Charlotte officials hold press conference in wake of transit safety concerns (10-03-2025--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 of the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendarshow 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. I just I need to start by saying one thing today, what the hell is up with the City of Charlotte's YouTube feed. I am sick of it, absolutely sick of it. I watch the city council meetings so you don't have to. You're welcome. I'm a giver. And it is always breaking down, whether they're in their chambers, and it's a live feed coming through the YouTube from you know, fixed cameras in a fixed studio being pumped out. This is not rocket science, okay. And then today they took their show outside so they could show off the PSS Security vehicles. PSS is the contractor for the Charlotte Area transit system and they've got themselves a couple of sweet sweet UTVs and bikes and such, and so they put them all out there, these black bikes with white letters on them, and black little SUVs and UTVs and white letters say pss security. Is this the militarization thing that the left was always concerned about. Is everybody on the left okay, with the site of these vehicles because they look kind of like military vehicles. I just want to put that out there too, Okay. So when I saw that they were outside, I'm driving into work. I pull up on the phone so I can monitor this news conference on the way in before I can get into the studio. Because it started at eleven am. This was the bike and UTV rollout briefing. That was what they called it. I did not make up that headline. They called it this. And I knew when I saw that this thing was taking place outside, I said, oh, this feed is going to be so jacked up, so jacked up. And I was right. I was right. It just crapped out multiple times and then just stopped. And now you go to the YouTube page and you only get the last like one minute of Ed Driggs when he made a late appearance councilman. Ed Driggs that's the only thing that loads up right now. It's just ridiculous. But luckily I am a professional. I have been doing this a long time, so I knew that the City of Charlotte also has a Facebook page. So I went over to the Facebook and look at that. They've got themselves recording on the Facebook, I guess because it's streamed to Facebook as well. And it ran and they took questions. And from a PR damage control crisis management standpoint, what should have occurred here was you stand up there and you answer every question until every reporter has no more questions to ask. That did not happen. They cut the questions off. They gave a limit. I think they were probably shooting for half an hour. It went forty minutes, and so they were like, no, no more questions, no more questions. Meanwhile, reporters are still shouting questions, and then the mayor closes it out by saying something completely ridiculous, like, thirty seconds after they shut down the questions, she says, that's why we came out here to answer all your questions. But you didn't answer all their questions. They're literally still screaming them at you. Alrighty, So there was a chunk here that I have not been able to view because I was on the road and I couldn't get the YouTube live stream. And no, I'm not going to you know, text and drive and try to find the video feed while I'm driving. So there's a portion I missed. So this is going to be new information for me as well as you. So here is I have a suspicion from what I have already heard that there are going to be some nuggets in here that I shall be able to mine. Here's Mayor Violiles. Thank you for being here today. You're welcome. I want to recognize the members of the Charlotte City Council as well as the members of the MTC that are here today, So raise your hand if you're I. Don't care about that, let's skip ahead. You know that I I have been in this situation before and having to have this loss by my arena. It's been a terrible time for all of us. We know the violence was on our like rail, but we also know that our city is mourning this loss and will likely never forget it. No one in Charlotte should feel unsafe about getting to work, school, or home to their family. Safety has been and will continue to be our top priority. And we have been working with the White House, our federal offices and assistants and all of this that we want to do. We definitely want to be sure that we are taking the right steps forward. All Right. Sometimes I get the sense, because I've been in this industry for a while now, sometimes I can get a feel for whether or not somebody has read the speech before they are delivering it, and maybe they like kind of skimmed it a little bit. Like famously, Pat McCrory would never like they would give him a speech and like he usually wouldn't even read it. And I've talked to Pat McCory, the former mayor, former governor, and so like he would have people write speeches for him and he would be like, yeah, this isn't very good, and he would toss it, he would wing it, or he would write his own speeches. And if you write your own speech, you're going to remember it better because it's yours. It's written in your voice. And so far right out of the gate here, I'm wondering if somebody else wrote this for her, because she's she's mispronouncing just normal words, And yeah, I'm not really clear as to why that's occurring. We've expanded the jurisdiction of our transit security provider, Professional Police Services PSS, known to most of us, so that they can patrol more of our transit facilities and adjacent areas. Oh, thank goodness, Oh. The Charlotte Transit Center, rail trail, among others are all now included. KATZ has been able to add additional patrol units, including bike teams and urban terrain vehicles. These are not things that we're promised. These are the things that we are doing. These steps are in motion. Right. This was from Charlotte City Council meeting what week ago, two weeks ago, where they expanded the contract to do this. Then it was unanimous vote. And again she is reading this right off of a piece of paper in front of her. Our city departments, CATS leadership, and federal and state partners are sitting at the same table, sharing information and coordinating and collaborating. Each step of the way. Safety is taking care if all of us work together. And I want to be clear that I hear often from. Our neighbors, our residents, the people that live in this great city who just want to feel safe. Turn that page. I live in the city. I've lived in this city since I was in college, and I understand what it means to be safe. I take this personally. I want my grandchildren to grow up and be a part of this city, and that means that we have to change and make things possible for them and the next generation and the next generation after that. We owe that not just to those of us that are here today, but wed us, to IRENA's family, and to every person that ever thought about we should ride the bus or the train for whatever reason. I'm committed to this work and we won't stop until our system is as safe as it can possibly be. Part of making sure the system is safe is making sure that everyone who uses the system needs to pay their fair share. Everyone in this region. Is being asked to support the transit system with the one Sense Mobility referendum on November fourth. If our community invest in our transit system, then our writers must pay fares. The MTC members have spoken at length regarding the need to increase fair enforcement and reduce fair invasion. Wait what fair invasion? Oh? Evasion, I think is what she probably meant to say, or maybe the AI generated speech said invasion, or maybe her staffer who wrote it said invasion, or maybe she just messed it up fair evasion not invasion. 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 in Minhill, North Carolina. 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I don't know if that's obvious, but it does raise some doubts. This speech, this is from anonymous the speech wow, just wow, nine eight zero number says she is so very bad at this good grief, and Brian says cats will not be safe until the streets are safe. All right, let's pick it back up here. This is Mayor vy Lyles, mayor of Charlotte, at this press event talking about the new bikes and utility vehicles that the private contractor will now be able to ride around the rail trail and the go between the different stations and stuff. And by the way, the media is not there for the vehicles. Okay, they're not there. This is okay. If this was if the murder of Arenas Zoritzka had not happened, and this was just an event like, hey, we've got some new vehicles we're rolling out, this would be something that news departments would send a single photographer to. They would what they call spray the event, they would just go and just shoot a bunch of video, get some shots. They'll, you know, one of the guys will get on the bike and ride around and they'll shoot some of that video. It's just b roll for a voiceover during the newscast. Okay, that is the if they even send anybody at all to cover the event. Okay, So the only reason that everybody is there at this press availability is because of the murder and the safety issues and the crime on the buses and on the trains. And now you've got the local FOP requesting that the National Guard be brought in to help the Charlotte mcklaburg police officers because the department is understaffed. So that's why everybody is here. But she's she's talking here about fair invasion or evasion is what it is. It's not invasions what she said. I and the MTC are committed to this work. I plan to work with members of the MTC to introduce a resolution at our next meeting assuring that we are actually going to have fair evasion and working towards making sure everyone pays fair share of our transit system. Okay, oh my gosh, that's not a resolution to ensure you have fair evasion. We don't want fair evasion, we want enforcement. Who wrote this speech? This makes me feel like we're bush league, you know, I feel like we're one of the top fifteen major cities in America at this point. We need to get we need to get our act together here. Okay, it won't be easy. We'll need to make some investments. But at the same time, we have to approach this process and this plan for fair evasion. Because fair evasion is often a symptom of different challenges. We can't ignore that, so we will have to work out how to best do it. So. In the study of fair evasion that I read last week, you know who evades the fairs the most, Besides the homeless people, it's actually wealthier people. Wealthier people evade fair more because the fines if they even get caught, are worth it to them because they will they will not pay the fare for so long and they didn't they get caught. It's a one time cost. They're wealthy enough to afford the fine, and then they'll just keep evading fares. That's what the study showed from New York City's fair evasion. And you're going to hear this stat get thrown out again when I went over all the stats about how much different systems are losing with fair evasion. Right, it's usually the people who are lower income and who use mass transit the most. They are the ones who never evade fairs because they know if they get caught, they can't come back on and they need the transportation to get to where they need to go. So what are these challenges that she's talking about? Once again here it is this whole equity conversation. She's trying to shoehorn into this issue. She just can't help her self. It's no just if you're riding the train or the bus, then you pay. That's it. That's the deal. And if you don't pay, you don't get to ride. And you treat everybody equally, not equitably, but equally. And by the way, you can buy fares or tickets for like long term use, for discounted rates like this is part of their structure. So this is like to me, I cannot explain her. I just I can't explain her. 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 can check it out at check dot 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 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. And this from Robbie from the text line, who needs bikes and utility vehicles? We need more armed patrol officers on each car of the light rail that is not going to happen. That was asked. I heard part of the Q and A at the end of this thing that's not going to happen, we'll hear it. This is from Deborah. I worked uptown for almost thirty years. We used to walk to lunch, to the library, department stores, etc. Always felt safe. Recently, I took my grandson to Discovery Place in broad daylight. As soon as we walked out the door to go to the parking deck, a homeless man came up to me and hit me up for money. I felt very vulnerable with a child with me, so I gave him five dollars just to get him off my case. Uptown is not safe yet, and that's illegal. You're not allowed to go up to people and start panhandling soliciting. Verbally, you're not allowed to do that. You can fly a sign, you can have a sign, but you cannot start soliciting money from people like that. But yeah, my wife went with a friend and a little kid. They went to Discovery Place probably a month or so ago. Same experience. Our mayor just wants more money to put in her pocket. Okay, that's from Michelle. I realized that a mayor has limited capabilities and can only promise so much. But all I heard in her speech was keeping people safe. Nothing about keeping these thugs in jail. Governor did say he's going to make changes with the judges to make sure these guys stay in jail. But with as long a rap sheet as these guys have, the mayor should say something about that. All right, Well, we don't know. She's not done with her speech. She's only eight minutes in. So. Maybe she does address the revolving door of our criminal justice system. I want to say, in outreach and education and policies that meet people where they are, we believe that we can have a system that is safe. Now, I don't do this alone. You. Many of you have been with us on the ride since that we've been talking about how do we maintain having transportation initiatives for this great city. And I want to say to you that I am really proud that we've been able to dress these issues candidly and openly. And I want you to do that because I know that behind me is the co chair of the MTC, Davidson Mayor Rusty Knox. I would like to welcome him to the podium to address what the work we've been doing as MTC leaders. She kind of strikes me as sort of like a mini Kamala Harris. You know, she's given me that kind of a vibe like Kamala's sister, you know. Anyway, here's Davidson, Mayor Rusty Knox. Good morning. I'm Rusty Knox. I'm the mayor Davidson, oles serve as vice chair of the MTC. He has no speech, and I want to tell you republic transportation is safe in Mecklemburg County. I am from Davidson. I'm one of those rare people that was born and raised in Davidson. My wife is from Charlotte. We come to Charlotte often. We are on the Blue Line regularly. I take the express bus to Charlotte from meetings. I've never felt unsafe. The tragic death of Rina Zariska was something that was spontaneous and probably unpreventable. All right, So hang on a second. If you've never seen Rusty Knox, the guy stands I don't know about six foot one or so maybe or six foot bald, big gray, fluffy go tee. He's a big guy, so that might that might I don't know, be part of the reason that you've never felt unsafe. You know, you're not a ninety eight pound, twenty two year old girl alone at ten o'clock at night. Maybe just throwing that out. There, that's the sad part about it. Can we learn from that, yes, or additional measures being taken to ensure that the public feels they're in a more safe environment. Absolutely, But I just want everybody to know that the MTC is going to do everything in our power, with the resources that we're providing to both PPS and to CMPD to ensure that safety is priority one for anyone that chooses to use public transportation, but also anyone that has to to navigate the city. So just be assured that as long as we're a structured organization in MTC, we will do all that we can and that message will carry through. If the one sent sales tax passes in November and the new transit. Authority is created. Safety has to be paramont It has to be the most important thing besides just making sure that the trains run on the ten minute cycle and the buses run on a fifteen minute cycle. Those are just givens. I think with the new initiatives that you're going to see, we're going to be in a better place. But you know, I will promise you know, the one thing that Mayor Lyles alluded to was fair evasion. That's one thing that we've got to solve and I think taking those measures will be first and foremost at our next MTC meeting coming up this month. So okay, with that, I'm going to defer to City Manager Marcus Jones at this time. Again, thank you for being here, thank you for the interest, and know that you can reach out to myself and the other board members if you have any further questions. Thank you, so thank you. Mayor and Mayor. I'm Marcus Jones, city Manager of Charlotte, and I wanted to start off by just saying how important important public safety is to our city. It's what we do. The City Council has spent the better part of the last year and a half having discussions around public safety, and which is very clear is that while there are many things that we can do, there's more that has to be done. We have multiple city departments and multiple agencies that play a role in safety. But in terms of the City of Charlotte, about forty percent of our general fund budget is solely for police, says forty percent of our general fund budget supports police. When you add fire. To it, it's about sixty percent of our general fund budget. Over the past several years, we have made tremendous investments in public safety, and we would go back to even twenty nineteen. What I do is I have opportunities with our Public Safety Pay Plan Committee, which is made of a police and fire and we talk about what's important for attracting great people in public safety as well as retaining them. So since twenty nineteen, we have increased the starting salary for police by thirty four percent and the top out salary by forty one percent. What we had to do is undo a bunch of things that happened and during the Great Our recession where it took longer for police officers in firefight just talk out. So we were able to have through different policies and initiatives and police officers. Why is he talking about tops out earlier, which is very significant for CMPD, But we also did things around second and third shift where we provide it more funding. All right, why are you going over the pay plans for CMPD right now. I understand that that is a part of the public safety debate and discussion, but that's not part of this particular issue. This is specific to the Charlotte Area transit system. But if you would like to talk about public safety at a larger level, then I'm your huckleberry for that. How about you start with some I don't know observations about the court system. How about that? How about the fact that when the cops arrest somebody like the Carlos Brown Junior fourteen times and they just keep releasing him back out into the public, and he is just one example of hundreds over the years. Do you have any comments on the court system that makes it more difficult for your officers to do their jobs? And how about this. You're trying to retain officers for longer periods of time so you don't lose the investment that you made in training them up and stuff and hiring them. You know what, You know what makes a cop want to leave feeling like the work they do doesn't matter? Because, as we heard in the hearing on Monday, when Congress came to town, you got cops that are arresting people and the guys are walking out back onto the street before the police have even finished the paperwork, So I don't know. Maybe he'll address that. We'll see. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina? 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Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight, three six, seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer a Cabins of Ashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Got a bunch of messages here, tons of messages. Do people not work? So, Russ says the PSS vehicle presser reminds me of the saying all hat no cowboy. I thought it was all had no cattle, All had no cowboy anyway. City leaders seem to misunderstand the state motto and think it's inverted to seem rather than to be right, because the state motto is actually the Latin for to be rather than to seem goodwa who says Charlotte has become the latest goose that laid the golden egg and Democrats have been able to take complete control with the help of people, including many Democrats fleeing their own mess and blue states. Charlotte only survives the horrible mismanagement because so many other places are worse and provide an almost endless supply of new suckers, error residents and taxpayer while most of the native Charlotteans that helped make Charlotte so attractive have long ago fled with all Ponzi schemes. This too, will end, and end very badly if people don't wake up and vote to save Charlotte from these incompetent and often corrupt lunatics running the city. I've said this before. It's a Jordan Peterson quote that you know, an un guarded store of value will succumb to parasites. That's a truism. And the City of Charlotte and its institutions have value and if they are unguarded, they will be devoured. Mark says, Viiles has been doing her best Kamala Harris impression for as long as she's been in politics. Now her chickens have come home to roost. It's all a distraction, It's a Pete tweet, she says. The audacity of the mayor using the murder of the arena Zerutzska to push attacks in increase for the light rail. Well, and look, part of it is that the local leadership is very concerned that the magnitude of this story, the international reach of the Arena Zarutzka murder story, that that is going to jeopardize the referendum. That's what is animating a lot of these decisions. There's a bit of a panic because the vote is just what a month away, and they've got to assure everybody we're taking it seriously. We hear you, you are seen. We are going to do all of this stuff. But if you approve the one cent, we're going to make it into this different entity, this Transit Authority, which, by the way, like now we have, there are going to be elected representatives I don't believe if I'm remembering correctly, They're going to be appointees that govern and manage the transit authority. So there will be another layer of insulation between the rider and elected officials. Right now, the MTC, those are all people almost all are elected officials from the towns, from the county. They're city council members, the mayors there. So you've got elected officials that are on the MTC. So that model is going to change. Like this may be the most responsive I know, I know, but this may be the most responsive governing model between the two so just keep that in mind when you're going to vote. Does this Rusty Knox mayor feel it is safe for his wife to ride the rails alone? Yeah, because he said he feels safe. Jeff says, Charlotte Transit is spending eighteen million for security. For that price, we should be able to provide an security to keep people from riding free and getting stabbed. I don't think transit security was a priority until now that it's become a national story. I tend to agree with that. Yes, let me see here. This is the city manager, Marcus Jones. We'll see how much he's got left here. We hadit more recruit classes. He's still talking about. We're seeing police. Retention trend in the right direction, and we're seeing vacancies trend in the right direction also, but no data. But also we've taking some steps to make sure that those jobs and positions that police officers were handling, for instance, like a captain who was overseeing the nine one one center, how can we change those to civilians? And we were able to take vacant positions, change those to civilian positions so that we can have more officers patrolling the streets. You may have seen the sixteen civilian crash investes that we have again freeing up ours for police officers to patrol. The same thing with forty sworn faked musicians that we've converted into civilian positions. We will continue to work with our partners. During the past several months, we've worked with community leaders, We've worked with the business community with a focus on a comprehensive plan as relates to public safety. So question, he initially said that forty percent of the budget goes to CMPD goes for police personnel. Right, so at forty percent of the budget, does that include the civilian crash investigators? Do they count as as a CMPD line item or is that something separate? See this is why, like when I sit at these press conferences, I bristle when they tell me we're only going to take five or six questions, because when you say stuff like this, I've got tons of follow ups or follows up, follow up. Yes, 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 dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.