Another Charlotte chief gets a payout (12-03-2025--Hour1)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpekclendershow 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. All righty, so yesterday I did not get to this yesterday, and it's a good thing I did not because there was an additional development after I got off air a couple hours later, when my colleague, also a host here and a reporter at WBT, Brett Jensen, got the North Carolina State Auditor, Dave Bollock to join him on his program. You can hear Breaking with Brett Jensen every weekday on WBT from seven or sorry six until seven p And Brett had broken a story yesterday. I want to say, let me see, I've got his. I've got his tweet pulled up here December for a sorry so about four o'clock on Monday, and Brett, somehow I'm not accusing him of stealing anything. No, I'm sure somebody, somebody gave him some of the documents that outline another payoff to a Charlotte Mecklenburg police chief, although this is technically not to the chief, it's to her husband. And we covered this a couple of weeks back when they made the announcement that Charlotte had arrived at its new police chief. They had chosen Estella Patterson, former CMPD employee officer, and she then went up to Raleigh. She worked up in Raleigh for three years as the chief up there, and it just so happened that it coincided with a spike in homicides. I'm not saying she is responsible for the spike in the homicides. This was also during the the COVID era and the fiery but mostly peaceful rioting that era that timeframe. So then she came back to Charlotte and a lot of the rank and file were happy to see her return the Fraternal Order of Police, they were pulling for her to be the next chief. And then we find we found out that her husband had been involved in litigation against the City of Charlotte. Her husband, Battalion Chief Lance Patterson, and he had filed a lawsuit along with another fire department employee, against the city claiming racial bias, and this lawsuit was settled just as the police chief was named. Okay, so the chief's husband in I think this was like a seven year lawsuit against the city. She is going through the hiring process while her husband has pending litigation against the city, and the city settles it just as they make the announcement that they're hiring her. And look, just from an optic standpoint, that does not look good, especially after the City of Charlotte paid out a three hundred thousand dollars settlement to the outgoing Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Chief, Johnny Jennings. More than three hundred thousand dollars paid to Jennings, who had threatened to sue for defamation, even though the remember the the internal complaint that was filed found no justification for the for any kind of action to be taken. You'll recall Johnny Jennings police chief, he did not want to purchase the outer carrier vests for Charlotte Mecklenburg police officers, and a city councilman at the time, Tark Bookari, one of the only two Republicans on council. Bakari wanted to fulfill the requests of a lot of rank and file officers that wanted to wear these outer carrier vests, and so this created this friction point between the chief and the councilman, and there were a bunch of text messages exchanged where you know, Bookari is like, I'm going to destroy your legacy. These were not public so there was no public defamation. It was a political dispute, a policy dispute, and eventually, by the way, Bakari raised money from the private sector to buy a bunch of the vests and then the chief allowed officers if they wanted to wear them, then they could. But this so emotionally scarred the police chief. I guess that he was going to sue, and he threatened to sue the city. And then this created a problem where Okay, the city manager had said that they're in the city attorney rather had said that there wasn't any evidence to support an internal ethics violation against Bakari. There was no evidence of defamation or damages and all of this, and so it was kind of like, well, why are you settling this lawsuit. If you were not going to give him the violation, the ethics violation, right, if there wasn't enough to get over that low bar, why would you settle for three hundred thousand dollars? And then of course, you know they wouldn't release it. Charlotte City council members, a couple of them, said that they were not aware of that previous ethics probe and the results of it. It was all just a mess, right, And then Jennings announces that he's going to retire, and they basically are like, well, this was sort of like a severance deal. It wasn't really a settlement. It was kind of like a severance retirement package or something. But also the city council and the city manager and city attorney did not want to release the terms of the settlement. They didn't want anybody to know what the numbers were. So there was, you know, these rumors about what the figure was, what was all included, and everything else. And the city maintained this position, which was incorrect, that they don't have to divulge the terms of the settlement because it would be a quote, personnel matter. But that's not true. I was saying it at the time. When you settle a lawsuit, you're the city government. You settle lawsuit, you have to disclose you know, the case, like who are the participants in the case and the amount. That was the way it always was. I was unaware that there was this shift in thinking inside the city government during the seven years or eight years that I was out of Charlotte and before I came back. So the state Auditor, David Bullock comes in and he has his people take a look at this, and they ask for the settlement. And then after the auditor produces his report or right about the same time, I would say, probably trying to remember the timeline on that. But while he's you know, pressing the city like you need to divulge this, this is the law. That's when Chief Johnny Jennings waives the non disclosure agreement or whatever was preventing him from you from divulging in the City's like, well, we'll sign it to in the interest of full transparency. No, you got caught, is what happened. Y'all got caught and you got a state agency now with the power to nail you with stuff. So now you're going to divulge it. That was a that was a month ago. That was like a month ago where they made the announcement that the new chief was being hired. Jennings settlements and stuff came about a month prior to that. All of this, So this is the swirl going on. And as part of the hiring process of the new police chief, we have another one of these settlement deals. But again this is going to the incoming chief's husband, Battalion Chief Lance Patterson. This is from October twenty seventh. A Charlotte, North Carolina fire chief says he has reached a settlement with the city over his claims of racial bias years after he brought or rather he thought the deal was done the first time. This is from Law three sixty Battalion Chief Lance Patterson of the Charlotte Fire Department, who was headed for trial in December. So like right now, they were fixing to go to trial after a federal court found that the settlement that he tried to have enforced from twenty twenty two was actually never fully finalized, and so he told the court now that the parties have reached another deal. The settlement ends a dispute from twenty eighteen in which Patterson and another colleague claimed they hit a glass ceiling in the fire department because they are black. In November twenty two, they allegedly reached separate agreements with the department that included early retirements, but claimed that the city was not honoring their deal by deducting retirement from funds from their settlement payouts. Okay, so that was the nature of the dispute for Battalion Chief Patterson, and that's late October, just as they are announcing the hiring of his wife. So a settlement would indicate money has changed hands, right, how much? Don't know? Enter auditor Bullock once again, here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. 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Call her text eight two eight, three, six, seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabinsofashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Okay, so here is from the Charlotte Observer story from Jeff Shamer, the reporter. The North Carolina State Auditor's Office is looking into the legal settlement paid by the City of Charlotte to a former fire battalion chief, the husband of cmpd's new police chief. Estella Patterson. State Auditor Dave Bollock said on social media site x formerly known Twitter, that his office is looking into the settlement which was paid to Lance Patterson following a racial discrimination lawsuit that the City of Charlotte fought for seven years. Bullock said his office would release a report. Okay, so this story was broken by wbt's Brett Jensen. This is what he posted on to Twitter the other day Monday afternoon. He says, I have obtained documents that show the City of Charlotte paid out ninety nine thousand, nine hundred ninety nine dollars, which is a very specific amount of money, ninety nine nine nine nine. This is to settle a seven year lawsuit brought forth by Lance Patterson, who is the husband of new CMPD chief Estella Patterson. The nine nine nine is a significant amount because City Manager Marcus Jones does not have to gain city council approval for anything less than one hundred thousand dollars. So Jones went to the very limit of what he could approve to pay without elected officials having to know or vote on it or sign off on it. I mean, I don't know if they were they ever briefed in a closed session about the settlement, or we don't know because the City of Charlotte, when they go into their closed sessions, they don't ever feel the need to tell anybody about what all was discussed, even years later when the case, the lawsuit is over. It's it is. It is a level of obfuscation. That when I was a reporter on this beat for eight years, I never saw this kind of level of deception. That's what it is. It's deception, Okay, they are attempting to deceive, you know, to to omit from the public site lines. These types of settlements. Why, I don't know. Like the juice here is not worth the squeeze, It really isn't. This is the behavior of an apparatus that doesn't believe there's any consequence to behaving this way. Like I'm just I'm at a loss to understand why they think this is the better play. Did you think it wouldn't come out? The stories were already published, right, Lance Patterson's lawsuit has been going on for seven years. Did you think this wouldn't come out? There are federal court papers publicly available. Did you think it wouldn't come out? At some point? It comes out, and when it comes out, then it looks like you've been covering it up, which is exactly what it looks like right now because it all came out. I mean, you got I mean, think about this. How long did you think that. You were to be able to avoid this story from getting out? However long you thought you could avoid it. I don't think you made it, you know. I suspect this got out into the open a lot faster than they anticipated. That's just a guess, because otherwise, why would you behave like this if you thought that it was going to get out much sooner than you would have just said, you know what, let's just just put it all out there, vote for it, you know, have the city council vote for it in open session, or at. Least make them aware about it. Whatever. You would have been fully transparent and disclosed all of this right out of the gate if you believed that this story was uncontainable, but obviously you didn't think that. This speaks to a profound lack of judgment in the city manager's office, specifically the city manager Marcus Jones, who works at the pleasure of the city council. Okay, if I'm on that council. I'm starting to have some serious concerns about what else he hasn't disclosed to me. And now you know what other kind of poop sandwiches I'm going to be forced to eat in the public domain because he's not telling me stuff that I should know about. It's really unfair to the city council members. It is. It's unfair to these people who have may have no idea what this guy is doing, and now they're going to be asked to defend or disavow if they are in fact asked to do so. I'm asking you know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. 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He posted on Twitter that of the ninety nine nine ninety nine dollars, that's divided into two parts. So Patterson, Lance Patterson, who had sued he will get forty thousand dollars. His legal team at JMD or James McElroy and Deal, the law firm, will get. Nine. So they're getting like sixty thousand. Lance Patterson's getting forty thousand. Okay, that's the settlement amount. Let me jump over here and let's chat with Pete. Hello, Pete, welcome to the program. How are you. Hey, Pete? Good? To be here. By the way, it's no cash bond, Pete. It took not what I was going to talk about, but it took Rina's death to get somebody in jail with no cash bond. I think it's a start. Anyways, what I was gonna mention the city or county budget, whichever is relevant. They have a ledger item for set aside for lawsuits, whether it's somebody slips on a sidewalk or something like that. I think if somebody could investigate that, and it's got to be public records, somebody get investigate that and figure out how much they set aside, how much they've paid people over the years, I think that that would open a can of worms that they just don't want open. Well, so they so a couple of things. Number One, there could be insurance payouts, so that would not come out of the city budget. For example, right if you've got. Insurance for like a slip and fall or something like that, and then the insurance company pays it out, so that might not be reflected in whatever that whatever those expenses might be. But you say, you would think that it's public information. And here's the problem, and that's what these last two cases are really about, whether it's the payout to Jennings or now the payout to Patterson. It's that the city management does not believe that these things are disclosable. They don't They don't think they should have to tell anybody. The Charlotte Observer asked for copies of the settlement and the city refused. But isn't last year's budget and what was up or down against budget? Actual expenses against budget? Isn't that public record? Sure? Yeah, the budget is, but you don't know what like if and I have not checked to see if they you know, put all like lawsuits, settlement, money payouts or something in one category. It may come from individual agency budgets. It may be buried somewhere in there, could be just under legal right, could be just under the management's city manager's office, right, who knows where it is. But even then they're not going to break it down per case, you know what I mean. They're not going to say, here's a payout for a lawsuit brought by John Doe or whatever like. They're not going to have it all broken down like that, especially when they don't believe they need to tell you if the you know, the lawsuit is coming from somebody who's employed by the city. They're not going to say they don't believe it's it's public record. They think it's it's personnel. Well, they may be right and they may be wrong. They're not right. No, no, yeah, like the state auditor says, they are not right, and that's why he launched this investigation again on a settlement from the City of Charlotte to an employee. First it was Jennings they probe that got that settlement information released, and now they're going after this settlement. And I get the insurance is probably a liability insurance, but they probably retain retainage. I think it's the word up to a certain limit, just like a deductible on a health insurance plan. You pay that first. But I think that some interpped investigator could find that. Yeah, Pete, I appreciate the call. Great name too, by the way, I appreciate the call. All right, man, SA, No, it's it's a good question. Like I said, I have not gone into the budget to divulge it or to discover that. But the problem here is that the city, even when the settlement is done. I understand during negotiations, right, they go into closed session. They're talking about legal issues, personnel matters. I get all of that. I'm not unreasonable, right, you want those attorney client discussions protected. I get that. But when the settlement is agreed upon and the order is entered, and the money starts changing hands, like that's our tax money, we should we should know. You know how much that settlement is for and what the case is about. Right, if people are filing a lawsuit, that's all public information. We've known the allegations brought by Lance Patterson for seven years. They've been going back and forth, they've been going through mediation all of this. We haven't been privy to all of those details, as. We shouldn't be. But when you come to a resolution and part of the resolution is to take my money and give it to some disgruntled employee in order to make the lawsuit go away, well then you know I would like to know what that cost is. But from the Observer's story, says the city refused to provide copies of the settle to the Charlotte Observer, leaving its details unknown. But a WBT news reporter, just some random reporter. They couldn't they know his name. By the way they know Brett's name. I think Brett used to work for them, like they know his name, but at least at least they put the call letters in there, so you know, small victories. A WBT news reporter posted screenshots and details about the settlement on x on Monday, and then yesterday Brett had on his program, State auditor Dave Bullock to talk about it. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You could check it out at check dot ground dot news slash. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored. By the left and the right. See for yourself check dot Ground, dot News, slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right, So, North Carolina State Auditor Dave Bullock was on Breaking with Brett Jensen last night, This is on WBT at six till seven, and they were talking about this investigation now and the requests for information from the City of Charlotte regarding this settlement, and Auditor Bullock explain why they started to look into this matter. We saw already that the City of Charlotte had created and completed one behind closed door settlement with the previous police chief, and then news reports indicated that they had entered into well, actually entered into a settlement because the city decided prior to trial not to try the case with the battalion fire chief. And so we said, well, and the indication in the federal court documents was that the case had been settled, and we could find no evidence or indication that the public had been made aware of any monetary payment to the battalion chief, and a settlement, you know, sort of indicates that there's likely some dollars that have been paid out. So we initiated an investigation to find out how much or whether the City of Charlotte taxpayers had paid the battalion chief money in response to a lawsuit. And we had just under one hundred thousand dollars. He said that the City of Charlotte appears to be playing some gamesmanship when it comes to disclosing these kinds of settlements. I was very clear when we initiated the investigation on the behind closed door settlement with the former chief of Police that the position of the State Auditor's Office is that any expense of taxpayer money is the business of the people who pay taxes. So it's the people's business with how much money is spent. Now, not to move forward with any additional comment on this ongoing investigation, but the previous findings that we made in the chief of police settlement, the former chief of police's settlement case that we looked into, the city responded that they would think about and I'm paraphrasing, but that they would think about it or give it some consideration as to whether they're want to release dollar amounts expended to settle lawsuits that they believe were personnel related. I've just got to tell you, from the position of the State Auditor's office, I'm going to repeat myself for the third time. Any expense of taxpayer dollars is the business of the people of North Carolina, no exceptions. And the gamesmanship that appears to be being played in the City of Charlotte is not acceptable in my opinion, to the taxpayers of Charlotte. They deserve to know how their money is being spent. After all, this is not the city council's money, it's not the city manager's money, it's not the city attorney's money. It's the people's money. Right, So what he's talking about there is in the report. So when the auditor does these types of reports, these audits, they will compile the information. They'll put together a draft report highlighting the deficiencies or problems whatever. They then send it to the government or the agency or whatever it is that they're auditing. They'll send it over to them so they can then respond to all of the problems that have been identified, saying Okay, we'll fix that, we disagree with that, we agree with that, whatever, and then those responses get included in the final audit report. So that's where we are sort of in this case. They sense these questions over to the city, and that's what he's referencing there, is that the city's response was that they don't like, Okay, we'll think about giving you information about other settlements that the city manager has done. And you just heard him say, like, that's not acceptable. This is not up to you to decide to disclose taxpayer funded settlement amounts. That's not up to you to decide that you have to disclose it. Let me jump over to the text line here. This is from seven oh four number Pete. You might be misreading the payout situation. Staying under the one hundred thousand dollars limit provides the council with plausible deniability, does it not? It does? See, So this is the question that now every council member, except for the new ones that just won their election, they wouldn't have any information on this. But all of the members of council at the time this settlement was reached, did they know did they know what the settlement was did they know that the city manager had done this or does he get to do these things? Like with the he can award contracts they changed this also, like in twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen, he has the ability. Yeah, twenty eighteen. In December they voted nine to two, the council did to allow him to spend up to half a million dollars on contracts without any public notice or any public vote. And so with the settlements it's one hundred thousand. So the city council just like blind to this. They're like, we got better things and bigger things to worry about, like this isn't Meanwhile, they gave themselves a pay raise to like over fifty k a year because there's a full time job. How is it a full time job? You're not even looking at all of the contracts and settlements anymore. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. 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