Charlotte pays its police chief in what sure looks like a shake down (05-07-2025--Hour2)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 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 thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] All righty, so things are moving kind of quickly with regard to the shakedown of the Charlotte City taxpayers by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police chief. It appears that he has gotten his payoff, so good for him, I guess.

[00:00:49] I've seen various numbers being reported. I think WBT News has gotten the number at $300,000. Basically, it's like a one-year salary plus benefits or something, vacation time. So, I mean, that's a nice gig if you can get it.

[00:01:10] But, um, city councilman Malcolm Graham this morning announced that he was going to do a press conference at 1030. And then that got postponed about, um, well, obviously before 1030. He posted, it was postponed, um, until further notice or indefinitely or something. So, now that wasn't happening.

[00:01:34] And then, the mayor announced that she would be doing a press conference at 3 p.m. Conveniently after my show. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. I'm actually really sure it's probably just a coincidence. But, still. Didn't do it during the show. I would have carried it live. I assume that's what this is about. I assume that Malcolm Graham was going to come out and talk about this.

[00:02:00] I assume the mayor is going to come out and talk about this. Because if you have some sort of a press availability scheduled for today that you just scheduled for today, the day after all of this stuff blew up, you know you're going to get asked questions about it. So, reporting from Joe Bruno at WSOC-TV, the Charlotte City Council is settling with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings.

[00:02:30] Channel 9 first broke the news of a possible settlement last week. Jennings was considering legal action against the city of Charlotte after Councilman Tark Bokhari, former Councilman Tark Bokhari's efforts to land outer carrier vests for officers. I'm just going to refer to these things as vests, okay? Anyway, he wanted these vests. The law enforcement officers, they wanted these vests. They go on the outside of the uniform.

[00:02:58] It's easier to put stuff and carry stuff in the vest so you can quickly get at it, which makes sense if you have a vest and it's underneath your shirt. You can't put anything in it, you know? You can't access anything in that vest. But the exterior vests allow you to put all sorts of your gear in there and then you can quickly access it.

[00:03:19] And also, there was discussion that these things are more protective of the officers when facing higher caliber rounds and whatever. So, a spokesperson for Jennings said he is not commenting since it is an open personnel matter. Terms of the settlement have not been disclosed. Well, okay. Is it an open personnel matter?

[00:03:45] Because it seems like when they pay you your check, I feel like then it's not an open personnel matter any longer. I said this yesterday. Some of these officials better start talking. And maybe that's what the mayor is going to do today. Maybe that's the purpose. Shed some light on what all this is about because the way it looks is like a shakedown.

[00:04:13] That's the way this looks. Channel 9's government reporter, Joe Bruno, spoke to three sources about the closed session that was held Monday evening. Okay? They have their regular city council meeting. They did a closed session. And people thought that they were going to be bringing back this issue for another vote because it did not pass on April 28th.

[00:04:42] However, it turns out it actually did pass on April 28th. See, and I would have known this if somebody had said, if I had known that there was somebody, that there was a council member present in that meeting that left. So, one of the rules in local government is that if you show up at the city council meeting

[00:05:04] and you then leave before the end of the meeting, your vote counts as a yes on every single agenda item vote. And you can think that's stupid or you can like the idea, whatever, but those are the rules. You leave for an unexcused absence, basically. So, if you don't ever show up, your vote doesn't count. But if you show up and then leave, your vote counts as a yes.

[00:05:34] And I know this because I saw it occur on multiple occasions 20 years ago. I don't remember what the vote was on, but it was a contentious vote. And I believe it was Patrick Cannon who went on to later become mayor and then get arrested for bribery. But he was not attending the meeting.

[00:05:59] And when the Democrats realized they did not have enough votes, they had him, like, he shows up, he races in, gets counted on the roll call, and then immediately leaves just so his vote would count as a yes. Because he couldn't stay for the meeting. He had something else to do, somewhere else to be. But he worked into his schedule just to zoom in. Not zoom in. We didn't do teleconferencing back then.

[00:06:25] But to arrive at the meeting, say, present, I'm here, and then take off. And his vote counts as a yes for the item down the agenda that the Democrats knew they did not have enough votes to pass. Because the Republicans were opposed to them. This was back in the day when Republicans actually had a majority or a slight minority on the city council.

[00:06:51] There was another incident also involving Patrick Cannon where he passed out at the dais during a city council vote on a very contentious issue. I believe this one was the SBE program, Small Business Enterprise Program. It was, you know, we're going to look for certain racial and gender quotas and that sort of thing and award them contracts and whatever. And so there was a highly contentious vote about how to rework the program because there was lawsuits and they had to redo it.

[00:07:20] And he was getting jammed up between different constituencies. He didn't want to have to decide. And so he passed out. No, I'm not. Okay. He passed out coincidentally right before the vote. And then they had to cart him out there. He amazingly enough, he recovered. Like he passed out, landed on the floor and was unresponsive.

[00:07:46] And Pat McQuarrie leaned over and was like, do I give him do I give him CPR mouth to mouth? And that's when Patrick Cannon woke up. Now, I don't know if he woke up because he didn't want to kiss McQuarrie, but I suspect if you were going to fake it, like that's really committing to the act. You know, if you're going to lay there and let the mayor give you mouth to mouth, I'm thinking like that's a bit too much to ask just to avoid a single vote.

[00:08:15] But his vote counted as a yes. And the thing passed. Right. So I know that this rule exists. I did not know who was in the closed session on April 28th. So what happens is they do their regular meeting and then they adjourn to go into a closed session. And this is an ongoing battle between media and local government bodies where they believe they can just adjourn right out of the closed session.

[00:08:40] And the late Mark Pellin and I, we would always argue with Mac McCarley, the city attorney, with the mayor, we would always be pressing our case that you're not allowed to be leaving the closed session. Because they would go back in there, they would do something and then they would just leave. And you would not be able to ask them anything about what happened in the closed session or what happened in the meeting because they immediately go into the closed session. You have to come back out and report if there were any votes taken.

[00:09:09] And if there were no votes taken, you have to come back out and adjourn the meeting in public. And they were refusing to do that. So on April 28th, they adjourned back into closed session, as I understand it. But somebody then left that meeting. They did not stick around for the entirety of the closed session. And that means their vote is a yes.

[00:09:38] But for some reason, nobody realized that that was the rule. So that's why we got the initial report that they did not have enough votes to pass it back on April 28th, when in fact, they did and it did pass. So Jennings got his payout from that April 28th meeting, not the one Monday night. 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?

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[00:10:55] 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 WSOC TV reporting that Channel 9 government reporter Joe Bruno spoke to three sources about Monday's closed session. This is the Monday City Council closed session where people thought they were going to try to take a re-vote because the previous vote failed to pay out Johnny Jennings because he got his feelings hurt.

[00:11:28] I'm not trying to be a jerk about any of this. I thought Chief Jennings was perfectly acceptable. I had never had any issues with the guy. I thought he was doing a good job. But this is so beyond anything I have ever heard of that you go to the city council and demand some money to wipe your tears away. What are you doing?

[00:11:55] And again, what reputational damage have you suffered? Somebody better tell me that soon. Seriously. I got nothing. I mean, like, what am I going to do about it? I'm just going to be mad about it, which I'm sure, you know, that's great for building public trust. What was the reputational damage? This is why you wait for an actual complaint to be written, to be filed.

[00:12:23] So this way you know what the actual charges are, what the accusations are, what the harms and damages were. Otherwise, it's just this vague, yeah, reputational damage. Dude, I get that every day on Twitter. Where do I get my payout? Well, Twitter does pay out now. I don't get anything, though. But what was the Monday closed session about then? Well, get this.

[00:12:53] Three sources told Joe Bruno at Channel 9 that the city attorney, Anthony Fox, not, I don't think it's the old, it's not Anthony Fox from, like, former Mayor Anthony Fox. Different Anthony Fox. They say city attorney Anthony Fox spent most of the meeting putting the fear of God into council members and warning them not to leak. And then they promptly leaked that to Joe Bruno.

[00:13:28] Yeah. Yeah. This is the state of the current city council. What did not come up was Channel 9's new report showing Fox had dismissed an ethics complaint filed against Tark Bokari, former councilman, and that two of the chief's top aides advised the NAACP president, Corinne Mack, on what to put into the complaint. Guys, connect the dots here. Right?

[00:13:57] Connect the dots. Chief and Bokari are beefing over the vests. Bokari is making this a very public campaign. And Chief doesn't want to do the vests. Tark pulls it, Bokari pulls it out of the budget, probably because there weren't enough votes to leave it in.

[00:14:18] Tark pulls it out of the budget, raises the money on his own privately, gets the vests, and forces Jennings' hand. At which point Jennings says, fine, if anybody wants the vest, then they could, you know, we'll let them use them, but they have to ask for it.

[00:14:35] And then Bokari takes the job up in D.C. for the Trump administration, and then you get Jennings, according to WBT News, Jennings has Corinne Mack from the NAACP file an ethics complaint against Bokari, but she doesn't really know what to put in it.

[00:14:54] So she reaches out to a major and the comms director over at CMPD, who then give her the language that she puts into the complaint. Oh, and then they also targeted the head of the FOP, because he crossed Jennings on the vest issue. And they transferred him. There's a complaint about that too. This is a ball of poop, city council.

[00:15:23] I don't know what you think you're doing. I don't know what you're letting your chief do over there, but you paying him 300K for this is outrageous. Outrageous. He didn't even file a lawsuit. He just said he was. He just said he was thinking about it. He was considering it. And that was enough for you guys to go wobbly and cave in. It's extortive. Here's a great idea.

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[00:17:07] As somebody who was born and raised in the Charlotte region and grew up with good governance and good law enforcement leadership, it's very sad to see Charlotte slowly going the way not only of Atlanta but places like Baltimore, D.C., Detroit, and Memphis. I hear it's only good. Is Memphis that bad? I didn't know that. I fear it is only going to get worse as so many that have moved here to escape cities like this continue to vote for exactly the same kind of politicians

[00:17:32] who install and or tolerate low-quality people in key positions like police chief. And then there is the sheriff. Yeah. That's the thing. I didn't find Jennings to be—I found him to be qualified. I found him to be competent. I didn't think—I would never have guessed he would do something like this. All right, 704-570-1110. Let's talk with Rodney. Hello, Rodney. Welcome to the program.

[00:18:03] Hey, Pete. Thank you. Sure. Isn't it kind of a requirement when you sue your employer that you step down? That's most cases. It's a conflict of interest, correct? No. No, you can sue your employer without getting fired or without resigning, I should say. Well, there's another thing. I mean, you could see which way this money is going to be distributed. Maybe somebody was fired up. And I guess the biggest thing about this is it's probably going to strike some nerves.

[00:18:33] Maybe the city is afraid he's going to leave his position and lose control of their power. And maybe a white guy gets to be chief. Think about it. I'm just saying. Okay, so I can think about it, Rodney. I can think about that for about 10 seconds and tell you that that's not the reason because the city council appoints—they hire the chief. Exactly. Exactly. But I just kind of thought—I just wanted to know. Thank you. The Charlotte—okay. Yeah. Okay. So the Charlotte City Council, if you want to play the race card here, Charlotte City

[00:19:03] Council is predominantly almost entirely black council members. So, like, I don't know why they would be afraid that they would, quote, lose power and get a white chief because they would hire the chief. And if you are playing the race card to say that they're only going to hire a black police chief, then it stands to reason that—what is it? Nine of the 11 council members are African American. They would have complete control over the hiring process.

[00:19:30] So I don't—I find it hard to believe that that's the motivating factor, particularly when one of said council members, Victoria Watlington, alleged corruption within city government in an email to supporters last night. See, I advise—let me just urge people.

[00:19:59] Do not look at everything through the racial prism because it blinds you to other things that are more important. In this case, politics and power. Okay? There is jockeying going on. There's corruption, right, that doesn't know any racial component. It's just corruption. That's all. Right?

[00:20:27] And it doesn't matter what the race of the people are. Now, sometimes there are elements of race that factor into things. Right? This does not appear to be one of those cases. Charlotte City Council member Victoria Watlington sent out an email—an email from her campaign account—that says, power corrupts. She says she's extremely concerned with the level of unethical, immoral, and frankly illegal activities occurring within the city government.

[00:20:57] The email also contains a, quote, contribute to the cause link, which steers you to Act Blue donations. Right, of course. She said, I have seen enough. Over the last five and a half years, I have witnessed the brazen disregard for dissenting opinions and the rule of law. Never, however, have I seen such an egregious example as what has occurred in the last week. It is time for a change. It does not refer—she doesn't specify what she's referring to. She doesn't spell it out.

[00:21:26] But it's pretty clear. Okay? Malcolm Graham put out a tweet in response saying that her statement was not based in reality. It was political rhetoric at best. Then, as I mentioned earlier, he was going to hold a news conference today, and then he canceled it, basically. So why do I say that this is about politics and power?

[00:21:54] The very end of this piece—this is at the Charlotte Observer, last paragraph—first elected in 2019 to represent District 3, Watlington is now an at-large council member, which means she won a seat, one of the four seats that are elected citywide. So she was in a district. She then ran at-large. She won that race. And she unsuccessfully sought the mayor pro tem position. This was another one of those fights.

[00:22:25] Another fight internally among the city council members as to who would be the mayor pro tem. Because it's perceived that the mayor pro tem, even though they really don't have any responsibilities or authority, but that they are like the successor to the mayor. So they use it for, you know, media coverage. They get to run some meetings for Vi Lyles, the mayor. So it gets them experience. It gets them access to donors and stuff.

[00:22:55] And so usually in the past, the top votainer—not vote getter—votainer—we're going to make this happen, people. This word is going to happen. The top votainer would get the mayor pro tem slot. And then, years ago, Democrats stole that from, I believe, Lynn Wheeler. Because they controlled the city council. I think it was Lynn—or maybe it was—it may have been Pat Mumford.

[00:23:23] But they stole it from a Republican who was the top finisher, the votainer, in the at-large race. That's who always became mayor pro tem. But when the Democrats won the majority, they named one of their own, even though they didn't finish first in the at-large race. And then you'll recall we had the fight between Dimple Ajmera and Braxton Winston. She finished first. He did not. He threw a fit.

[00:23:50] And his colleagues rallied around him and gave him the mayor pro tem post. Because they didn't like her. Right? So you've got personality conflicts. You've got people that are positioning for their own political future. Right? So they want this post. And she was—Watlington was the votainer among the council candidates.

[00:24:16] So another example of where the person who finished first did not get named mayor pro tem. That caused hard feelings. So there is an internal power struggle. Now, what happens also when you have a council or any governing body that is comprised, as the city council is, with nine members from the Democrat Party, or if it was the Republican Party, I'd say the same thing.

[00:24:43] When you have so many people that they don't need to even pay attention to the two Republicans on the council, that stuff gets sorted out behind closed doors. And I'm not talking closed session meetings. Right? This is internal Democrat on Democrat fighting. Okay? This is them jockeying for power inside of the party structure that they all reside under.

[00:25:11] So we don't get access to this information. When you have a body that is more evenly split, they have these fights out in open. And you hear more of this information because the votes are so close. When you have nine members on council and you just need six to win approval, that means you can alienate some of the troublemakers in your own party. You don't have to deal with them. You could just cast them out. That creates hard feelings.

[00:25:40] But then if you need them at some point, now you are going to have to do something for them. But if you've got the hard feelings, then you can't get stuff done. Right? So that's part of this as well. That's the backdrop against which this is playing out. So Watlington coming out and accusing her colleagues of corruption. Right? Unethical, immoral, and illegal activities. That's what she's accusing her colleagues of. She has an ax to grind because they were the ones that prevented her from becoming mayor

[00:26:09] pro tem, even though she was the vote-tainer. Now, maybe she was also opposed to the payout of Jennings. It was a five to two vote in the closed session. So there were two people that said, no, we shouldn't pay him. Maybe she was one of them. All right. So spring is here, a time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime.

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[00:27:37] Taylor says, how many officers have their reputations and careers marred by the department and they get nothing? The chief gets his feelings hurt and he gets 300K? How does this make sense? Speaking as a former CMPD officer. Well, thank you also for your service there, Taylor. I don't know how it makes sense. This is my problem. Like, I'm trying to think through all of the different permutations to see as many angles

[00:28:06] as I can. But I don't know because they're not, nobody's saying anything. There's nothing in writing. There are no allegations. All we have is this vague reputational damage as a charge, as an accusation. And there's no proof that the chief actually suffered any reputational harm. There's no lawsuit filed. There's no complaint filed. What exactly is the allegation here?

[00:28:35] And instead you're going to go to city council and you're going to say, I'm going to sue otherwise. If you work for me, if I'm a city council member and you come in there and you're like, I'm going to sue because this guy said, you know, he, he, he argued against me over the vests and all that. I'd say, well, all right, let's see your lawsuit. Let me, let me see the accusations. And maybe he presented something. Maybe he had something in writing. Maybe he spelled it out. And maybe that was persuasive to the council. Then they damn sure better release it.

[00:29:06] You don't get to pay out a claim like this using our money without telling us what you're using it for. Why? You've got to make your case to the voters. This is from Russ. Yesterday, I thought this suit by the chief was farce. As you mentioned, how would he demonstrate harm?

[00:29:34] Today, I hear it has happened and I can't help but think most legislative bodies seem to think their primary purposes are number one, reelection. And number two, enriching themselves and their friends, regardless of constitutional or legal prohibitions. Well, along those lines, Mike says, I don't know too much about the police chief. I'm a very big fan of the police department and they have a hard job and I think they do a very good job. And I agree, Mike.

[00:30:01] In the case of this $300,000 going to the police chief, I think that's just an early retirement bonus for the chief. As far as I know, the city council likes the chief and I think they did this because they like him. Like, that's a possibility here. It could be that simple. That they like the chief. They think he's done a good job. He was complaining about evil Tark Bakari. He was mean to me and you all hate him too. And they're like, we agree. We love you, chief.

[00:30:28] Here, let's peel off some dollar bills for you. That's how we express our love. We give you other people's money. As far as I know, the city council likes the chief. He says, I expect to see the chief now retire within 12 months. It might be sooner, depending on how all of this shakes out. Just a guess on my part, but that's my prediction. I will say this. This, uh, uh, 300 or part of that $300,000 is my money.

[00:30:57] And I am not for giving that to the chief. I don't think he was harmed that much. This whole thing was just a difference of opinion. Love your show. Thanks, Mike. Um, yeah, that's the thing that's so bizarre to me is without any kind of a record of the reputational harm that he suffered. I am unaware of anything that maybe he did suffer some harm. I don't know what that is. Like who, who even remembered that big fracas from a year ago?

[00:31:27] This was not on anybody's mind. Nobody, nobody was talking about this stuff still. Now, as I said yesterday, it is possible that he suffered some sort of reputational harm among his rank and file, among his own officers. Maybe he lost some of the support of his officers, but that would be because of his position. Not because of anything Tark Bacari did.

[00:31:52] He lost that, that reputation because he opposed giving them better vests. They wanted better vests. He said, no, I don't like the way they look. And so you can't have them. That's what caused you your reputational harm. And even then, how do you, how do you quantify that? How do you figure that? How did you, how'd you come up with this figure of 300K? Or whatever it was.

[00:32:21] Because all we're getting is just, you know, anonymous source leaks on what the price was. We don't even know how much we were taken to the cleaners for. Stan, welcome to the show. Hey, Stan. Hey, Pete. How are you today, my friend? I'm good. What's going on? Well, I kind of want to put a little wag out there, kind of based on what you've been talking about. And that being, what if the chief had been offered a job by another city?

[00:32:49] He is a pretty good, he is a pretty good police chief. And so he, the city says, well, man, we can't lose Chief Jennings. He's great. But we can't just give him a big salary increase. So here's what we do. We come up with this crazy story about his reputation being damaged. And maybe it would be on his resume. Okay. So they decide, pay him off. I mean, the mayor said he's the best chief he knows. And they're keeping everything in the secret.

[00:33:19] Nothing's being released. That is... That's my theory. I'm sticking to it. Well, you don't have to dig in on it. We're just spitballing ideas, right? But that's a really good theory. That would actually line up pretty well if he comes to council, says, hey, I've been offered or I've been recruited to go apply for this big city job. It's going to pay me more money or whatever. And they're like, no, no, please don't leave. And then he's like, yeah, and I didn't like all that stuff with Bakari and everything else.

[00:33:49] And so do they construct essentially a cover story to make it a personnel matter so it can stay within closed session and they pay him out as a settlement, never having to divulge that it was for him and why. And then it just becomes a retaining bonus, basically, that they otherwise wanted to avoid coming to light. That's possible. Sure. Exactly. Okay. All right, Stan. Yeah. Let's spitball that out there, buddy. All right, man. I appreciate the call.

[00:34:16] See, and this is what we are forced to do now because they won't tell us what actually is going on. 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 thepetecalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone.