, and now after.
So what we don't know is why I've got the
New York Times story. I will get to it. Well,
I intend to get to it. Okay, no promises here
because I tend to go off on tangents and then
I run out of time. I'm sorry. What other issues
are at play in the stabbings? You've got the quote
unquote reforms that we saw in the criminal justice system
that really ramped up and gained momentum after the summer
of fiery but mostly peaceful riots post George Floyd. We
also have local budgeting priorities where Mecklemberg County has not
prioritized public safety spending for the jails, for the sheriff's office,
instead funding to greater levels parks and rec for example. Right,
So they're funding priorities. And you also have nullification efforts.
What do I mean by that? When local officials do
not agree with state or federal law but they cannot
do anything about it. They can't change the law, so
they try to nullify it in some other way. And
that's what we have seen with the immigration issue. States
particularly have attempted, but also cities, bigger cities have attempt
to nullify federal immigration law. And they do this in
all sorts of ways. And we see these ways being
used in Mecklemburg County. Our current sheriff, Gary not my fault.
McFadden ran in twenty eighteen on a platform of cutting
ties with ice and the two eighty seven G program.
That was his explicit campaign promise. When he won, they
had a big celebration and they had a cake and
the cake had a big red circle with a red
line through the letters to and numbers two eighty seven G.
And he takes the knife and to great fanfare and photos,
he cuts the cake right through the center of the
two eighty seven G label. The message is unmistakable, right,
there's no like, I'm not taking an unfair, uncharitable reading
of his position. This was explicit, So this was an
attempt to nullify. They're like, we're not going to cooperate
with immigration in the jail. So somebody gets arrested for something,
they get brought into the jail. We're not going to
check through the ICE database anymore who this person is
and whether they've got a rap sheet that has been
identified by immigration authorities. They didn't want to know who
was in the jail, and then they wouldn't tell ICE
before they released them out into the public, which is
how you ended up how we ended up with hundreds
of people in Mecklenburg County with criminal records here illegally
not being held for ICE despite ICE's requests. You also
have a nullification effort at the direction of the policy
makers locally that they tell their law enforcement officers you
do not question someone's citizenship as part of that initial interaction,
you know, like a cop pulse me over and I'm
from another country here illegally. The cop doesn't ask me that.
The cop doesn't do any kind of examination or exploration
as to whether I'm in the country illegally. And if
he does happen to find out that I'm here illegally,
that's not a reason to take me in either.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Those are decisions that were made by local policy makers
to direct law enforcement to take a hands off see
no evil, hear no evil kind of approach, a willful blindness. Right,
And this was touted, this was celebrated, This was used
as a way to get certified as a quote welcoming city.
Charlotte is certified welcoming city. And that's one of the
things that you have to do. And so that's what
Charlotte did. So that means when you have an interaction
with a fellow like Oscar Solarzano thirty three years old,
twice deported, charged and convicted of illegal re entry, but
then came back a third time. Don't know when, don't
know where he crossed in, how he got in, but
he got in again. But he had interactions with local
security or law enforcement, and they never checked his status. See,
had they checked his status, they would have found out,
oh he's an illegal alien and oh he's already been
deported twice, but they never took him in. That left
him free to roam around, free to live on the
streets of Charlotte. He listed his address as a roof
above a local homeless center, a low barrier or no
barrier homeless center, which allows people like this guy who
is you know, getting drunk, accosting people on the trains,
carrying around a large fixed blade knife that allows him
to gain access to the services and then continue, you know,
walking around Center City riding the train. That's another issue
that is sort of at this nexus point here of
this story. The guy was banned from the trains. He
was not allowed to be on cats, but there's no
enforcement mechanism because we have an open system, we also
don't have a lot of security. 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
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You can check it out at check 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
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but it also supports Ground News as they make the
media landscape more transparent. All right, let me jump over
and get some calls in. This is Mark. Hello, Mark,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hey Pete.
Speaker 5: Hey, First off, I love your show, Thanks sir. I
listen NonStop, and I just want to say the congratulations
to the whole entire like radio team for switching over
to FM. That's incredible.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I can't wait, but I just want to say
so I lived in Charlotte ever since I was a child.
Speaker 6: I was born and raised.
Speaker 5: I'm twenty six now, and I have seen the homeless
population here in Charlotte grow immensely and it's and it's sad,
and it's troubling, and I just I'm just confused as
to like you were saying earlier, this gentleman who went
on the the tram and had had a knife was drunk.
And I mean these individuals, Pete, like I mean, they
they have nothing to live for really, like honestly, like
people who are homeless like that they don't care.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of out there. Yeah, they're they've become hopeless,
they're you know, they're addicted, they're suffering from mental illness
of some kind. Yeah, it's not a human like the
way that we you know, quote unquote treat homelessnes. It's
not This is not a humane way to do it.
Michael Schellenberger wrote a whole book about it called San Francisco,
and it's just depressing because you have an entire part
of the problem is you have an entire cottage industry
that has been erected around this issue, that is funded
by taxpayer dollars. And so these organizations they have an incentive,
an existential incentive right to continue to have a homeless population.
Speaker 5: Well you know, and that's that's the troubling thing because
you know, way a long time ago, like I know,
they had like sanitariums and everything like that, but people
were using that money for ill gotten games. A lot
of these like doctors, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, there's going to be corruption in any
kind of a man made.
Speaker 6: Structure, and it's and it sucks.
Speaker 5: And I didn't mean to like when I say they
they're they're hopeless or anything like that, that's not that's
not true at all. You know, like there's people out
there who are suffering from addiction and who need the help.
But I mean, like, what do what do we do
about this?
Speaker 2: You know, like what do we Well?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the key is what do we do
to help them? If they want the help? So like,
if they want to break free of the addiction. And
therein lies the problem is that there are a lot
of people that they don't they don't care to. I've
got a family member he does a lot of work
in this space, and and there are a lot of
people that you know, you give them every opportunity and
you try to help them as best you can, and
they and they will just take from you and then
go about and continue the life that they prefer. And
that's their choice to do.
Speaker 5: You know, well, I guess, well what do we do
with the uh? I mean with the with the underlying
problem of the individuals who don't want to try?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean if they're a threat, I mean, if
they are a threat to themselves or the public, then
I mean I think, like I think we have to
have the quote the conversation a national conversation about reopening
and institutionalizing people who are a threat to this is
to the society and themselves or themselves. I think that
has to be part of the conversation.
Speaker 5: Clean man, that's all it is.
Speaker 2: People need to get clean. I mean they need to.
Speaker 5: Like I work in the restaurant industry, I actually work
for Noble Food and Pursuits, and you know, they have
a whole program set up for people to get them
off the streets. Yeah, but I think you know that's
I mean, it's at the end of the day, it's
just a person who has to choose to get better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they have to want to turn their
life around. Yeah, Mark, I appreciate the call, Buddy, good
to hear from you. Let me go over and get
John on real quick. Hey, John, welcome to the show.
Speaker 6: Hey, thank you for taking my call. Sure, that was
really interesting hearing that about the you know, homeless. But
I want to mention something. My wife and I we
ride the rail all the time. I'm even in Charlotte.
We'll get it south Charlotte, so I don't have to
park up town when there's you know, a football game,
this game, concert or something that's when we use it.
And I always thought, my god, you know everybody on
here don't even pay. Probably, And we've ridden rail all
through Europe, England, everywhere in the States, and I have
every single place that I can think of has gates.
You have to buy your ticket before you can go
out there. Know where the machines are, for example, it's
off both of our parking lot. Why can't they You
buy your ticket, I can do, and you got to
punch it go through a gate before you can go
out there. I think everybody should have to pay, and
that might control some of these hate saying the dead
beats just hanging on the trains all day long.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, definitely, yeah, definitely. Fair jumping is a major problem.
And our system was not designed with turnstiles and control access.
That was a design choice, right that was made, I
would assume to save money, right, so you don't have
to construct the barriers, you don't have to build any
buildings and that sort of thing, And so they rely
on essentially the honor system, and they know you don't
have people coming around checking your tickets. I've talked about
riding the Long Island railroad and somebody comes through those
cars and they check your tickets. You know, that's how
they police it. But we don't do that in our system.
Speaker 6: And yeah, this surprised me that they decided to set
it up this way. If they ever did, they'd probably
have to reduce the amount of stops going towards town
because they can get on so easy on and off there.
There had to be some places where you can only
get on where there was barriers were set up right,
and then go on. But yeah, I appreciate you taking
my call. I just wanted to mention that I think
that's not the only solution I can see here. I
don't think an honor system is ever ever going to
work here.
Speaker 1: So no, I agree, John, I appreciate the call. It is.
And by the way, CATS officials are aware of that
very that very solution. They know this. They talked a
little bit about it when they appeared at the city
council right after the murder of Arena Zarutska, and they
talked about how other systems have problems with fair jumping
as well. Sure, but when you have an open, uncontrolled
access system like Charlotte has, you're basically incentivizing free rides,
and when you do that, you get people that can't
afford to ride the train to then ride the train
and ride it a lot. 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 go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and that don't break
anything while I'm gone.
Speaker 5: Hmm.