Charlotte officials worry about costs of punishing criminals (12-01-2025--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 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. All Right, so I did follow the news while I was on vacation because ABP always be prepping and I have a lot so and of course I have now way more prep than I can get to. But I want to start with the story here because today is December first, and that means today is day one of Arena's law being implemented, well part of it. The other part will be implemented next year, which is the involuntary commitment component of the law that's designed to basically tell the local jurisdictions the state is telling the local jurisdictions your priorities suck. Okay, That's basically what this is all about. And if you don't. Believe me, you will hear it in the audio that I have obtained exclusively from the public meeting that was broadcast over the YouTube. It was the Mecklinberg County Commission. And they brought up the director of the Criminal Justice Services Agency in Mecklinberg County. They brought up Chief Judge Wiggins, They brought up Sheriff Gary not my fault McFadden. They brought up the District Attorney, they brought up the public defender, they brought up the Clerk of Court, all to tell us the same thing, which is, one, we're going to need a lot more money to do the things that now we are required to do under state law, this new state law number one. Number two, we don't have the money from We're not getting any new money from the state. Also, number three, we don't know exactly how much money we're going to need or how well of this is going. To impact us yet. Okay, so we need more money. It's not coming from the state, and we don't know how much we're going to be asking for. We don't know what the impact is going to be, but we do expect there to be an increase in the number of people being processed through the jail and the number of people that are going to be housed at the jail, or as our sheriff calls them, residents of the jail. And by the way, he said, it's not his fault. So this from the Charlotte Observer from last week, the way they wrote it up, Mary Ramsey, the Reporter. A new state law named for the Ukrainian refugee fatally stabbed on Charlotte's light rail will increase staffing and funding needs for Mecklenberg County's criminal justice system, official say, but exactly how much remains unclear. County commissioners heard an update from Sheriff Gary not my fault McFadden, Chief District Judge Roy Wiggins, and Criminal Justice Services Director Sonya Harper on the local impacts of Arena's law. Many provisions in the new law were named after that was named after twenty three year old Arena Zarutzka. Take effect today on Monday today. So I did what you I'm sure don't want to, which is I watched the hour long meeting, which, by the way, this is now a pattern. I've identified this before with the Charlotte city officials. They have begun doing this. This never used to happen. I shouldn't say never. This would rarely occur When I was a reporter for WBT News. This would have been from like two thousand through two thousand and eight. And the Charlotte City officials I noticed they are doing this now. They are holding these press conferences. They don't take questions from the media, but they will allow media representatives. They'll allow reporters to after the press conference is over, they'll let a reporter go and pull one of the participants in the press conference. They'll pull them off to the side and you can do a one on one. Which this is a TV construct, by the way, like that whole thing. It's just it's a TV construct because TV people in like the management and the assignment editor desks and the producer and all of that, they don't like the look of a person standing at a podium taking questions and reading statements. They don't like the visual. They prefer a more you know, close in shot, close up of the guy's face or the gal's face that you're interviewing, and you know, the MIC flag and only the mic flag of the TV station in their face and then answering a question. It's a complete construct. Okay, you're going to get better answers when the media acts as a pack. That was always the case, and so that's why they don't do it anymore. Right, they are the local city officials. By doing their press conferences this way, they are controlling the way the media is able to behave in getting answers out of these elected officials. Now, whether they know that or not, I'm not sure. My bet would be of course they do so. At this County commission meeting, same sort of artificial construct. They set the meeting and they set it for one hour, and they say, well, we got somebody else that needs the room, and we got to go to do this other thing, and so we only have one hour. And by limiting the meeting to one hour, with presentations from Judge Wiggins, Sheriff McFadden, and the Director of the Criminal Justice Services, Sonya Harper, they each gave their presentation, each one ran about ten minutes. And then all the county. Commissioners, there are nine of them, they basically get one or two questions and they put all of the county commissioners on a clock. And that's because of Vilmalik. Okay, all right, let's just be honest about that. That's because of Commissioner vill Malik, who would just ask questions for six hours if you gave her the opportunity. They've had to deal with this when she was on school board. They've had to deal with it when she's on county commission. She just doesn't stop with the questions, and she always asks them. I guess for clarity for the people that are out there. Not that she doesn't know what she's asking about, it's just that she thinks other people may not know, so she's going to ask a really stupid obvious question. So anyway, they got all the county commissioners on a clock. I didn't think it was like. A two minute' clock, and that means you only get like one or two minutes or sorry, one or two questions. So it wasn't it wasn't a deep dive. You don't get a deep dive here. Now, maybe they're doing the deep dives off camera outside of a public meeting, and they're figuring this stuff out in their own way. Maybe I just note the way you structure these types of events, you induce certain outcomes. So let me start with Sonya Harper, and she is again the director of me Umber County Criminal Justice Services, and she says that the biggest impacts will be seen in the pre trial process. Okay, So that includes from the moment you are brought into the processing center for arrest and then your first appearance in front of a judicial official. It identifies that an arresting law enforcement, a pre trial services program, or a district attorney must provide a criminal history for judicial offendant defendant. I will say for us at CJS, the work that we conduct already in this space is currently we conduct public safety assessments as well as run criminal records for each person who is booked into the Mecklenberg County Jail. So we fully intend to continue providing those records in the public safety assessments again for those booked into the jail. But this does expand and again requires that record to be run for each each person who is arrested and presented at at an arrest processing center. It also includes here when that record is produced, it does require that a judicial official consider the full criminal history, not just the convictions when they're setting conditions of pre trial release. Interesting. 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 art. Stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. 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Why I would submit it's because they have been misprioritizing public safety for a very very long time funding all these other things that now they are complaining they're not going to be able to fund because they put them as a higher priority. We'll get to that though. So according to the the director of the County Criminal Justice Services, Sonya Harper, she says, like they're already doing, you know, the complete record as part of their safety assessments for the people coming through the jail and all of that, but not all of them because they've been operating what they called the risk model versus a charging model. So a lot of people would never make their first appearances. They would they would just be released unsecured, and so they'd spend very little time in the jail. And so while the CJS would compile these reports or these records rather, they say, there's not going to be a big difference for them. But here's the key. Judges will now have to consider all arrests in a defendant's history, not just the convictions. Okay, so can you. See here how plea deals that drop a bunch of charges that how this has helped to create the turnstyle, the catch and release in our judicial system, right, because you're not ever seeing as the judge, you're not seeing their record. The CJS is. It's not giving you all of the arrests going back a decade, going back fifteen years, going back twenty years. All they're doing is giving you the convictions. And if you get popped for five or six charges, initially from the from the police, right they arrest you, They're like, we got you on five or six items here they bring you in, but then you eventually go through the court process and the DA drops four of the five charges. Well, now you just have one conviction for one thing, and that's an easier record to compile, and the judge just sees that they just see, oh, one conviction from six year years ago. What they don't see is that you've been arrested two dozen times since that conviction, but you've walked on all of those charges. In the interim, Sonya Harper then goes on to say here that the new law eliminates the written promise to appear. There had been quite a bit of language out in the media talking about you cashless bail North Carolina. We've never really had cashless bail in our state, but written promised to appear is also in a lot of states referred to being released on your own recognitances, And so under this effective on December first, that will no longer be an option here in North Carolina. The other changes here is it does not permit for the imposition of unsecured bonds or custody releases for any defendant charge with the violent offense. So when you hear people use the term cashless bail, she's saying that we don't really have that. What we have had is the written promise to appear, which is basically the same thing. Basically like I promise I will show up in court for my first appearance. And that's what the magistrates have been doing. They've been you know, they get the person in front of them and they're like, do I need to hold this person? They're not charged with a serious offense or a violent defense, and all I have to do as a magistrate is to make sure that they show up for their first appearance. If they are not a threat to the public, if they don't pose some sort of danger, if they're not a flight risk, that's it. Well, they look at a schedule of charges, and if the schedule of charges has the charge that you know, you know, I'm in front of a magistrate and I'm charged with stalking. They look at the list and they say stalking. You're not a danger to the public because that's on the list, which by the way, it now is on the list. That was part of the law change also as well as arson. So now those things go off the list and now they have to hold me, whereas before I could walk. Also, anybody who has been convicted of three or more offensive in the previous ten years is not eligible for the unsecured bond. And so this is a difference between the secured bond and unsecured bond. Secured bond, does I understand it means you got to pay the you gotta pay the whole thing, right, and then an unsecured bond is where you pay a portion of it or something like this gets into the whole the bail system and everything like that. And one of the bail bondsmen spoke at the congressional hearing in Charlotte and he was talking about how, you know, the unsecured bond is is a huge problem because there's nobody to go after. There's nobody to hold that defendant accountable because usually some family member or the person themselves, The defendant themselves have to put up the ten percent towards the bond right in order to bail out, and that keeps them connected to the local jurisdiction because they're family or they themselves have to Then they would have to be on the hook for the rest of the ninety percent if the person were to skip down. So no more unsecured bonds. If you've got three or more convictions over the last ten years, that's essentially like a three strikes rule, right, three convictions serious crimes, ten years, you don't get you don't get an unsecured bond. You got to pay it all. You got to go secure 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 combined 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. Already, from the Mecklinberg County Commission meeting last week, the Director of Mecklenburg County Criminal Justice Services, Sonya Harper, told the commissioners what the new law Arena's Law, what it would do, and some of the impact it's going to have on the judicial system here in Mecklinburg County. One of the things is that if any judicial official, so a magistrate or a judge, anybody releases a defendant. They now have to provide a written finding of facts to explain their decision. Okay, And that's an inversion, that is a flip. If you were holding them, you had to have the findings effect. Now it's turned over. Now if you're going to release, you have to explain why you are releasing people that are now categorized under Arena's law. And in those cases, a secure bond or house arrest are the only options available to the judge. Secured bond or house arrest. She expects that this is going to slow down the process for everybody involved at all stages. You know, with the violent offenses and again those requirements with certain offenses for folks to bypass initial appearance and be required to be booked into the jail. We are in fact of expecting increased volume at the arrest processing center or at AP. Attached to this obviously is going to increase workloads in a few different spaces they are at arrest processing. We would expect increases in the magistrate workload. There are also some requirements with criminal record checks and things that will also come into effect with magistrates, which again are just additional steps within the process. Also kind of tied to that, we are expecting longer delays at the arrest processing center for law enforcement officers. So again, just with that increased volume, it's going to take our officers longer to have cases processed, arrest process there at AP that. Arrest processing center AP. So she says that her agency, the Criminal Justice Services, they ran more than twelve thousand safety assessments last year, okay, as part of these cases going to the judges. Twelve thousand safety assessments. But get this in another part later on, about half hour later in the presentation, she said, there were twenty two thousand bookings at the jail, so you have almost twice as many bookings at the jail. Then you have the safety assessments being run. Twelve thousand safety assessments twenty two thousand bookings, so a delta there of about ten thousand. She expects the number of these assessments to increase significantly, but they don't know how large it will be. They also expect an increase in the jail capacity, an increase in the dockets for first appearances, as well as an increase in the need for ankle monitoring because if you go through you and you're a judge or a magistrate and you want to you want to release somebody, you have to explain why, and then your only options are secured bond or house arrest. And so they anticipate a lot of the judges and magistrates are going to send the people back home on house arrest, especially with Gary McFadden crying about not having enough room in the jail, which, oh, by the way, I might want to point this out, perhaps maybe we should have built a new jail by now. We hear all of these reports about how many people are moving to Charlotte every single day, the explosive growth that we have seen in Mecklemburg County for the past forty years. And the last time that a new jail was built here was when ninety seven, and then the tower was added in two thousand and two. So we've gone twenty years without a new jail being built. Have there been more people coming to Charlotte Mecklelberg in the last twenty years, of course, but there's been no capacity added. Why not, Well, so this way you can release more defendants because we don't have the bedspace. See, so they expect an increase in the jail capacity they expected an increase in the ankle monitoring, which is a Charlotte Mecklenberg Police program, that's a CMPD program, and CMPD has said that, like they're basically almost maxed out on ankle monitoring, so we're going to have to probably look at spending more money to buy more ankles and more monitoring or ankle monitors. We're not buying ankles, we're just buying the monitors for the ankles. They expect an increase in pre trial supervision in certain cases as well. But the involuntary commitment procedures that were originally part of the bill of part of this law that we was supposed to take effect today, those have been pushed off one so those will go into effect December one, six, which she says will give them time to at least prepare. For it, which is which is a good thing, because this piece here is also going to be is also going to take some time and some work for us to build out to be able to support it. So with THEVC commitment IVC processes or in voluntary commitment proceedings under this section of HB three oh seven, it does create a new pre trial release procedure that requires a judicial official to initiate an IVC automatically for any person again who's charged with a violent offense and have been subject to an IBC within the previous three years. Okay, So this is going to create a new procedural step because it's going to require a search of a record to determine if a defendant has had an involuntary commitment order in the previous three years. Also, an IVC proceeding is to be initiated if a judicial official believes that a defendant is a danger to himself or others. Mechlenberg has four examiners who would be required to conduct these assessments for the involuntary commitment orders the ivcs. The arresting officers will then have to transport the IVC defendants, and so that's going to create an additional burden on the officers. So judges will no longer have discretion on whether to allow release for violent offenses. There is now a presumption for violent felonies that there are no conditions of release that can ensure the safety of the public. That is a key change. Okay, the presumption if you are brought in as a defendant, you are charged with this list of these certain serious violent crimes. There is the presumption now is that there isn't any condition for your release. It's presumed that you are a danger of you being charged with the violent felonies. Now this is what they call rebuttable by the defense. So the public defender or defense attorney can say, no, no, no, they're not a danger. But there's some timing issue there that's going to make that difficult. The public defender says, for the violent felonies, the written findings by the judge used to be for a secured bond, but now it's flipped. As I mentioned, judges have to provide written findings for unsecured bonds. The incentive was to do unsecured bonds to reduce workload. That's me saying that 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 or text eight two eight, three, six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. So I would submit that the way that we used to do before today, the way that in the system that judges would have to provide written findings for secured bond. If they were going to issue secured bond, they would have to issue their a written set of findings as to why that that was an incentive for them to do unsecured bonds because it meant they didn't have to write up anything. I'm not accusing any specific judges of anything here. I'm just saying the natural incentive would be that if you can find a reason to let somebody walk, that means you don't have to write up all of the findings. You don't have to do all of that case management work. Right, the criminal justice services people, they don't have to come up with all of the same stuff. So it's just an easier thing to do, especially when you're dealing with and you know, an overloaded judicial system, right, you got so many people getting arrested and you don't have time to hear every case and all of this, and this is this. Look, I'm not denying what these officials are saying, that what they're saying isn't true. I'm not saying that it is true. This is going to create a lot more work for a lot more people. It's going to slow down the process, it's going to lead to more people being in the jail. I have no doubt about that. And I'm going to get into the jail component here in the next hour, and we're going to feature heavily Sheriff Gary not my fault, McFadden, okay, as well as the county commissioners. But I would submit that the incentive was to do unsecured bonds in order to help speed the process and relieve the workload. Now that has been flipped because of this new state law. Let me jump over to the phones and get Jeff on. Hello, Jeff, welcome to the show. Happy that's going to make a quick comment. It just seems like they've got a jail spell shortage apparently have had for a while. And yet over the last ten years, our council has found one hundreds or tens of million, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to redo and then re redo the Panther Stadium and the basketball arena. You know what, where are priorities as a city? Well, well, you know the answer, you know the answer to your question. Yeah, right, Unfore it'sunly right. Well, it's like Joe Biden's dad told him, right, Joey, Joey budget, I'll show you your priorities. Right, that's this has been their priority. Their priority is not criminal justice and public safety because they have had the opportunity to do these things and they have chosen not. To do them. So, yeah, those are their priorities. It's a great point. We're going to get into that in the next hour two. Because the numbers don't lie, Jeff, I do appreciate the call. The numbers do not lie. Here. This is from the Charlotte Observer story. Let me see if I want to jump Okay, yeah, so, and this is sort of a preview as to what's coming. Multiple county commissioners describe the legislation as a quote unfunded mandate and predicted they'll need to allocate more local money in next year's budget without additional state financial support. Laura Meyer said, our priorities are going to be cut into because of this. Correct, you are correct. Spoiler here for folks who don't know. Cities counties are administrative units of the state. Okay. The state is the fountain of authority from which all of the authorities in the cities and the counties flow. That's why Mecklimberg County has to go up to Raleigh and ask for a referendum for a sales tax and cree for transit go I'm sorry roads, sorry roads, but also really mainly transit. But anyway, they're not allowed to just do that on their own, sort of a mother may I state. Now, not all states have the same sort of structure, but North Carolina does, okay. And so when you raise your property tax rates and you're spending all this money on all of these things that you know, as Jeff mentioned, these tourism related projects are parks and rec health and human services, education, right, you're funding all of these different things, and you're not funding public safety. You're not funding new construction of jails. Because your incentive as a Democrat politician is not to anger a base that is against the quote coarceral state. Right. Your base believes that police departments are the are the remnants of slave patrols, that they're inherently racist, systemically biased, and discriminatory. You want to defund them. This is what the base is telling you, and so your incentive is to not fund those things at the higher priority level. And what the state is telling you now with a quote unfunded mandate, is that no, no, no, the state's priority is this you need to be funding this now? Oh my gosh, though, We're gonna have to We're gonna have to cut some of the various programs that we think are a higher priority. And yes, that is true, that is correct. You're going to need to cut things that you think are more important, but the state believes are not as important. The director of the Criminal Justice Services, Sonya Harper. She said, Mecklimberg County has for twenty years operated a risk based system where a person's a defendant's release was determined by the threat to the community and the likelihood that the defendant will return to court. This law, Arena's Law, changes this now to a charge based system. And what does that mean. It means the Mecklenburg model has failed. The Democrats model here in Charlotte has failed. That's what the state is telling Mecklenburg County because that's what the people have been telling the state lawmakers. This model sucks, it has failed, Please fix it. And the state said, okay, 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 thepetekallnershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone. Hmm