Charlotte Police Chief to retire with payoff (05-27-2025--Hour2)

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The ASSEMBLYNC dot com published in both places. It is a very lengthy article. It took me about half an hour to read it, but I'm kind of a slow reader and there's one glaring omission from the report, and I don't know if it was intentional or not. I'm not trying to to besmirch or to drag Michael Graff. I don't know who he is. I thought the piece was well written and did have a lot of the information in it, and I appreciate that. But there was, in my view, there was a pretty big omission, which is the ethics complaint, the ethics complaint that was filed against now former Charlotte City Councilman Tark Bookari. That ethics complaint was filed by the local chapter president of the NAACP, Corn Mac, and the reporting was from WSOCTV that she had coordinated with two of police Chief Johnny Jennings's top people, his right hand in his left hand, I call him the Chief's hands, and they had worked with Mac on the language on what she should submit for the ethics complaint against Bookari. Because Bakari had had this battle with the chief over the outer carrier ballistic vests for rank and file cops. That wasn't a dressed anywhere in here. Did he coordinate with her when she did a Freedom of Information Act request with the city to get text messages that were between tarc Bookari and Chief Jennings. How did she know the keywords to search for under the Foyer request? How did she get that? I think the reporting has been that Jennings coordinated with her directly on that that was not covered. The ethics complaint was not covered. And that's important because the ethics complaint was a precursor to the settlement, and the ethics complaint was dismissed by this city attorney, Anthony Fox, through the interim city attorney, not the former mayor Anthony Fox, but the interim city attorney, Anthony Fox, and he dismissed the complaint, but then did the settlement. And they're now saying, well, see what people didn't know. Oh, and there's all this inaccurate information out there, But this is basically a severance deal. That's what this is. Well, yeah, you know what would have probably advanced this narrative a lot more quickly. It would have been just to say, hey, Chief Jennings is retiring and we're paying him out a severance. We put together an exit package. Why wouldn't you just do that? Why wouldn't you just do that? But instead we get the secrecy. The closed session votes we can't talk about it, threatening people with criminal charges if they tell anybody about the settlement, which the terms of the settlement have to be reported. So he amends the separation agreement, that's what they're calling it, a separation agreement, and he amends it to waive the whatever is confidential, so now we can know the details of it. But you don't have to waive that. See, he says. In this interview, Jennings says he wanted to share the terms of this settlement. He wanted to share it because quote, the benefits of releasing it outweigh protecting my information on a personal level. Yeah, there isn't any personal information in it. It's an agreement. And the city says, we're not admitting to anything. We didn't do anything wrong. Chief Jennings isn't admitting to anything. You could have just done this as a severance deal, but you made it into this huge thing, probably because that's actually what it was. He says. We're all still sorry. Let me let's start this again. This is a quote. We're all sitting in a chair with a bomb in it. We just hope to get up before it goes off. That's what Jennings relayed to the reporter that a close friend in the organization often says, this is the Major Cities Chiefs Association. So the police chiefs recognize that they are in these large city chief positions and it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when you're gonna get shown the door. And he talks about it in the piece, and I think he is exactly right that he's he's got the rank and file morale of the police that he's trying to keep high, you know, keep your numbers up, be seen as a cops cop. You know, I'm one of you. I'm going to be your advocate and all of that. You're my employees, and I'm going to protect you and all of that. And then if you don't, then they get mad at you and they lose confidence in you. And then on the other side you have activists and they just savage you if like when there was a police shooting, and they go after the police, they go after the chief. And so these are these two competing sort of constituencies, if you will. And then you add in the politicians, the city council members. They are also particularly Democrats with the activist crowd. They are, you know, they are susceptible to this form of activist persuasion, shall we say, But this is the analogy. You're sitting in a chair with a bomb in it, and you're just hoping that you get up off the chair before it goes off. Jennings is now getting up. He'll retire from CMPD after thirty three years of service on January one, twenty twenty six, and the reporter says, he told me this Thursday Thursday. So this story came out on Saturday, the twenty fifth Memorial Day weekend. That date was signed as part of a widely speculated agreement with the city, which he also released to me. In a wide ranging three hour conversation, the embattled but still idealistic CMPD leader discussed the dispute over outer carrier vests that led to the severance agreement, his ups and his downs as police chief since taking the job during the summer of unrest in twenty twenty mostly peaceful, sometimes fiery. His career as well was covered, his upbringing, his family, a little fishing. Even notably, he never mentioned the name of former councilman Tark Bocari referring to him only by the title. When I asked specific questions about the year long dispute over whether patrol officers should be allowed to wear outer carrier vests as part of their uniform. We took a forty five minute break in the middle of the interview, during which he signed an amendment to a settlement agreement that granted him permission to release his personnel information. The original agreement, which he signed May eighth, after council approved it in a closed session three days earlier, included a clause that said he in the city could not disclose it. He said he wanted to share it because the benefits of releasing it outweigh protecting my information on personal level. Again, there was not personal information in there, just the terms of the severance package, and that is disclosable. So why did this Why did this gag order clause or the gag clause? Why did this thing even exist? Who wanted it in there? Don't know? Did all parties want it in there? Did somebody object? Seems like some city council members objected. Three hundred five thousand dollars is what he's going to get paid out. He says it's more like a severance package. See, but people have been, you know, misreporting on it, misstating what it is. Yeah, well that happens when nobody says what's in it? That's what happens, 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. Jerry, welcome to the program. How are you hey, I'm great, Pete. I just wanted to say I heard that he got a twenty five thousand dollars money a lot for legal fees. Yeah, what legal fees? There was no attorneys, there was no lawsuit brought, So what legal fees are they talking about? So they do not describe that in detail in the agreement or in the article, but there is a chronology in the article, and it says by August twenty twenty four, Jennings had relented and changed the vest policy. Bakari thanked Jennings for doing so publicly and privately, but Jennings didn't let it end there. Wfae's report on the text messages didn't come out until November, following a public records request, but by then, Jennings had already retained legal counsel. Okay, so he hired the lawyer before the text messages were public. He says, it wasn't about the text messages. I keep hearing that oh, you know, the chief had his feelings hurt over some text messages. I'm a former college football player. I've had my feelings hurt by coaches, but certainly not by words written down in text messages. It was more about what happened after. Everybody focused on the texts, but not the other things. What other things. The push for me to be fired, the push for the city manager to be fired, the push for the petition for people to go online and sign up for my termination or forcing the manager to fire me. That's what he retained legal council for. Okay, that's just still to me. Feat come on, I mean, let's be realistic. Twenty five thousand dollars, you know for for something like that, that's to me, that's ridiculous. I'm a retired police officer, okay, and that that to me, that's a lot of money. Yeah. Sorry, that's just a lot of money. That is a lot of it, and that just seems ridiculous to me. It's a nice whole number too him. That's a nice whole number, which is weird for legal fees, legal bills and such, because they bill you by time, you know, the lawyers do, and so right, right, and then they also say that they're going to be that each party is responsible for paying their own legal fees. So it's a so it's a twenty five thousand dollars check, but then Jennings takes the check and then he writes whatever or he reimburses himself out of that for whatever legal fees that he paid for or you know, or O's and so, okay, I seriously doubt that the legal bill is twenty five k on the button. You know, it seems like there may be a little bit of padding on that. No, I agree, I agree, Pete, and I appreciate you covering it. Yeah, that's great because I got a lot of friends that's still working there and that are very upset with this situation with Chief Jennings. Yeah. No, a lot of a lot of residents, non law enforcement are upset about it also. And I think the FOP is they're they're proceeding today right there. Online voting began yesterday and there in person voting began today for the no confidence vote in the in the chief. But now he's going to be retiring, So I mean, you know what different, right, but I mean it is you're laying down the Marker. So at least you're conveying the sentiment of you know, the FOP, So there is that there is a benefit of doing so, Jerry, I appreciate the call, buddy, thank you. Thanks for your service. Too, Yes, sir, thank you, Peter. Take care. Yeah, So this to me was an interesting part of the story, the TikTok, not the app but the chronology, the timeline. See, it's so many So much of journalism is about just keeping track of what happened and when right, just keeping a calendar, keeping a timeline of this stuff so you can see the way the story develops over time. And so. The chronology is very helpful. Again, it omits the part about the ethics complaint, and I almost wonder if there was something going on there with the legal fees that was connected to the ethics complaint. But I don't know. Did he consult an attorney on the defamation charge, like, oh, I'm going to sue for defamations, I'm going to go and get a consult with an attorney. Maybe you had to pay a twenty five thousand dollars retainer or something. I don't know. When Jennings took the job in twenty twenty. He continued a long running department rule that restricted patrol officers from wearing the outer vest carriers or ballistic vests over the uniform unless the officer had a medical exemption. The three previous police chiefs all had the same policy. They believed the vests did not align with community oriented policing philosophies, which attempt to bridge gaps between officers and the people they serve. Jennings had made customer service central to his administration, and he kept the uniform policy. He said, that's not the look that I want for our police department. But Councilman Bokari, who represented South Charlotte until April, as well as the local FOP, believed all officers should have the option to wear them, and this was not a new position for them either. Bakari had been advocating for the vests for more than two years. He often cited research that showed the vests improved officer comfort and conversations with officers who said that they wanted the vests. And so he tries to put it in the budget, he doesn't get the votes. Chief Jennings opposes it. It's an aesthetic decision, that's it. Like, oh my gosh, I'm so intimidated because this officer is wearing a vest with stuff on the outside of it. Ah, you know, like this is that was the argument. I don't buy it. By the way, I don't buy it. So then August rolls around, they're in there, they do the budget. Then August hits Bokari has now gone public with this campaign. He can't get the budget money from the city council, who rely on the chief to say no, don't do it, so they basically make the chief the public face of the no policy. Bakari raises me, honey, privately, gets a bunch of vests donated, and then the chief relents and says, okay, if anybody wants them, they can request him. And then he goes and hires a lawyer, and now he's going to go after Bakari. That's what it sounds like. 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 Ashville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. 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How many weeks has it taken them to come up with it? So I think this was drawn up, well, the package was drawn up back on May eighth, and or yeah, or well I guess he signed at May eighth because it was drawn up on May fifth or something. City council. This is what they approved. So and they call it general I'm sorry, Uh yeah, General Waiver, Release and Separation Agreement. And then they have the the amended version which says, you know, mutual confidentiality is deleted from the title such that it is now titled non disparagement. And this is pretty standard in contracts when people are leaving. It's like, don't talk any crap about me, and I won't talk any crap about you, you know. And apparently, according to Jennings in this interview, he had been looking to retire for a while and he didn't even need to take the job. This was another part of it. It's like, I mean, I understand this is part of his thinking on this stuff, and maybe he's a little salty about it, like I didn't even have to be here. Was that movie Clerk's right where he's like, this is my day off, I don't have to be here. So and maybe he just he comes across as kind of salty about this. He believed it was his duty on behalf of other current and future department leaders in the city to stand up to a public pressure campaign mounted by Bakari. See he's looking at it like the next chief that comes in, right, he's gonna he's gonna be dealing with, you know, whatever norms have been adopted under my watch. So he's like, I'm gonna push back against this because, as you know, I talked to Pat McCrory the other day about this, and he said they always had this rule of let the chief be the chief, let him do his job, don't micro manage the police chief, right, And so this is what Jennings seems to be channeling, this idea let me do my job. And I'm saying no vests back off, and then Bookari's like, well, no, I'm going to, you know, do a very public campaign. I'm going to raise the money and I'm going to basically turn cops against the boss. And then it worked, and that's what the chief was trying to stop from happening. And then after he relented and let them have the vests, that's when he then hires a lawyer, and I suspect that's when they started to try to go after Bookary with an ethics complaint. And then when that didn't work, he said, I'm gonna sue and I'm gonna quit. I guess that's what happened. He says, I want to make sure that when you hire a leader to a certain department within our city, then let them run the department. And then the reporter. This is over at the Charlotte Optimist as well as the assemblyanc dot com, and the piece is written by Michael Graff. It's in some ways, excuse me, it's in some ways a story as old as time. I don't know if it actually is, but anyway, an exemplary public servant rises in the ranks only to encounter frustration in dealing with the politics of the top job. The more public the disputes became, the more he stowed internally over how he spent thirty three years in policing only to end up in the chair with the bomb. Right, That's the analogy he gave earlier in the interview. Later, he mentioned multiple times in our conversation Jennings did that he could have made more money if he had just retired when he became eligible five years ago, or if he had left for a private sector job. So he keeps saying this, like, I didn't have to take this job, right, but you did. This is like people who run for office and then, you know, complain about all of the the problems and the impact that the job has and oh there's so much downside, all of this stuff. You know, But you asked for the gig, right, you asked for it. You didn't have to take this job you wanted to take. To take the job, he apparently was also offered the police chief job down in Greenville, South Carolina, but he took the chief job here. And he says he could have collected his pension in Charlotte and then taken that job in another city. Okay, Like that's that's not our fault, that's not the taxpayer's fault. You you made your choice. You had Arlotte or Greenville, and you chose Charlotte. You wanted to be the chief of this department. He talked about how he saw former well then Chief Rodney Monroe say that a CMPDEE officer would be charged with voluntary manslaughter in the death of Jonathan Ferrell or Farrell in September twenty thirteen. While people in the community praised Monroe and his investigators for acting swiftly, the chief lost the faith of many rank and file officers. Later, three years later, police Chief Kerk Putney he handled a different police killing differently. This was the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, and Putney kept emphasizing that Keith Scott had a gun, contrary to social media lies, it's not rumors, they were lies. Putney's blunt perspective and defense of his officers helped with police morale, but it brought significant criticism from community members who filled city hall calling for his resignation. And then, of course you have the death of Saint George Floyd in Minneapolis, and Jennings was shadowing Putney during those protests in twenty twenty, and so he saw like the way the two different chiefs handled these types of explosive situations, and he was like, I want to try to try to thread the needle. I got to try to balance this. So that's where he's identifying these pressures that are coming from his employees and then the community activists, and it sounds like a lot of those are the people that made his life. Hell, he said, I tried to have that blend. How do we regain community support, how do we keep morale? How do we keep our officers doing the job that they're here to do? Right? So, like this is the challenge that is the politics of being a big city police chief. It is a political role, and it sounds like he did not like it all right, So spring is here a time of renewal and celebrations. You've got graduations, weddings, anniversaries and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by? Are they hidden away on old VCR tapes, eight millimeter films, photos, slides? Are they preserved? Because over time, these precious memories can fade and deteriorate, losing the magic of yesterday. At Creative Video, they help you protect what matters most. Their expert team digitizes your cherished family moments and transfers them onto a USB drive, freezing them in time so they can be enjoyed for generals to come. I urge you do not wait until it's too late this spring. Celebrate your past. Visit Creative Video today and let them preserve your legacy with the love and care that it deserves. Creative Video Preserving Family Memories since nineteen ninety seven, located in mint Hill, just off four eighty five. Mail orders are accepted to get all the details that create a video dot com. I got an email here from Thomas who says, I've been kind of following this story and I guess they are really going to pay off this loser. Ha. I think they already did. Of course they are. They are the one party government. Insanity like this is why we moved out of Charlotte twelve years ago and why after eleven years of service, our son resigned from CMPD. One party rule, all their lies and Charlotte's crazy politics makes our move to South Carolina look better and better every loving day. All we can say is Charlotte and enjoy the ride. You are paying for it. So in this article at the Assembly, Johnny Jennings said that he had considered not taking the job five years ago, and that in April of last year, twenty twenty four, he was planning to announce his retirement, but he had not settled on a date, and then there was the murder of the four law enforcement officers, including a CMPD officer, in East Charlotte while they were trying to serve a warrant. So he told his wife he wanted to delay his retirement to see the city through this tragedy. He says he hopes releasing the agreement himself will help with public trust. It will, Yes, it will, which is why I said, y'all should do it. The chief could do it, City council could do it. They should have done it. Everybody should have done this. Y'all should have done this from the beginning. But the way you went about it did not inspire trust, particularly when you have council members that are at the time came out and we're talking about the way this was done and what is it for and not being made aware that an ethics complaint was filed and dismissed. May. He's still haven't address that, He says. He wants to be clear that he is retiring because it's time to retire, not because of all of this. He could have retired in twenty twenty, he says, but he stayed on. He planned to retire in twenty four and stayed on. He already has his next career lined up, and he planned to step into it earlier this year, but will stay on for seven more months to assis assist with the transition. Despite the lingering controversy and reputational damage see once again, show me the actual harm. But we don't get that we get. According to the agreement, the City of Charlotte denies any and all of the allegations ever made against them by Jennings, including but not limited to the allegations set forth in this dispute and dispute that they are in any way liable to Jennings for anything or for any reason. So they're saying none of that's true. We don't agree to any of it, and none of this. All the parties acknowledge and degree that the allocation of the funding is made for purposes of settlement and is not intended to and should not be deemed an admission of any liability for any such damages. The City of Charlotte specifically denies any liability whatsoever. Right, but we don't know what you're even denying because we didn't get any kind of a lawsuit filed. We don't have any information about why this was needed, why you came to this agreement, he says. I'm not worried about myself. Where I became enraged is the effects that it has on my wife, the effects it has on my kids. That to me is the effect that I don't know people realize, or if they realize it, then they don't care. Now this, I totally understand this part. I completely understand this. It is always harder on the family members, family members of politicians, you know, high ranking government officials and the like, media people. It's always like people say stuff about me all the time, and I don't care they. I don't know why people constantly mistake me for somebody who gives a rip about their opinion of me. I do not care. Right, you can call me the names, you can say all this stuff and It doesn't matter to me, but it matters to the people that love me. They don't like that very much. And then sometimes they get attacked. And when you are in the police chief position, right, it's tough on that family. So I totally get it, and I sympathize with him on that, and you get to a point where it's like, you know what, this isn't worth it. The juice is not worth the squeeze on this. Totally understand that. This was towards the end of our conversation. By then, it had become a parent that Jennings hasn't spent the past year in a conflict over tactical vests or transparency or interviews. He was facing down a new breed of confrontation and policymaking, a theater of online comments and optimized headlines that ran counter to his nature. He was ill suited, for better or worse, to tangle with his media savvy opponents online. And I guess he's talking about Tark Bakari and whatever army Bakari was able to marshal in order to get the tactical vest policy changed. I guess I don't know what all what messages the chief was getting from whoever was trying to do the pressure campaign. But that's that's politics, man. And. I'm at a loss to understand why. I guess this is surprising, he says. I've never treated people like that, And to publicly try to defame someone through social media, through the media, through any of that, I just think there's too much of that that goes on in our world nowadays, and it's a shame. Again. I don't know that you were defamed nobody, Like after the vest issue was settled, when you said, okay, we can let the cops have the vests that were funded through private donations. At that point, it all went away. I saw nothing ever since then in any media about any of this stuff until the text message report came out in November, and then that didn't make the chief look bad, it made Bokari look bad. So like I just I don't understand what the actual harm was. 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 thepetecalanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.