Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast.
Speaker 2: It is heard live every day from noon to three
on WBT Radio in Charlotte.
Speaker 1: And if you want exclusive.
Speaker 2: Content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my
daily show prep with all the links, become a patron,
go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for
your support. We've been talking about the security situation on
the Charlotte Area transit system known as KATS and this
comes after last night's Charlotte City Council meeting. I watched it,
so you didn't have to. You're welcome. They expanded the
contract that currently exists with private company Professional Police Services.
This is a corporate security model that KATZ has been
using for years. Nobody can explain why they use this model,
but this is the model, and so they're expanding it
to include the entire rail trail, sidewalks surrounding the transit centers,
and other areas adjacent to transit properties. PPS Professional Police
Services say they're now fully staffed up.
Speaker 1: They are, They're all over the place.
Speaker 2: But as I went over the last hour, there was
no explanation as to how they staff, like do they
target certain hot spots? CATS doesn't have the data on
crime that was asked for a month ago after the
murder of twenty three year old Ukrainian refugee Arena Zarutska,
So they don't have the data. And when asked, you know,
do you know where the hotspots are? They said basically no,
we don't have that data yet. We're still compiling it.
We're trying to comply with all of these demands for
information from the federal and state lawmakers and regulators. But
PPS was there last night and they didn't address it either.
They didn't answer this question because Edwin Peacock, the city
council city council member, was asking like, how are you
allocating your resources if you don't know where the crime
hotspots are? And there was no answer given to that,
and he didn't follow up on it. He didn't press
anybody from PPS on it. And maybe we'll get some
data on that at some point, I don't know. The
other issue is about the fair skippers or fair evasion.
I'm going to get into that in a moment. First,
let me get over here and chat with Tony. Welcome
to the program.
Speaker 3: Hey Tony, Hi Pete, how are you well. We've spoken
a few times in the past, because you know, retired
law enforcement, I've been following this whole horrendous incident. But
also this is just really dependent of the amount of
violence we've seen on cats between the buses and the trains.
I think you've spoken on it previously, but I am
just really disturbed by what I've heard from PPS and
that council. You know, it's great that they fully staff,
but they don't discuss any type of training that personnel
have received.
Speaker 2: They want to hang on Tony. They did say last
night that they go through all of the same ble
T training that CMPD does.
Speaker 3: Then my next question would be to them is what
happens when they do have an incident that results in
either an arrest or a transport for a medical evaluation
or psych evaluation. They referred then that they have to
contact CMPD to go ahead and do that transport. So
why have a middle man? Why not just have let
CMPD handle it and let I Like I said, it's
very very strange, and it's great that he says he's
passionate about security. What does that do for keeping people
safe on these transit trains?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, And what you're asking for is the data
that supports these decisions, and they didn't have it. And
this is the concern, right And my understanding is that
CMPD would be the transporting authority that they would be
the ones to Now, well, they would take the people
into custody and bring them to the jail, right, but
PPS can According to Cagel, the interim CEO of CATS,
Brett Kagel, he says that PPS does have the authority
and the ability to make arrests souh, But I don't know, Like,
I don't think they take them down to the jail.
I think they can detain somebody, they can arrest them,
but then they got to probably call in CMPD in
order to bring them over to the jail to do
the processing, I believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The issue too is, you know, there's no real
simple solution to this problem because there's so many different
teers through it. Sure, as I've heard you speak out
previously as well, you have the whole mental health issue
that is woefully under addressed, and Charlotte and just everywhere
in the country, and certainly when I started my career
many years ago, was one of a lot of the
state run facilities started to close down and they started
to put these people out in the street. But because
when they were controlled settings and medicated, they were somewhat control.
Speaker 1: Yeah they were, Yeah, I mean they were under control.
Speaker 3: Control is a teller is the word that they that
times get people upset about it. But yes, you know,
but once they're outside of those settings, all sorts of
things happen, and we see the increased level of violence
that takes place here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they go off their meds. They then have interactions
with law enforcement. They then end up in jail. They
end up with a whole bunch of charges against them
and stuff. They victimize people, and then they end up
maybe you know after after they like this guy to
Carlos Brown Junior, you know, he's going to prison and
like and he destroyed a life and his life is ruined,
and like, that's not a human. This has not been
a humane approach to these types of problems, Like this
idea that oh it's inhumane to keep them in uh
you know, in a in an institution under an involuntary commitment, right,
But like, what's the alternative.
Speaker 1: Exactly, you leave him on the street. Yeah, that's not humane.
Speaker 3: That can hurt themselves and others. It's it's a huger problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, hey, Tony, I appreciate it, man, Yeah, yeah,
you too.
Speaker 1: Take care.
Speaker 2: There was an interesting study. I mentioned this a little
while ago about the fair evasion. I'm going to go
into a couple studies here. But the first thing, and
I detected a little bit of an accent there on Tony.
I suspect I might know where he uh he hails
from where he did his law enforcement. But one of
the uh, well here you go. Let me start with
this clip because this is Brett Kagel and he's talking
about fair evasion. And I'm going to get into the
stats out of New York City because Kegel brings up
New York City. Because then the guy that they just
hired for CATS is former New York I believe he's
out of the MTA Metropolitan Transit Authority up there New York,
New Jersey are and he's now in charge of our security.
He just took the job like four or five months
ago or something, so I believe it's a newly created
position too.
Speaker 1: And so he was asked.
Speaker 2: They were all asked about like what does the what
does New York City do about, you know, fair evasion
and this sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Fair evasion crime. They have those things too. There was
just a study.
Speaker 1: That came by the way, you hear all that. M
oh yeah, you hear all of that.
Speaker 2: Those are the Democrat ladies on city council like somehow
another like this is some sort of justification for what exactly,
I'm unclear, Like why do you feel like this is
some level of vindication, Like, oh, yeah, they got crime too,
that's right, like right, but that doesn't make it okay.
I don't understand why this is some sort of amen
moment for you.
Speaker 1: Again, Brett Kagel, I'm gonna rewrack it.
Speaker 4: Fair evasion crime, that they have those things too. There
was just a study that came out that estimated the
MTA loses a billion dollars a year in fair evasion.
So again, this is not something that a closed system
or an authority, a governance structure.
Speaker 1: Resolves.
Speaker 4: This is something that transit agencies across the country, of
all different sizes, of all different governing structures, of all
different security enforcement structures.
Speaker 1: We're struggling with this.
Speaker 4: This is a nationwide thing, and Charlotte is included in that.
And so I will say, as the manager said, this
is about how do we provide more resources today. We
have started that, and we can demonstrate that that we
have continuously added resources towards security and towards state of
good repair to the system since twenty twenty two. I
can speak directly to that since twenty twenty two, and
will continue to do that because we also acknowledge that
more can and needs to be done, and we will
continue that.
Speaker 2: All right, So what I like to do in this,
you know, I don't know. Maybe given my roots as
a reporter, I like to go and find the original
source material. So I went looking for this stat that
Brett Kagole mentioned this one billion dollars in losses that
the New York MTA suffered through fair evasion. So in
New York City last year twenty twenty four, fair evasion
costs the MTA about a billion dollars, with fair evasion
at about fourteen percent, So fourteen percent of people riding
the subways they were evading the fairs. Subway fair evasion,
fourteen percent, bus fair evasion forty four percent, forty four percent.
Almost half of all the bus riders in New York
are not paying the fares. Recent efforts have led to
a decrease in fair evasion rates, with subway evasion down
twenty six percent bus evasion down nine percent. So what
do the numbers look like for twenty twenty five Through
the first quarter, it was thirteen point six fair evasion
on the subway. It's now down to just under ten.
So they have seen some progress there. Okay, bus fair
evasion first quarter last year forty eight percent. Now it's
down to forty four percent. So most of your fair
evasion is from buses. But it also, by the way,
includes that one billion dollars. It includes not just the
subway and not just the buses. It includes commuter rail,
and it also includes toll roads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and arrests.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two it went from six hundred and
fifty five arrests to more than four thousand.
Speaker 1: This year.
Speaker 2: They're making way more arrests on their transit system.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The MTA is implementing modern fare gates at twenty subway
stations to further reduce evasion and get this a comprehensive
strategy focusing on education equity, environment and enforcement is being
adopted to tackle fair evasion effectively. What in the hell
does equity have to do with fair evasion? You either
jumped the freaking turnstile or you did not. The color
of your skin is irrelevant. Equity has nothing to do
with this.
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: You hear me talk a lot about incentives, Right, Well,
let's talk about incentive trips, the kind that companies offer
employees to fire them up and reward their teams. If
you own a business or you work somewhere that offers
these incentive trips, first off, good for you, but also
there is a custom app that's a game changer for
these trips. It's called Incentive Tripkit. Private group messaging, shared photos,
your itinerary, travel details all built into a single, easy
to use app. There's even a traveler locator so Carl
from Accounting doesn't get left behind. The best part about
Incentive Tripkit it's totally private, no email captures, no sign ups,
no cringe ads. It's simple, clean and secure, and when
the trip is over, Incentive Tripkit turns those highlights into
a professional storytelling video. So think about it when you
launch next year's incentive trip campaign. That video becomes your
greatest motivator. Talk about a return on investment. Right, you
got to check out incentive trip kit for your business.
Visit Incentive tripkit dot com because great trips deserve even
better returns. So I went over to New York City
fair evasion stats. They say they lost a billion dollars
due to subway fair evasion fourteen percent, forty four percent
bus fair evasion, totaling a billion dollars, also toll road evasion.
So let's compare to Charlotte. No, no, oh, we can't.
Oh sorry, because we don't have comparable data for Charlotte. Yeah,
when you run this through the AI machines to find
out By the way, you know where they get all
this information from the AI for the AI chat GBT
and such, Google, you know where they're getting it from
Wikipedia and Reddit and those things are infested with leftists anyway.
The fair evasion statistics out of Charlotte show fewer than
one hundred tickets were issued every year in twenty twenty
in twenty twenty one, in twenty twenty two, but this
number spiked to more than four thousand, seven hundred tickets
in twenty twenty three when in four increased and now
it's down to about two thousand. Well, those are tickets issued.
That doesn't give us any understanding of how many people
are actually evading the fares, right because obviously in twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, and twenty twenty two you were you
were not enforcing it for three years, and then in
twenty twenty three you obviously started enforcing it a little
bit more and you wrote forty seven hundred tickets. But
what does that mean, how many people were riding, how
many people paid? What extrapolate that out? Well, it's the percentages.
We don't know. You don't have a breakdown light rail
versus buses, streetcars free anyway. Cats generate seventeen million dollars
per year in fares, But the tickets issued metric is
not very instructive because it's not based on total headcounts,
and we don't have a percentage to actually compare to
New York City. So when Brett Kagel says to the
city council, well, you know New York City, you know,
fair evasion costs them a billion dollars, and everybody's like
m m oh, yeah, that's right, And it's like, well, right,
But what's the comparative. I can't make one because you
don't have the data the results of get this. Here's
another one for Charlotte. The results of a fair equity
study are expected by the end of the year. A
fair equity study. There it is again, equity. We're dealing
with equity issues in fair collection. No, it doesn't matter.
None of your demographic data matters to me. What matters
is did you pay or did you not? That's it.
That's it. There was a piece at the City Journal
by Elliot Hamilton a couple of days ago, time for
a no tolerance policy on transit crime. The only way
to address the problem is more aggressive enforcement of basic
subway rules, including prosecuting what he calls fair beating or
fair skipping. But he calls it fair beating. Subway assaults
have tripled in New York. Subway assaults tripled since two
thousand and nine. Violent crime recidivism doubled since twenty nineteen.
Seventeen percent of violent subway offenders had prior arrests for
similar crimes during the prior six years. Twenty five percent
of those same violent subway offenders had prior arrests for
fair beating in the past six years, so a quarter
one out of four people that have violent offenses on
their records over the course of years also have been
jumping the turnstiles. There's a connection here. Game on Week
one starts now, and every touchdown brings you closer to
a payout. With Draft Kings sports book and official sports
betting partner of the NFL, this isn't just football, it's
first touchdown fireworks. Anytime TD rushes live bets that ride
every momentum shift that DraftKings every play is your next
shot to win. Will the Panthers win? Will we even
get a touchdown? New customers bet just five dollars and
get three hundred dollars in bonus bets instantly, plus get
over two hundred dollars off NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube
and YouTube TV. So your season starts now. Download the
Draft Kings sports Book app and use code Pete to
get three hundred dollars in bonus bets instantly when you
place your first bet of five dollars or more plus
over two hundred dollars off NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube
and YouTube TV. But you got to use promo code
Pete in partnership with Draft Kings. The Crown is yours
gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler In New York
call eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text
hope and why for six seven three six. In Connecticut,
help is available for a problem gambling called eight eight
eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven, or visit
CCPG dot org. Play responsibly on behalf of boothill, casino
and resort Kansas. Fees may apply in Illinois twenty one plus.
Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario. Bonus
bets expire seven days after issuance. Se Sportsbook dot DraftKings
dot Com, Slash Promos NFL Sunday Ticket offer for new
subscribers only and auto renews until canceled. Digital games and
commercial use excluded. Restrictions apply additional NFL Sunday Ticket terms
or at YouTube dot com slash go Slash NFL Sunday
Tickets Slash terms Limited time offer. The would be assassin
Ryan Ruth. This was the second assassination attempt on President
Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: This was the one den at Ma a Lago.
Speaker 2: Ryan Ruth found guilty on every single charge attempted assassination
of a major presidential candidate, the ablitter rated serial number
on the gun. All every charge he acted as his
own lawyer, proving once again that one who represents himself
as a fool for a client. I heard a Fox
analyst say this was the shortest game of clue ever,
because his defense was that, yes, he was there, Yes
he had devised this plan to murder the president. Yes
he had the gun. Yes he did all he did
all of the things he had been to do, all
of the things. But he didn't shoot the president. See that,
It really makes you think, right, No, so he was done.
He has been convicted. We're talking about the fair evasion
on Charlotte's light rail line. And by the way, they
do a much better job of they say, but we
have no stats to prove this one way or the other.
They say they do a better job of collecting all
the fares on the buses, because that's more of a
controlled access kind of a thing, right where you can
get on to the bus, but you have to then
go past the driver, and if you don't pay the
driver or show your ticket or whatever, then he can
tell you to get off. So there's a Theoretically, there's
a lower fair evasion on the buses than there is
on the sub or on the trains, because the trains
are just open platforms, open access. There's a little kiosk
you're supposed to buy a ticket, but it's on your phone.
It's all virtual, and there's nobody that really comes around
and checks very often, and so a lot of people
just ride for free. But the problem is that fair
evasion sends a message to the criminals. Elliott Hamilton City
Journal writes about the New York City subway system. Three
years ago, Eric Adams instituted a safe Subway plan to
address New Yorkers' anxieties. He says it didn't go far enough.
Though New York needs zero tolerance for all subway crimes.
That means that the city's DA's have to resume prosecutions
for turnstile jumping. In the summer of twenty twenty four,
former NYPD Commissioner William Bratton and the City Journal contributing
editor Raphael Mangual called on the city to resume fair
evasion prosecutions. They also identified some of the central obstacles
to prosecuting these crimes, namely bail and discovery reforms of
twenty twenty and the reluctance of district attorneys to prosecute
fair evasion. I'm not going to go into all of
the details here. I read through it. It's just asinine
and they have reversed it now. So beginning last month
in August, this discover the demand for discovery, which is
like you've got to turn over all the evidence to
the defense team, right, But they made it so sweeping
that like if you forgot or you didn't turn over
some piece of information from something that was like completely
unrelated to the crime, then they would get it tossed out.
So the ADAS then just don't prosecute the cases. So
he said, some changes have appeared on this front, and
that's good, but more remains to be done. The New
York Post reported that sixty three transit recidivists so repeat, repeat, repeat,
repeat offenders. Here sixty three individuals in New York City
account for more than five thousand arrests. Sixty three people,
five thousand arrests, but only five incarcerations between them, five
thousand arrests and five incarcerations. That's zero point one percent.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority MTA has called for DA offices
to resume prosecutions for fair evasion, citing the loss of
more than six hundred million dollars in revenue in twenty
twenty three, which is a good start. Boston has also
begun to crack down on fair evasion right zero crime
should be tolerated on the transit systems. Zero you want
like a zero tolerance. You want to try whatever you
want to try with your different policing, criminal justice, defund
the police crap. You do it outside of the transit systems.
People are in a tube, they are in a vehicle.
They are held captive. They are not allowed to arm
themselves because of your stupid rules, and so you have
a captive audience aka victims.
Speaker 1: Let me see here.
Speaker 2: This is from the Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives Journal, published
in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: No research.
Speaker 2: This is a piece evaluating fair evasion risk in bust
transit networks. No research quantified the risk of fair evasion.
The objective of this study is the introduction of a framework. Okay,
they say inspections positively impact the revenues projection or sorry,
revenue protection and the reduction of aggressive behavior in vandalism.
So More inspections equals more money equals less evasion. Less
aggressive behavior equals less vandalism. Asking people for their tickets works.
The literature on deterrence has stressed the potential offenders pay
greater attention to the certainty of being caught than to
the severity of the punishment if caught. Moreover, a suitable
level of inspection can decrease criminal issues and increase the
security of passengers.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing.
Speaker 2: Without inspections, it's impossible to know the true level of
fair evasion. And that's where we are now in Charlotte.
This is an emerging research area and the determination of
rigorous solutions is a challenging issue. This study improves the
current knowledge on fair evasion by introducing a new metric
for evaluating fair evasion and the fair evasion risk. So
the idea here is they created this framework to say
we're looking at these different factors, and we can tell
you that this particular line, this particular leg of a
route or route depending on what part of the country
you're from, like this is going to have a higher risk.
Speaker 1: These are other factors.
Speaker 2: Oh, you have an open platform, you're going to have
higher increase and they give a formula and they do
all of the research and stuff. So they're hoping that
this can now be built into plans by these planners
right to assess, to assess how much fair evasion you
can expect on your build. I'd be curious to know
if we ran our system, put our numbers into this formula,
what would it look like.
Speaker 1: Probably not good. Probably not good.
Speaker 2: So when I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's,
and before he died, my mom and my dad took
care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago,
there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers
and family. But things are different today because of the
work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of
Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with
huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years.
This cause means a lot to me. I participate in
the annual Walk to End Alzheimer's and I'm leading a
Charlotte team again this year, and it's called once again
Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join
the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth
that truest field. Sign up at alz dot org slash
walk and then you can search for my team name,
Pete's Pack. There's also a link at thepetepod dot com.
There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also,
I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh,
and so you can make a team and join that
one too, or make a donation and help me hit
my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I
really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks
all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz dot
org slash walk for all the dates and locations. Were
closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us
get there? Will you walk with me? For a different future,
for families, for more time for treatments.
Speaker 1: This is why we walk.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned in the last segment, the man charged
with trying to assassinate Donald Trump while he was playing
golf at mar A Lago, Ryan Ruth, has been found
guilty on all charges in a Florida courtroom. According to
Fox News, sheriff's deputies then had to stop him from
attempting to stab himself after the verdict was read, I
don't have any other information except that I don't know
if it was with like a pen or something, or
a pencil, but he apparently attempted to stab himself, but
he was prevented from doing so. Eric says it sounds
like if New York would just lock up the thin
fifty three people after their I don't know, fiftieth arrest,
that would greatly reduce the prosecutorial caseload. They could be
even more efficient if they did so after their third strike.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Once again, this is not a new problem. Former WBT
host Keith Larson used to talk about this all the time,
the repeat offenders. It is a small percentage of or
a small number of individuals that are known to law enforcement.
They are known to the court system, and they are
the frequent flyers. They are in there all the time.
And like whether it's like violent crime, car theft, whatever,
they're different people in different crime categories. When it comes
to you know, public new since and that sort of thing,
you know, causing trouble on the buses and stuff, there
are a very small number of people that are creating
the largest workload. So if you get them out of
the equation, the case loads then become much lighter, but
there has to be a desire to do so. Eric
went on to say that we should have a minimum
number of rules, but the ones we have should be
enforced correct. If we're not going to enforce these laws,
then get rid of them. There is no point in
having the laws if you're not going to enforce them.
Russ says, why is it so hard for them to
connect fair evasion with increased crime? It's basic economics. If
you reduce the cost of a desirable item, more people
will try to get that item. In this case, the
desirable item is a captive population that is largely guaranteed
to be unarmed. If criminals and the mentally unstable can
get access to that for free, of course there will
be more of it. And as far as New York
City is concerned, losing a billion dollars per year and
you can't do anything to stop it, well, then shut
it all down or spend millions more on enforcement and
recoup a lot more.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: This is the other thing is that if you're going
if you're losing massive amounts of money due to fair evasion,
what is the breakpoint? How much do you have to
spend for you to get back more of your money,
for you to collect the revenue that you're not collecting now.
And what came out last night at the Charlotte City
Council meeting, Council Member Lawana Slack Mayfield mentioned that she
has been apparently in constant discussions with cats over the
years to try to make public transit free quote unquote free.
I mean it's going to cost us more money. Property
tax payers is going to cost us more money. But
the idea is just don't collect any fares. And I
will tell you they tried that in Ashville when I
was living and working up in Ashville, and they attempted that,
and the buses became rolling homeless shelters because of course
it would, because to US's point, it's basic economics. Allen says,
fair equity comments by Democrats all goes back to the
mayor's initial statement, where is the concern victim or villain
Stan says, mass transit has become what it was designed
to be from the very beginning. Transportation for the quote
oppressed funded by the quote oppressors. The only reason there
is still a fair listed is to disguise the true intent.
Speaker 1: Well that may be true.
Speaker 2: All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2: 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 thepetecallanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.