Charlotte struggles to deal with fare evasion on its transit system (09-23-2025--Hour3)

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 dpeteclendershow 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. We've been talking about the security situation on the Charlotte Area transit system known as KATS and this comes after last night's Charlotte City Council meeting. I watched it, so you didn't have to. You're welcome. They expanded the contract that currently exists with private company Professional Police Services. This is a corporate security model that KATZ has been using for years. Nobody can explain why they use this model, but this is the model, and so they're expanding it to include the entire rail trail, sidewalks surrounding the transit centers, and other areas adjacent to transit properties. PPS Professional Police Services say they're now fully staffed up. They are, They're all over the place. But as I went over the last hour, there was no explanation as to how they staff, like do they target certain hot spots? CATS doesn't have the data on crime that was asked for a month ago after the murder of twenty three year old Ukrainian refugee Arena Zarutska, So they don't have the data. And when asked, you know, do you know where the hotspots are? They said basically no, we don't have that data yet. We're still compiling it. We're trying to comply with all of these demands for information from the federal and state lawmakers and regulators. But PPS was there last night and they didn't address it either. They didn't answer this question because Edwin Peacock, the city council city council member, was asking like, how are you allocating your resources if you don't know where the crime hotspots are? And there was no answer given to that, and he didn't follow up on it. He didn't press anybody from PPS on it. And maybe we'll get some data on that at some point, I don't know. The other issue is about the fair skippers or fair evasion. I'm going to get into that in a moment. First, let me get over here and chat with Tony. Welcome to the program. Hey Tony, Hi Pete, how are you well. We've spoken a few times in the past, because you know, retired law enforcement, I've been following this whole horrendous incident. But also this is just really dependent of the amount of violence we've seen on cats between the buses and the trains. I think you've spoken on it previously, but I am just really disturbed by what I've heard from PPS and that council. You know, it's great that they fully staff, but they don't discuss any type of training that personnel have received. They want to hang on Tony. They did say last night that they go through all of the same ble T training that CMPD does. Then my next question would be to them is what happens when they do have an incident that results in either an arrest or a transport for a medical evaluation or psych evaluation. They referred then that they have to contact CMPD to go ahead and do that transport. So why have a middle man? Why not just have let CMPD handle it and let I Like I said, it's very very strange, and it's great that he says he's passionate about security. What does that do for keeping people safe on these transit trains? Yeah, no, And what you're asking for is the data that supports these decisions, and they didn't have it. And this is the concern, right And my understanding is that CMPD would be the transporting authority that they would be the ones to Now, well, they would take the people into custody and bring them to the jail, right, but PPS can According to Cagel, the interim CEO of CATS, Brett Kagel, he says that PPS does have the authority and the ability to make arrests souh, But I don't know, Like, I don't think they take them down to the jail. I think they can detain somebody, they can arrest them, but then they got to probably call in CMPD in order to bring them over to the jail to do the processing, I believe. Yeah. The issue too is, you know, there's no real simple solution to this problem because there's so many different teers through it. Sure, as I've heard you speak out previously as well, you have the whole mental health issue that is woefully under addressed, and Charlotte and just everywhere in the country, and certainly when I started my career many years ago, was one of a lot of the state run facilities started to close down and they started to put these people out in the street. But because when they were controlled settings and medicated, they were somewhat control. Yeah they were, Yeah, I mean they were under control. Control is a teller is the word that they that times get people upset about it. But yes, you know, but once they're outside of those settings, all sorts of things happen, and we see the increased level of violence that takes place here. Yeah, they go off their meds. They then have interactions with law enforcement. They then end up in jail. They end up with a whole bunch of charges against them and stuff. They victimize people, and then they end up maybe you know after after they like this guy to Carlos Brown Junior, you know, he's going to prison and like and he destroyed a life and his life is ruined, and like, that's not a human. This has not been a humane approach to these types of problems, Like this idea that oh it's inhumane to keep them in uh you know, in a in an institution under an involuntary commitment, right, But like, what's the alternative. Exactly, you leave him on the street. Yeah, that's not humane. That can hurt themselves and others. It's it's a huger problem. Yeah yeah, hey, Tony, I appreciate it, man, Yeah, yeah, you too. Take care. There was an interesting study. I mentioned this a little while ago about the fair evasion. I'm going to go into a couple studies here. But the first thing, and I detected a little bit of an accent there on Tony. I suspect I might know where he uh he hails from where he did his law enforcement. But one of the uh, well here you go. Let me start with this clip because this is Brett Kagel and he's talking about fair evasion. And I'm going to get into the stats out of New York City because Kegel brings up New York City. Because then the guy that they just hired for CATS is former New York I believe he's out of the MTA Metropolitan Transit Authority up there New York, New Jersey are and he's now in charge of our security. He just took the job like four or five months ago or something, so I believe it's a newly created position too. And so he was asked. They were all asked about like what does the what does New York City do about, you know, fair evasion and this sort of thing. Fair evasion crime. They have those things too. There was just a study. That came by the way, you hear all that. M oh yeah, you hear all of that. Those are the Democrat ladies on city council like somehow another like this is some sort of justification for what exactly, I'm unclear, Like why do you feel like this is some level of vindication, Like, oh, yeah, they got crime too, that's right, like right, but that doesn't make it okay. I don't understand why this is some sort of amen moment for you. Again, Brett Kagel, I'm gonna rewrack it. Fair evasion crime, that they have those things too. There was just a study that came out that estimated the MTA loses a billion dollars a year in fair evasion. So again, this is not something that a closed system or an authority, a governance structure. Resolves. This is something that transit agencies across the country, of all different sizes, of all different governing structures, of all different security enforcement structures. We're struggling with this. This is a nationwide thing, and Charlotte is included in that. And so I will say, as the manager said, this is about how do we provide more resources today. We have started that, and we can demonstrate that that we have continuously added resources towards security and towards state of good repair to the system since twenty twenty two. I can speak directly to that since twenty twenty two, and will continue to do that because we also acknowledge that more can and needs to be done, and we will continue that. All right, So what I like to do in this, you know, I don't know. Maybe given my roots as a reporter, I like to go and find the original source material. So I went looking for this stat that Brett Kagole mentioned this one billion dollars in losses that the New York MTA suffered through fair evasion. So in New York City last year twenty twenty four, fair evasion costs the MTA about a billion dollars, with fair evasion at about fourteen percent, So fourteen percent of people riding the subways they were evading the fairs. Subway fair evasion, fourteen percent, bus fair evasion forty four percent, forty four percent. Almost half of all the bus riders in New York are not paying the fares. Recent efforts have led to a decrease in fair evasion rates, with subway evasion down twenty six percent bus evasion down nine percent. So what do the numbers look like for twenty twenty five Through the first quarter, it was thirteen point six fair evasion on the subway. It's now down to just under ten. So they have seen some progress there. Okay, bus fair evasion first quarter last year forty eight percent. Now it's down to forty four percent. So most of your fair evasion is from buses. But it also, by the way, includes that one billion dollars. It includes not just the subway and not just the buses. It includes commuter rail, and it also includes toll roads. Yeah, and arrests. In twenty twenty two it went from six hundred and fifty five arrests to more than four thousand. This year. They're making way more arrests on their transit system. Now. The MTA is implementing modern fare gates at twenty subway stations to further reduce evasion and get this a comprehensive strategy focusing on education equity, environment and enforcement is being adopted to tackle fair evasion effectively. What in the hell does equity have to do with fair evasion? You either jumped the freaking turnstile or you did not. The color of your skin is irrelevant. Equity has nothing to do with this. All right? You hear me talk a lot about incentives, Right, Well, let's talk about incentive trips, the kind that companies offer employees to fire them up and reward their teams. If you own a business or you work somewhere that offers these incentive trips, first off, good for you, but also there is a custom app that's a game changer for these trips. It's called Incentive Tripkit. 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No, no, oh, we can't. Oh sorry, because we don't have comparable data for Charlotte. Yeah, when you run this through the AI machines to find out By the way, you know where they get all this information from the AI for the AI chat GBT and such, Google, you know where they're getting it from Wikipedia and Reddit and those things are infested with leftists anyway. The fair evasion statistics out of Charlotte show fewer than one hundred tickets were issued every year in twenty twenty in twenty twenty one, in twenty twenty two, but this number spiked to more than four thousand, seven hundred tickets in twenty twenty three when in four increased and now it's down to about two thousand. Well, those are tickets issued. That doesn't give us any understanding of how many people are actually evading the fares, right because obviously in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and twenty twenty two you were you were not enforcing it for three years, and then in twenty twenty three you obviously started enforcing it a little bit more and you wrote forty seven hundred tickets. But what does that mean, how many people were riding, how many people paid? What extrapolate that out? Well, it's the percentages. We don't know. You don't have a breakdown light rail versus buses, streetcars free anyway. Cats generate seventeen million dollars per year in fares, But the tickets issued metric is not very instructive because it's not based on total headcounts, and we don't have a percentage to actually compare to New York City. So when Brett Kagel says to the city council, well, you know New York City, you know, fair evasion costs them a billion dollars, and everybody's like m m oh, yeah, that's right, And it's like, well, right, But what's the comparative. I can't make one because you don't have the data the results of get this. Here's another one for Charlotte. The results of a fair equity study are expected by the end of the year. A fair equity study. There it is again, equity. We're dealing with equity issues in fair collection. No, it doesn't matter. None of your demographic data matters to me. What matters is did you pay or did you not? That's it. That's it. There was a piece at the City Journal by Elliot Hamilton a couple of days ago, time for a no tolerance policy on transit crime. The only way to address the problem is more aggressive enforcement of basic subway rules, including prosecuting what he calls fair beating or fair skipping. But he calls it fair beating. Subway assaults have tripled in New York. Subway assaults tripled since two thousand and nine. Violent crime recidivism doubled since twenty nineteen. Seventeen percent of violent subway offenders had prior arrests for similar crimes during the prior six years. Twenty five percent of those same violent subway offenders had prior arrests for fair beating in the past six years, so a quarter one out of four people that have violent offenses on their records over the course of years also have been jumping the turnstiles. There's a connection here. Game on Week one starts now, and every touchdown brings you closer to a payout. With Draft Kings sports book and official sports betting partner of the NFL, this isn't just football, it's first touchdown fireworks. Anytime TD rushes live bets that ride every momentum shift that DraftKings every play is your next shot to win. Will the Panthers win? Will we even get a touchdown? 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Yes he did all he did all of the things he had been to do, all of the things. But he didn't shoot the president. See that, It really makes you think, right, No, so he was done. He has been convicted. We're talking about the fair evasion on Charlotte's light rail line. And by the way, they do a much better job of they say, but we have no stats to prove this one way or the other. They say they do a better job of collecting all the fares on the buses, because that's more of a controlled access kind of a thing, right where you can get on to the bus, but you have to then go past the driver, and if you don't pay the driver or show your ticket or whatever, then he can tell you to get off. So there's a Theoretically, there's a lower fair evasion on the buses than there is on the sub or on the trains, because the trains are just open platforms, open access. There's a little kiosk you're supposed to buy a ticket, but it's on your phone. It's all virtual, and there's nobody that really comes around and checks very often, and so a lot of people just ride for free. But the problem is that fair evasion sends a message to the criminals. Elliott Hamilton City Journal writes about the New York City subway system. Three years ago, Eric Adams instituted a safe Subway plan to address New Yorkers' anxieties. He says it didn't go far enough. Though New York needs zero tolerance for all subway crimes. That means that the city's DA's have to resume prosecutions for turnstile jumping. In the summer of twenty twenty four, former NYPD Commissioner William Bratton and the City Journal contributing editor Raphael Mangual called on the city to resume fair evasion prosecutions. They also identified some of the central obstacles to prosecuting these crimes, namely bail and discovery reforms of twenty twenty and the reluctance of district attorneys to prosecute fair evasion. I'm not going to go into all of the details here. I read through it. It's just asinine and they have reversed it now. So beginning last month in August, this discover the demand for discovery, which is like you've got to turn over all the evidence to the defense team, right, But they made it so sweeping that like if you forgot or you didn't turn over some piece of information from something that was like completely unrelated to the crime, then they would get it tossed out. So the ADAS then just don't prosecute the cases. So he said, some changes have appeared on this front, and that's good, but more remains to be done. The New York Post reported that sixty three transit recidivists so repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat offenders. Here sixty three individuals in New York City account for more than five thousand arrests. Sixty three people, five thousand arrests, but only five incarcerations between them, five thousand arrests and five incarcerations. That's zero point one percent. The Metropolitan Transit Authority MTA has called for DA offices to resume prosecutions for fair evasion, citing the loss of more than six hundred million dollars in revenue in twenty twenty three, which is a good start. Boston has also begun to crack down on fair evasion right zero crime should be tolerated on the transit systems. Zero you want like a zero tolerance. You want to try whatever you want to try with your different policing, criminal justice, defund the police crap. You do it outside of the transit systems. People are in a tube, they are in a vehicle. They are held captive. They are not allowed to arm themselves because of your stupid rules, and so you have a captive audience aka victims. Let me see here. This is from the Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives Journal, published in twenty twenty three. No research. This is a piece evaluating fair evasion risk in bust transit networks. No research quantified the risk of fair evasion. The objective of this study is the introduction of a framework. Okay, they say inspections positively impact the revenues projection or sorry, revenue protection and the reduction of aggressive behavior in vandalism. So More inspections equals more money equals less evasion. Less aggressive behavior equals less vandalism. Asking people for their tickets works. The literature on deterrence has stressed the potential offenders pay greater attention to the certainty of being caught than to the severity of the punishment if caught. Moreover, a suitable level of inspection can decrease criminal issues and increase the security of passengers. But here's the thing. Without inspections, it's impossible to know the true level of fair evasion. And that's where we are now in Charlotte. This is an emerging research area and the determination of rigorous solutions is a challenging issue. This study improves the current knowledge on fair evasion by introducing a new metric for evaluating fair evasion and the fair evasion risk. So the idea here is they created this framework to say we're looking at these different factors, and we can tell you that this particular line, this particular leg of a route or route depending on what part of the country you're from, like this is going to have a higher risk. These are other factors. Oh, you have an open platform, you're going to have higher increase and they give a formula and they do all of the research and stuff. So they're hoping that this can now be built into plans by these planners right to assess, to assess how much fair evasion you can expect on your build. I'd be curious to know if we ran our system, put our numbers into this formula, what would it look like. Probably not good. Probably not good. So when I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died, my mom and my dad took care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers and family. But things are different today because of the work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot to me. I participate in the annual Walk to End Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year, and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth that truest field. Sign up at alz dot org slash walk and then you can search for my team name, Pete's Pack. There's also a link at thepetepod dot com. There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make a team and join that one too, or make a donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz dot org slash walk for all the dates and locations. Were closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me? For a different future, for families, for more time for treatments. This is why we walk. As I mentioned in the last segment, the man charged with trying to assassinate Donald Trump while he was playing golf at mar A Lago, Ryan Ruth, has been found guilty on all charges in a Florida courtroom. According to Fox News, sheriff's deputies then had to stop him from attempting to stab himself after the verdict was read, I don't have any other information except that I don't know if it was with like a pen or something, or a pencil, but he apparently attempted to stab himself, but he was prevented from doing so. Eric says it sounds like if New York would just lock up the thin fifty three people after their I don't know, fiftieth arrest, that would greatly reduce the prosecutorial caseload. They could be even more efficient if they did so after their third strike. Right. Once again, this is not a new problem. Former WBT host Keith Larson used to talk about this all the time, the repeat offenders. It is a small percentage of or a small number of individuals that are known to law enforcement. They are known to the court system, and they are the frequent flyers. They are in there all the time. And like whether it's like violent crime, car theft, whatever, they're different people in different crime categories. When it comes to you know, public new since and that sort of thing, you know, causing trouble on the buses and stuff, there are a very small number of people that are creating the largest workload. So if you get them out of the equation, the case loads then become much lighter, but there has to be a desire to do so. Eric went on to say that we should have a minimum number of rules, but the ones we have should be enforced correct. If we're not going to enforce these laws, then get rid of them. There is no point in having the laws if you're not going to enforce them. Russ says, why is it so hard for them to connect fair evasion with increased crime? It's basic economics. If you reduce the cost of a desirable item, more people will try to get that item. In this case, the desirable item is a captive population that is largely guaranteed to be unarmed. If criminals and the mentally unstable can get access to that for free, of course there will be more of it. And as far as New York City is concerned, losing a billion dollars per year and you can't do anything to stop it, well, then shut it all down or spend millions more on enforcement and recoup a lot more. Right. This is the other thing is that if you're going if you're losing massive amounts of money due to fair evasion, what is the breakpoint? How much do you have to spend for you to get back more of your money, for you to collect the revenue that you're not collecting now. And what came out last night at the Charlotte City Council meeting, Council Member Lawana Slack Mayfield mentioned that she has been apparently in constant discussions with cats over the years to try to make public transit free quote unquote free. I mean it's going to cost us more money. Property tax payers is going to cost us more money. But the idea is just don't collect any fares. And I will tell you they tried that in Ashville when I was living and working up in Ashville, and they attempted that, and the buses became rolling homeless shelters because of course it would, because to US's point, it's basic economics. Allen says, fair equity comments by Democrats all goes back to the mayor's initial statement, where is the concern victim or villain Stan says, mass transit has become what it was designed to be from the very beginning. Transportation for the quote oppressed funded by the quote oppressors. The only reason there is still a fair listed is to disguise the true intent. Well that may be true. 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 thepetecallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.