Charlotte leaders' secret task force on crime | Hour 3

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 vpetecleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. So the City of Charlotte government leaders, business leaders, community leaders have been meeting in secret going back over a year to try to fight crime in uptown. Right, the thing that we've been talking about framed as a Republican narrative, which, like guys just heads up over at the Observer, Republicans have no power here. Okay, so you can drop the whole framing of Republicans as the boogeyman because there are no Republicans here to hold any Democrats to account. Okay, that's all d on D action right there. Okay, so you guys at the Observer, the local media. It's on local media. To hold the Democrats accountable because they are in complete control. There is no Republican narrative that is going to prompt the Democrats to do something. Okay, Republicans have no power to make the Democrats do anything they don't want to do. Now, the business leaders could bad pr could by way of media reporting, right, you have more like media has more power than the Republicans. Republicans cannot drive any kind of a story about the Democrats in Charlotte, Okay, They're just there's not enough Republicans and they're not going to get the airtime. And even if they got airtime on this station, right, other local outlets are not going to pick up those those stories. So it's on you, guys. So this is all on you. I suspect that the divulging of the existence of this task force is because they want to tout a decline in crime in Center City, right, So they want they want the praise for leading to the for their efforts leading to the decline in crime, which I am fine to give you. I don't care who gets the credit, Like, I really don't care who gets credit. I just want the city to be safer, right, I don't don't want to see videos from East Boulevard of women being punched out by deranged men. On the sidewalk in broad daylight or any time of the day. So I don't care. You guys want to claim credit for it, you go right ahead. But there has to be some honesty here in what is driving this and the observer, I think does not get to it. They allow this thing to be framed as just oh, well, we were giving some grace and we inadvertently, you know, created these conditions. It inadvertently lowered our standards for public safety, inadvertently. No, these were choices, right, cashless bail the equivalent of. That was a choice. That was a choice that Democrat leadership made in elected and in the court system. This is a philosophy you guys adhere to. You guys believe in that you didn't want people to be held responsible criminally for their criminal activity. You wanted to get to the root causes of the crimes. You thought there was something else that just wasn't provided for this person that made them turn to a life of crime. And if only we had done the root causes and address the root causes, we could save them. But when somebody engages in antisocial behavior and victimizes somebody, they should be held accountable and they should be taken off the streets because they are a danger to other people. And when you don't have the. Security, then you don't have the economic activity that the security allows to occur. I've talked about this many, many, many times. If you are going to have a high trust society, right, you have to believe that laws are being enforced, that if somebody violates law, if somebody hurts somebody else takes their stuff, that they're going to be punished for that. If you don't, you end up with a low trust society, and then you don't have any economic activity that occurs because people will not go to your city to engage in the economic activity for fear of being victimized. That's why you provide the umbrella of security first. So this way people are free. They don't have to worry about being assaulted, being attacked, being robbed, right, they don't have to worry about these things. Awesome, Andy on the text line with a very good point, because the quote here was from the Center City Partners president and CEO Michael Smith, who who led this secret task force. They said the world needed grace after the COVID pandemic, and in doing so, we inadvertently lowered our standards for public safety. It's general disorder that creates environments that are more welcoming to misbehavior. This is essentially what he's espousing there, or what he's describing as the broken window theory, which we learned. I thought decades ago that if you don't care about the little things, they pile up and turn into big things. When you allow people to spray graffiti all over your building and you don't clean it up and nobody gets arrested, then more graffiti appears, more and more and more and more, and then other little crimes they're not punished either, and the little things stack. It compounds, and it sends the message to the criminals that they can continue doing this behavior, and they can even step it up. They could do more and more worse things. But it also sends messages to the non criminal citizens who say, oh, this is a dangerous place because crime is not punished, I'm not going to go there, or even worse, they begin engaging in criminal activity because who cares. That's the norm. You're not going to be punished for it, and that's the only way to get ahead. There was a was it. I'm trying to remember the president of the country. Was it El Salvador, I think it is. And he tells the story of the merchant who goes to the market selling his tomatoes or apples, whatever it was, and he is robbed. Right, he sells all of his apples. He makes five dollars that day, and on his way home he gets robbed by the gang, the local gang. So is he going to continue spending the day at the market selling his fruit or is he going to join the gang and just steal it from other people? Right? What's the cost benefit there? You could do the right thing, right, you can raise your crops, spend all that time and energy doing all of that to make the money, do it all the right way, not hurt anybody. Or you could abandon all of that and just a couple hours of the day just go and mug some. People and take their stuff. Right. But Andy on the text line says grace was definitely not extended due to COVID. It was actually BLM defunding of police. And this is the thing that they won't talk about that drove a lot of this misbehavior, this disorder, this general disorder. It didn't come from COVID. It didn't come from people being locked down. It came from the summer of fiery but mostly peaceful rioting. Right, Andy's exactly right. There was a general reckoning, if you will remember, that was the term that we're in for a reckoning on this stuff. We can't police. Anything anymore, everybody, because justice lo and behold, things got worse. All right. For over a year now you've heard me talking about Create a Video. Great local company in mint Hill that has helped more than two million families preserve their memories by turning old photos, VHS tapes, film reels and slides into lasting keepsakes. Now creative videos helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. 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Check out group travel Videos dot com. That's group travel Videos dot com. Or call seven oh four eight four six seventy eight seventy extension two o six. And when you do that, ask for Katie. But Pete, can I just email? Well, yes you can. You can email Katie Katie at group travel videos dot com. Group travel videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. Yeah. Apparently the Charlotte Movers and Shakers, the Uptown Crowd, they've been meeting for a year in secret. According to two different stories, one by Peter saint Owne and another by Nick Sullivan today at The Charlotte Observer, that about thirty members of this secret task force they started meeting in July twenty twenty five. They met for a year. They were gonna disband, and then there was pushback, No, no, no, we can't disband, And so they're meeting quarterly now instead of I guess monthly or whatever. From the piece by Nick Sullivan, Charlotte has undergone a public safety reckoning over the past year, with uptown centering in the debate over whether crime perceptions match reality. Okay, all right, I do follow this stuff pretty closely. What reckoning are you talking about? What reckoning? Has there been a reckoning? I'm not aware of such. See, a reckoning would require there to be people being called out saying you did this thing that isn't working. You're out of a job, you're out of office. We're changing course. This was wrong and bad, terrible decisions were made. Let's not do that again. There's been no reckoning here and even here, even as you claim in your piece, mister Sullivan, that there's a reckoning occurring, you couch it in this weather. Perception match reality, this dismissiveness of it. And that's the party line right there, is that, Oh, it's just the perception of insecurity in uptown or throughout Charlotte. It's just a perception, it's not really reality. But here's the thing, and the business crowd knows this, and this is why they were participating in the task force. Was that even if it wasn't reality, which I would submit it was, when you have about one hundred murders a year, that's reality. Okay. So even if it's just reality, or even if it's just a perception and it's not real, the perception harms business People do not want to do business, open a business, keep their business open in a city that has a perception or a reality of being unsafe. Right. Businesses don't want to locate in a business district where people are afraid to walk around and engage in commerce. That's the whole point of a central business district or an entertainment district, a tourism district is that you have people who are going there to engage in commerce and economic activity. If they don't feel safe, they don't go. If you're trying to recruit a business to town and they think they're employees, the business thinks it's employees are going to be assaulted while walking to work every day and nothing will happen to the attackers. They're not going to locate their business here, so the business crowd understands the perception. I've been saying this for a couple years that the Charlotte business community needs to recognize that this is not good for them. So this is an out growth of This is a response to what was it called the inadvertently lowered standards for public safety as Michael Smith's Center City Partners president and CEO called it. I understand why he's saying it. It's not true. We did not inadvertently lower standards. It was quite intentional, But I understand why he has to say that. Whether he believes it or not, I don't know, and I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. But he, as the president of the Center City Partners, has to have a good working relationship with these Democrat leaders, and the Democrats have been the ones who have inadvertently or intentionally been the drivers of the lower standards for public safety. They've been the ones to do that because that's what either they believe or they know their base beliefs and they need to win election, so they have to cater to that base. So he has to cater to them. So essentially he's catering to the base, which is why I suspect they were meeting in secret, because if you met in public, and you were doing these meetings out in the open, and you were implementing certain changes in order to help address the perception of insecurity, you would have gotten the same usual suspects showing up at the meetings with their bullhorns and their poster boards, screaming and yelling about justice and equity and all of the other attendant issues that these people come down to the city council meetings and scream about. So if you wanted to get anything done, it had to be done in private. I'm not knocking it, by the way, I'm not critical of the fact that they met in secret. If that's the way it had to happen, okay, But that does tell me something about power structure. No, let me go over to the text line here. I got a lot of people texting in as part of the Republican narrative. I'm sure BET's favorite Russ says, inadvertently doesn't excuse a failure to consider second and third order consequences, especially when people on the right and all of human history were warning. You exactly. This is bill the commercial I keep hearing about Wattley as he hired some pedophile or sex offenders. There a backstory and okay that's not on topic, Champ, but yeah, it was some guy who and I covered this several months ago when this story first came out. It was like. A party post, like a Republican party post that he had been appointed to and Wattley as chairman, makes the appointments. So that's what the Cooper campaign is. Is smearing him with. And the Cooper campaign has got its own problems with the local guy here in Charlotte that ran the LGBTQ Business Chamber whatever they call themselves. I forget Chad Severance I think was his name, and. He was a registered sex offender, and Roy Cooper came to his events and took pictures with him. But for some reason, it's okay when Cooper does it, because it's different. Anyway, John says, Pete, what do you expect from the Observer with their opinion and deputy editor writer whatever spewing out every day Chapel Hill liberal journalists. Yeah, I mean that is what UNC tends to produce up there. Yeah, there has been no public safety reckoning, just like there's been no COVID reckoning. There's been no BLM reckoning. The closest we have gotten is AOC saying woke one was crazy. That's the closest we've come. That's not a reckoning. If anything, any measure of accountability that has been attempted has come from the state legislature that started looking at the problems in Charlotte after the murder of Arena Zaruska. Arena Zaruska was murdered about two months or a month and a half after the creation of the Secret Charlotte Crime Task Force. Okay, so the business and community. Leaders they knew something was wrong before Zeruzka was murdered. They knew that. And if you follow the local news, you hear about the shootings at Romeer beard In Park in Uptown at like a right outside of a restaurant and stuff. You see the street takeovers, the team takeovers, like all of this stuff this disorder. So from the story in the paper today about the UH the Secret Task Force, small things started to pile up. Flower baskets. This is talking about a neighborhood and Fourth Ward. Flower baskets that once adorned trees around Fourth Ward disappeared, lights burned, out and weren't replaced. More people showed up to panhandle on the streets. And the Charlotte Transportation Center, well, it gained a reputation for violence and loitering. Okay they Okay, hang on a second. The Transportation Center did not gain that reputation post COVID. Okay, that was that has always been the reputation. That has always been a sketchy place to walk past, Okay always. I know my wife's office was about two blocks away, and we would walk past there if we were going to the arena, if we were going to Center City for something, going to eat at a restaurant or something, if we were going into Center City trade and try on, we would have to walk right past that place. So it has always had that reputation. Anyway, Transportation Center gained a reputation for violence and loitering, which added economic stakes to the discussion. Okay, well it shouldn't have just added it to the discussion. The economic stakes should have been part of the discussion from the very beginning. People like me I guess as part of a republican narrative that crime depresses economic activity. Once again, people don't want to engage in commerce if they're afraid of being killed, they will not go to your area. This is the same thing with the food deserts or the groceries or deserts, like, oh, we can't buy groceries over in this area, and the one or two stores that do exist, like a CVS pharmacy or something, and everything is locked behind plexiglass. Okay, there's a reason for that. It's the crime. Crime creates the food deserts because the business can't stay in business. Michael Smith, head of Center City Partners, recalled a period where potential investors shared concerns about what they saw at the Center City while visiting. He's not sure if Charlotte ever lost a project over safety. Quote, but sometimes you don't know what you never got the chance to look at because of a reputation. Yeah, there were companies that probably may have considered Charlotte took a look at the news coverage, took a look at the crime stats, made a visit two or something, and never reached out to anybody because they ruled us out. They were like, oh, no, we're not going there. The business community grew increasingly concerned about crime, both real and perceived. So again the business leaders they're the ones who initiated this quote reckoning, No, a task force. We're going to have to meet together to try to figure out how to drive down crime, how to address this. So they fixed a bunch of light fixtures so it wouldn't be so dark. CMPD launched Crown remember that, focusing on minor infractions and quality of life crimes like panhandling, illegal street vending, public disruption within a half mile radius of trade and try on streets. And now we know what prompted it. I mean, I applaud the observer for doing the story. I'm critical of some of the way that they are framing this, trying to you know, boogeyman Republicans over this. And this is the Republicans are not a part of this story at all. Republicans have nothing to do with this. Okay. These were intentional decisions made by Democratic leaders at the local level and all the way up to the state level, right because remember Governor Roy Cooper with his Racial Justice Equity task Force. The Attorney General at the time, Josh Stein, who's now the governor Minnie Cooper, he was on that task force. Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls up for reelection this year, also on that task force. These are the things that they said in the wake of the BLM protests. These are the things that they said would make everything more equitable, and it drove up crime. CMPD Central Division, which covers Uptown and part of South End, reported a twenty three percent year over year decrease in total crime during the first six months of twenty twenty six. Violent crime is down by more than thirty percent. There have been thirty fewer burglaries and aggravated assaults this year. There's been one fewer homicide from three to two, and vehicle thefts plummeted from two hundred down to one hundred ten. See that, so it's working. I see so, uh policing works. Huh, well that's interesting. CMPD declined to participate in the story. The police department scheduled but then canceled an in person interview, but agreed to answer a list of questions by email instead. CMPD refused to release its responses after drafting them. What why, what are you guys doing over there at CMPD headquarters? What's up with that? Why would you not participate in the story. Don't you have a good story to tell? Your initiatives are working. Let me just say this also, I try to always remember to put this in. I am critical of these leaders and these programs, these actions or inactions, not because I don't want Charlotte to be better. It's because I do. I'm critical of media because I want it to be better. I'm critical of these policies because they don't make us better, they don't make the city safer. So I applaud the efforts to address crime. What I bristle at is the framing of this as some sort of reckoning when it isn't as some sort of you know, this is just perceptions, not reality, And that's a Republican narrative in all of this. No, this has been a problem for a while, and the permissive attitude in the wake of the BLM riots, that permissiveness and this reimagining of public safety has been an abject failure. And I say that because I don't want the city to exist as it is. I want it to be better. I want it to be safer. And when you have policies that make it safer, and you have actions, and some of these things are pretty straightforward. Right fix the lights, fine, right, move the security guards from inside the buildings behind a desk and put them out on the sidewalk. That makes a difference. Good idea, I applaud it. The Center City Task Force was launched in July of twenty five, and Michael Smith said that we wanted Charlotte to be the safest large city in the country. Me too, Me too. I would love for that to be the case. I would love for that to be a goal and for us to achieve it. I want to live in a safe place. Most people. Do you know who doesn't criminals? Criminals don't want to live in a safe place because they thrive in an unsafe, chaotic place. The group was broad and diverse from the start. It had thirty members, including executives from large employers, including banks and Charlotte hospitals. It included community leaders, presidents of Charlotte's four Center City wards, and directors of nonprofits centered on homelessness and mental health. It included CMPD Chief Estella Patterson Mecklenburg DA Spencer Meriweather, Chief District Court Judge Roy Wiggins. It included city and county officials like City Manager Marcus Jones, County Manager Mike Bryant, City Council Member Dante Anderson County Commission Chair Mark Jarrell. Okay, are we going to see any changes at the courts? Roy Wiggins is there. He's part of this task force. The CMPD revived their Entertainment District unit that targeted the nighttime hours when most crime occurs, and police also have launched initiatives surrounding panhandling and disruptive behavior that brings complaints from residents, businesses, and visitors. Importantly, the task force also went beyond crime to criminal justice issues. Police were frustrated that people they arrested were quickly back out on the street, often without punishment. Oh there's that dastardly Republican narrative again. There was little coordination between CMPD and the District Attorney's office and the courts, and DA Merriweather said, part of the benefit of having everybody meet together is you realize how much you operate in silos and how the information you have isn't something that everyone gets. I'm sorry, do you not have a computer? Can you not like pull up somebody's record? Can you not see that they have been repeat repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat repeat offenders? Do you not know this. Monica on the text line points out like there's a small percentage of people that make up a large portion of the people arrested. This has been the case for decades. This is not new. These are your frequent flyers. They put so much strain on the system. Were doing anything about that? Did the task force talk about that? What to do about the frequent flyers? The task force persuaded about a dozen property owners or major employers near Trade and try on to commit to moving security personnel from behind a desk to more visible spots on the curb, and to make intentional efforts at cleanliness and beautification at least once or. Twice a month. Unused transit kiosks were dismantled, bike racks, trash cans, and benches were removed or upgraded. I have noticed that some of the benches have been changed. They upgraded and added three thousand light fixtures. Partnering with Duke Energy. The project will be completed in the next few months. Again touting crime being down twenty three percent year over year just in the first six months, so you're looking at six months of twenty twenty six versus the first six months of twenty five. Michael Smith sees the difference, especially at the transit center where security has moved to the curb and all the inside lights have been replaced. Quote, it had gotten so bad. That was a block that you avoided even during the day. There's another one of those desperately republican narratives. 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 don't break anything while I'm gone.