Charlotte's transit bans apparently don't work on criminals?! (02-05-2026--Hour3)

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I know, who would have thought that a system that doesn't prevent people from getting on and off the trains at the open platforms right, there's no turnstiles there. It's just sort of an honor system. Who would have thought that people who get banned from the train or buses would ignore the band. It's beyond me. Why would people engaged in violence against other passengers or the drivers of the buses. Right they're engaging in criminal activity. They're ignoring the laws against engaging in violence against other people that they would ignore a band like we told you you're not allowed on this train, and they're back on the train. Here's the story from Amber Godet or Goadet g a U d e T. Gaudet Godeu. Anyway, when Oscar Solarzano stabbed another passenger aboard the Charlotte Area Transit System's Blue Rail the Links Blue Rail train back in December. Again, this is a different stabbing on the train than the Arena Zarutzka stabbing from the summer last year. This was the second stabbing Oscar Solarzano. He was not supposed to be on the train at all. He had been banned from using cat's transportation a few months earlier, but violent riders flouting bands is a common occurrence on CATS, according to the transit system's own records from the last two years. More than a dozen banned riders last year were banned again for another offense. During the periods when they were prohibited from using the system. So they get banned and then they come back on the train and do something else, or back on a bus and do something else. And there were more than a dozen such people. So, in other words, rather than like I would not have gone with this sort of Anondyne kind of framing with the headline that they flout the bands. The bands don't work. Okay, the bands don't work. The reason they don't work is because there is no enforcement. The ability to say no to somebody carries with it an implied use of force. That is always the case, always the case, if somebody wants you to do something and you don't want to do it, and you say no, The implication there is that if you're going to try to, like if I say no, and you really want me to do something, you're going to have to force me to do it. And if I say no and you try to force me to do it, then I'm going to meet your force with force from myself. The ability to say no has the implication of force behind it. So when you're saying you are not allowed on this train or bus any longer you are banned, can I come on the bus? No? That carries with it the implied use of force. But if there is no force ever to be applied, then there is essentially no ban. It does not work. The only way it works is if you catch the person violating the first ban, and you can catch them and then you can try to charge them with a criminal offense, which is force. It's the force of the government to detain you, to take your liberty or your property by way of a fine or something. Many of the people had been charged with serious crimes like assaulting security officers or bus operators and train operators, or weapons possession or threatening drivers. Cat's representative, Brett Baldeck, declined to make the interim CEO Brent Cagele or Chief Safety and Security Officer Eric O's niece Ostness Osnis. That's how he pronounces that. Did not make either of these men available for interview or to directly answer questions from The Charlotte Observer about the findings. Baldeck instead provided a copy of the cat's exclusion policy, which was already public. That policy says low level misdemeanors like loitering or disorderly conduct, rule violations, repeated fair evasion these things can earn riders a six month suspension riders who are cited for violent offenses like assault or property damage, weapons possession, or sexual crimes, they can be banned for one year. In a December tenth news release, Cagle said that there are several challenges to enforcing the bands. You don't say yeah, well, the. Original design of the open platforms would be a major obstacle, a challenge, if you will, because you can't keep people from getting on the bus or sorry, getting on the train. You can't keep people from getting on the train if you can't keep people from getting on the platform, and when the platforms are built at street level, and all you have to do is walk up and punch in some code on a kiosk in order to get a ticket, or alternatively not do that and just jump on the train when the door's open, right, if you don't have anybody there to say no, with the implied use of force behind that, no people are going to get on the train. That press release from December tenth went on to state tens of thousands of people ride cats vehicles every day and monitoring everyone entering the system is not feasible at this time, as there is no practical way to identify an excluded individual as they bord there's just no way to do it. So what's the point of the bands. It's all retroactive. It's after you do something bit, after you've sexually assaulted somebody, or after you've robbed them, after you beat up the bus driver or something, then then we'll ban you. But then if you get back on the bus, different driver or something at a different location, we're not going to know. And so yeah, you're gonna be able to ride the bus then until you, you know, commit some other kind of violation, and then we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna ban you again. CATS is exploring facial recognition technology to help identify band riders. That's a good step, but that's going to cost money. Law enforcement personnel with jurisdiction on CATS, as well as authorized transit system staff and others, can enforce the bands. According to the agency's written policy, band riders receive written notice at the time the ban is issued. So after you're done whipping up on the passenger, the driver comes over and says, you're a band off this bus. Here's your band sheet, here's your here's your notice. Take this piece of paper with you. Don't hit me. Sullerzano, thirty three years old, was banned for a year on October twenty eight, twenty twenty five, for having a large knife on light rail property. The undocumented immigrant had been twice deported to his home country of Honduras in the years leading up to the stabbing. That would have been during the Biden era. He had come back in twice deported. Now he's a two time felon at a federal level. But for some reason, even after having a large knife on light rail property and being a felon twice deported, for some reason, he was not handed over to Ice. Wonder why Gary. Super Bowl sixty deserves a sports book built for the moment. DraftKings sportsbook and official sports betting partner of Super Bowl sixty puts you right in the center of the biggest game of the year. Anything can happen during the Super Bowl, so DraftKings has your back. With early exit, if a player goes down in the first half, you'll still get paid out in cash immediately once your bet settles. 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Number on the text line says Charlotte just needs its own modern version of the Guardian Angels like New York had in the seventies and eighties. What color would the berets be? Would they be read? Um? Kevin says, Pete, your sarcasm is not helping on those banned on the light rail. Beside the band, they need to give them a tick that they will not pay that will keep them from riding on the train again. That or cutting off one finger every time they are caught on the train again. Just one finger, though Kevin says he's not a monster here, like that's that's fair. But also you would know then how many times they violated the policy. We'll take the thumb's last fine. Back to this story at the Charlotte Observer about this guy, Oscar Solarzano, who was caught on the train with a very large knife, banned for a year, but did not adhere to the band, got back on the train and then stabbed somebody with the very large knife. He had gotten a six month ban for public intoxication at an unnamed Cat's location the very next day after the first ban went into effect, so he gets banned for the knife. The next day he's drunk at one of the platforms and he gets cited. He gets a six month ban, but he already had a ban. Cat's security and Charlotte Meckleberg police officers who responded did not have visibility into the prior day's exclusion. In other words, when the cops show up, they don't know he's been banned. They don't know that he was banned the prior day, and Kat says that was due to a data entry error. Solarzano would have then received an indefinite band if they had known, but they didn't because you know, data entry. Cat's records obtained by the Charlotte Observer indicate that the data entry error that the transit system said prevented officers from seeing Solarzano's previous offense on October ninth may not have been an isolated event. Although Solarzano was banned twice in twenty twenty five, his name does not appear in Katz's internal list of riders banned that year. Provided to the Observer. It's not clear how many other banned riders were also left off the list. So when the Charlotte Observers said, give us a list of everybody that was banned in twenty twenty five, Oscar Solarzano's name is not on the list, but supposedly he got two bands, So how many other people are not on the list that got bands? Like? Whatever this system is that they are running. It is not working. It is not a system at all. Yesterday we talked about the Federal Transit Administration audit of the cat's system, which found that the rates of crimes against passengers is three times higher than the national average. The rate of assault on cat's transit workers is five times the national average. The piece concludes that passengers who received multiple bands often continue to pose problems. During twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five, more than eighty percent of those riders were banned again within six months of being allowed back on the system. Does this sound familiar? Does this phenomena sound familiar? It does to me. This is the frequent flyer program. This is what we see at the jailhouse. You have a small percentage, and by small, I mean probably somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twenty percent of all the people that get arrested every year are repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat offenders. A small percentage account for a large majority of the arrests. And it's the same on the transit system. You've asked us to keep approving sales tax increases with the promises of mass transit for all, and you can't keep people safe and you're the ban system sucks. But again, why should you change course? Really? When people keep voting these referenda into place and people keep saying, take more of my money. Sure, Sometimes repeat bands happen quickly. For example, one rider, Christopher Alexander, was banned for a year on May fourteenth, twenty twenty five, for assaulting a security officer. He was banned again two days later for assaulting a cat's contractor on the Blue Line platform. Another writer received a one year ban on April twentieth for assaulting a cat's employee second degree trespass, as well as disorderly conduct. Five days later, that rider got another one year ban for simple assault. Although CATS records do not specify who was assaulted. I don't know what the answer is, short of closing up all of the platforms, putting turnstiles in them, staffing security at the entrances to all of the platforms, yeah, I don't know. Actually, you know, holding people accountable if you're going to be if you're going to be you know, attacking people on these trains and buses, drivers or passengers. I don't care if you're engaging in this kind of anti social criminal behavior. There has to be some punishment for it. And I'm not talking about a piece of paper that says you're not allowed on the train again for six months. You should never attacked the driver. Six months, right, There has to be some other form of punishment. Without punishment, there is absolutely no deterrent effect. Now. I know there are people that are gonna say, well, actually, this doesn't act as any kind of a deterrent. You know what. First off, I don't agree with that. But secondly, let's assume that's the case. But if you're in jail, guess what you're not doing. You're not on the bus attacking the driver. You're not on the train attacking passengers because you're in jail. So even if it's not a deterrent to change your behavior, to change your antisocial mental disorder, whatever it is, well, at least it is a deterrent to other victims getting victimized because now you're just not present. Speaking of assault, did North Carolina leaders mislead the public about salt supplies? It's assault, it's salt. It's like a play on where's okay? Anyway? Yeah, apparently North Carolina officials say that the local governments that they were talking to before the snowstorm and ice storm. They were talking to the supplies that the state had ready to go to clear the roads, and they may have said something or things that may have been misunderstood by the local officials. And what they what the locals seemed. To misunderstand, was that that they didn't have enough salt for everybody to do the roads. But that's that's that was not true. They just misunderstood what they were saying. All right, I hope you had a happy holiday season. But tell me if something like this happened at your house. Your family and friends are gathered around, Maybe y'all are in the living room and you're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing, and then somebody says, hey, Dad, remember those old VHS tapes? Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room gets all quiet. All eyes are on Dad, who says, oh, you know, well, I've been meaning to but I just having gotten around to it. Look, don't let those priceless memories sit in a box for another year, all right. Create a video has been helping families in the Charlotte area preserve their history since nineteen ninety seven. Simply bring in your old camquarder tapes and Creative Video will transfer them to a USB flash drive for just fourteen ninety five per tape. You have a big collection, They've got a discount for you. And next year, instead of talking about those memories, imagine gathering the family to watch them together. Talk about a memorable gift. So do what I did. Trust the experts at Creative Video, conveniently located in Mint Hill right off I four eighty five and online at create avideo dot com. Another piece from the Charlotte Observer, this from Nora O'Neill. North Carolina officials say local governments may have misunderstood discussions about the state's road salt availability ahead of this weekend snowstorm may misunderstood now. The mayor of Munroe, Robert Burns, took aim at Governor Josh Stein in a widely scene post on Twitter formerly known as x saying municipalities were warned before the storm the North Carolina faced a shortage of road salt and needed to be selective in treating the roads. By the way, Charlotte Mecklemburg emergency officials say they also received that same warning. State officials however, told the Charlotte Observer, No, no, no, they had enough salt on hand to treat major roadways. Any limits that were discussed ahead of the storm were about how the supplies would be shared, not whether the state was prepared. See, so we don't have a shortage here at the state. I don't know what you're talking about. We don't have a shortage. We're just saying we don't have enough to share. That's what this is what they're going with. This is the line. Okay, I mean that is one way to play this, Burns told. This is Mayor of Monroe, Robert Burns. He told the Charlotte Observer he received information about salt availability during a Union County emergency management briefing that was held before the storm hit. He said officials in that briefing were told that there was a state wide shortage of salt and brine, so no martinis people, and that the North Carolina Department of Transportation would prioritize major roads. First. I don't know. I like, I'm not an expert on the salting and the brining. Yes on the martinis, but no, not really on the salting and the brining. But it does sound to me like they're basically saying the same thing, right, Like, the locals are saying that the state told them there's not enough salt for them to share the supplies with the locals, so we're going to concentrate on the major roads first. And the state is saying, no, no, no, we never said that. They must have misunderstood while we were saying was that there's not enough supplies to share with them, So we're going to focus on the major roads first. Right. Doesn't that sound It kind of sounds like the same thing. Burn said, They told us there was a statewide shortage. They said they were going to have to be selective. Yeah, they'd have to prioritize what to do with their resources. After the storm hit, Burn said he became well, he says he became frustrated, But I wonder if he was actually frustrated, But he says he became frustrated when state leaders publicly pushed back on claims of a shortage. Burn said, somebody's not telling them the truth. If there was a mistake, just own it and fix it. Days before the snow arrived, Governor Josh Stein expressed confidence in the state supply levels during a visit on January twenty ninth to an nc DOT facility in Raleigh. He said the DOT employees felt confident that they had enough salt and sand to help handle another storm following the ice storm the prior weekend. Charlotte Mecklenburg Emergency Management spokesperson Page Grande said the agency also received a briefing related to limited salt availability. In an email to the Observer, she said the agency was informed early last week by Emergency Management about a nation wide shortage of road salt and brine. The agency said that it worked with state and local partners to ensure adequate supplies were available across Mecklenburg County across the country. Meanwhile, cities and towns have reported a shortage of road salt, including in Vermont, Ohio, and New York. Have you, by the way, have you seen any videos out of New York City? Not all? I mean, first off, not only did they allow like more than a dozen homeless people to freeze to death, because that's the that's the warmth of collectivism Under Zoron Mamdani, he refused to go and round up the homeless before the big storm hit, just leaving them out on the streets and like more than a dozen of them froze to death. And now there's video because like the streets haven't been plowed, so like for all of the for all the Yankees and the Midwesterners who have you know, relocated to the Charlotte area and they're all complaining about the streets not being plowed. Like okay, like we have like one plow. Okay, we've got we have. We have not seen this kind of a storm in more than twenty years. Okay, we should not be prepared like Minnesota or Vermont or New York City. We should not have a fleet of plows ready to roll because we only get this kind of a snow very infrequently. But New York they do have plows and they have not been able to plow the streets for like it's it's been like a week. And the videos coming out of New York City. So because the streets aren't getting plowed, you know what else doesn't happen trash pick up. And this would if you've never been up to New York City, this would blow your mind. Like they still use guys on the backs of the trucks. They don't have the arm that comes out and picks up the can and dumps it. So all the shops, all the businesses and residents they take their trash and they put it on the sidewalk at the curb, and then the trucks pull up and guys jump off the back, pick up the bags, throw it in the back of the truck, and of course, you know, you get some leakage and bags break, and that's why New York City smells. But well one of the reasons. But they haven't been able to pick up trash. So now you have the the piles of snow and you have the piles of trash, and it's all mixed together because they're not picking up the trash. And I saw one video from some guys last night. They've got some equipment out there the city does. They've got some equipment rolling down the street where apparently they had been able to plow like one lane or something on the street, and then they came back through and started spreading the snow across the whole street. Rather than have like a lane open, they spread the snow that had been plowed to the side. They spread that and they spread it around or something, which is totally something a Kami would do. Right, They're going to redistribute the snow. Equally across the street, so everybody has to drive on the street. This is like, this is a colossal failure of competence and governance, right, your first test as the new mayor, and it's a snowstorm and he has failed miserably. Well, I shouldn't say that, because out in front of his residence at Gracie Mansion, that street was plapted. So just like any good communist area, right, any commedy jurisdiction got to take care of the party officials. 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. From the Charlotte Observer story on the uh salt shortage that wasn't or maybe was, I'm really sure state officials say that. Look, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why the local officials thought that the state had told them that there was a shortage of salt supplies ahead of the snowstorm. They say the difference in accounts reflects how resources were managed, not a lack of preparation, which I'm not really clear if that's like, are you actually addressing it? Seems to me to be a pretty straightforward question. Did you say that there was a statewide shortage or did you not say that because you've got Charlotte Emergency Management and you have the mayor of Monroe at a Union County Emergency Management meeting, and they're both saying that you guys told them that there was a statewide shortage of salt supplies and there's a nationwide shortage of salt ahead of the snowstorm. Which makes sense because like we just went through two rounds of these snowstorms across the country, so it would make sense to me if there was a shortage. And I'm not blaming and see DOT for the shortage. I mean, you can only make so much salt, you know, at the salt factories wherever they are located. I don't know. Now, sand, on the other hand, seems like we could, you know, just get a whole bunch of sand from the coast. I mean, you got a bunch of houses that are already falling into the ocean, so like just take the sand that they were sitting on. I'm just kidding people, just I'm not saying to knock people's homes down. Aaron Moody, nc DOT Assistant communications director said in a written statement to the Observer that the department communicated to some local officials ahead of the storm that it would not be able to share salt supplies. It couldn't. It wouldn't share the supplies with municipalities. Why, Well, it had to preserve its resources for the state maintained roads like interstates and highways. Okay, I'm just going to run a quick thought experiment here. Why would you not share your supplies with the municipalities if you thought you had enough salt for the storm. To share with municipalities. Right, the fact that you're telling them we're not going to be able to share our supplies with you would indicate that you don't have enough supplies to share with you, which might lead somebody to believe that you don't have enough supplies of salt to share with the municipalities because you told them that. So you're on your own, municipalities, like, we're going to do our roads. We got to focus on our roads first. Again, totally understand, and again back to back storms means you are limited in the amount of time you have to be doing the clearing from the first storm. You know you got impassable roads. If you're trying to get new salt deliveries in like that's a difficult thing to do because you've got icy roads and you're still applying the salt and the brining and all of that. So it makes sense to me, it makes sense that you would tell municipalities like, guys like, we're up against it here. We're running all of these crews, we're dumping all of this salt. We just did it this weekend, we got to do it next weekend. And so we're not going to have enough for you. That means that there's not enough for you. So it is completely understandable why the people that are being told there's not enough for them would think that there is a quote shortage because you are short, right, Because theoretically, again I'm just just running this thought experiment out, like wouldn't if you had, say, three weeks between the storms, you probably would have purchased more salt and then you could have shared in those supplies. Right. The confusion, says Moody, I think there's some confusion over the amount of salt NCDOT had on hand versus the availability of resources to share with local agencies. Well, yes, mister Moody, because like you know what your supplies are, and so when you said you don't have enough supplies for them. They heard, you don't have enough supplies for them. He says. The department advised local governments, public works departments, and emergency management agencies to coordinate directly with private suppliers or contracted local vendors for their salt or treatment needs. Right, because you have a shortage, you don't have enough. That's what that means. Why can't you just say that, Well, apparently they did say it, according to all these people that heard them say it. Then said, hey, there's a shortage, and you're like, oh, we don't have a shortage, We just don't have enough supplies. They had one. Hundred thousand tons of salt on one hand going into this week's storm and pre treated roads with three and a half million gallons of brine. The agency said it followed standard procedures that prioritize interstates, highways, and other major connectors and worked with suppliers to restock salt during the storm. Stein told reporters the state expects to have fifty thousand tons of salt on hand within the next few days. This was on Tuesday before the storm, and entered the recent winter weather stretch with enough supply to handle three major storms. He said, the state has sent requests to states with surplus salt to help replenish its salt bank, so they have wait, wait, hang on a second, they have surpluses, So you're asking the states that have surpluses if you can have some of their salt because you have a not surplus, which would also be called a shortage. That's what that means. So much time is spent with just trying before you can even have a debate about the thing. Like, so much time is wasted playing these stupid word games because nobody wants the boss in this case, Josh Stein to look like he wasn't like Johnny on top of everything, like he handled this perfectly. Everybody's so worried about the perception of failure. Just admit, yeah, two storms back to back weekends. We ran out assault. Just say that. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. 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