Cooper's racial justice equity task force gets renewed scrutiny (09-09-2025--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. I do have a bunch of your texts. I will get to I promise. I am going to cover the June twenty twenty announcement from Governor Roy Cooper in North Carolina at the time when he created the North Carolina Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice, and then the results the recommendations that came from that task Force, which sort of outline all of the reasons why we are seeing these types of events, these people who are getting released, that are repeat offenders, that are mentally unstable, and sort of the underlying philosophy that has guided the Democrat Party now for the last roughly decade. But you but really ramped up with the summer of fiery but mostly peaceful rioting and looting the phone number seven four five seven eleven ten, and that's also the WBT text line driven by the Liberty buick GMC. Let me go over and get Dave on first. He's been waiting from the last hour. Hello Dave, welcome to the show. Hey, how you doing. Hey, I'm good. What's up? Well? I hadn't talked to you in a long time. I think Charlotte moved to Wilmington. Oh well, anyway, Opaul as well, have you heard of Nick Craig. Have you heard of Nick Craig. He's down in the Wilmington area. He owes it's the show now here for the Carolina Journal News Hour at five am. But he's out of Wilmington. You should check out it. Yeah, you should check out his show. He's on YouTube down there. I'll check it out. Yeah. I usually just listen to listen to your podcast. But I saw something today on Acts formally known as Twitter that really disturbed me. I was wondering if you had seen it regarding the young woman who was murdered the Blaze. I don't know how they got it, but it's not it's not graphic or horrific. It shows the aftermath. From the from the light rail attack. Yes, right, So the only version that I have seen is the one that WBTV published on Friday, which freeze it shows her get on the train, shows him on the train, shows you know him, you know, reeling back to stab her, but then it freezes the video and then it cuts to him walking further up the train car. And I pointed out that there is there's a gap and there's the missing footage because the first camera angle is on her and him, right, So that's the first camera angle, and then the second camera angle after the attack is farther up the train, far away from where the attack occurred, where he had walked to. So we know that there's missing footage there. Well, I don't know how the Blaze got it, but anybody you should be able to find it on X just look for the Blaze. They probably did. I pinned it to my account. Okay, so yeah, they probably did. They probably did a Freedom of Information Act request, just like the local media did. But it sounds like what you're saying is that they didn't edit it out, so it's the full video. Well no, so I didn't see what was obvious The most horrific part, but I did see it does show immediately after. Okay, this poor girl, after she has been stabbed three times, she apparently is just sitting there sobbing, and the train apparently or the rail apparently stopped at that point, and three people around her who obviously saw what happened. You could tell from their reactions they get up and don't offer aid at all and just walk off. I was just horrified anyway. Yeah, I would be curious to know. So a couple things. Number One, did they actually see and process what they saw? You know what I mean? Because it's so outside of the norm. You know, this sort of it's called the normalcy bias. It's why people don't jump to action. They or they think, oh, what are those gunshots? No, it's fireworks. They always say, oh I thought it was fireworks because the normalcy bias kicks in your brain is it doesn't have anything any point of reference, you know, and so that you know, so there could have been something like that going on. Or I mentioned this earlier. It's not like he shot her, so there's no noise involved that would give that cue. It's just he got up right, and the knife was small. I mean, it's a folding pocket knife kind of a thing, and so they may not even have realized what it was that occurred. They may have thought he just punched her and walked away. Well, I'll let everyone come to their own conversation. I haven't seen that I could tell from what I could tell, they definitely. Knew what had happened, right, And did it show any how long after? I mean, it showed them get off the train. Did it show the people that did come up and help her or try to. No, No, it's the flip us all. It shut off before that part, which I had already seen. But I was just I thought maybe that that the whole entire video is out there somewhere. So apparently it wasn't. Based on what you just said to me, you had only seen a little. Bit of it, right, just the edited version that BTV put out, and that did not like you could not see the video where so like there's another reporter in town, Joe Bruno, he saw the whole video. He says, there were several heroic passengers who rushed to her, aid. We saw one man take the shirt off his back and attempt CPR. So that wasn't in the video. You saw either. No, well, God bless him, I mean in vain. Yeah, right, And so there there's definitely more video, and I know there's I knew there was more because the cutaway from where she was sitting to then farther down the train where Brown is walking around dripping blood and he takes off sweatshirt and wraps it around his hand. So I knew there was like there was obviously something going on farther down the train. You can kind of make out the commotion down there, and there is a camera that was there, And we know there's a camera there because you just showed us cats just showed us footage from that camera. So that camera still has more footage that we have not seen of the people trying to render aid. Now, the local media has said that they did not release that because it's at a respect for her family. Because if that was your daughter, you know, dying or you know, attacked and dying on a on a train floor, you would not want that all over the internet either. You wouldn't want to see it on your TV, on the newscasts and all of that. I mean, this is the that's the line you walk in a news operation is you know what do we publish, because at some point you get into snuff film territory, you know. No, I get it, and I understand that to some degree. But so I was horrified at this whole thing from the get go. But after I saw that, I was, I was just I was, I was at a loss for words. I mean literally, I mean, the poor girl obviously knew she was mortally wounded, and it's like she put her head down and was sobbing, and there was one passenger and I'm I'm not going to pass judgment on her, but I mean she was sitting. You know how they have the seats that they're actually horizontal. Yeah, or yeah, back against the wind. Which yeah, which in retrospect. So if nothing else, I hope some people, if they actually dare to ride the light rail, you know, should be very aware because this young girl obviously had her ear pods in. Yeah, she was probably trying to stay I'm. Just guessing, as you know, under the radar. Yeah, circumspect or whatever as she could. Yeah, but situational awareness is very important. Yeah. No, I wish I had been on that train because I would have taken his head off. Dave. I appreciate I appreciate the call, man, I do, I really do. I got to run to a traffic update. Good to hear from you, all right, buddy, Yeah, I mean it makes me angry too. 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Restrictions apply additional NFL Sunday Ticket terms or at YouTube dot com slash go Slash NFL Sunday Tickets Slash terms Limited time offer alrighty so In June twenty twenty, Governor Roy Cooper created the North Carolina Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice the tf R CJ or as I call it the T forrecagym, but they call it the Trek the TEC because they just dropped a bunch of letters from the acronym, which I don't think is actually legal, but they did, so they call it the Trek, the Racial Equity Criminal Justice Task Force. This action came after the deaths of George Floyd, Brionna Taylor, and many others at the hands of law enforcement officers. The circumstances of their deaths led to widespread public protests throughout the country, including in North Carolina, and conversations about the systemic racism and resulting harm that black people and other communities of color have experienced for decades in housing, employment, education, healthcare, and criminal justice. Governor Cooper asked the task Force to recommend solutions to end disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system. I'm going to come back to that. That's a very important term, disparate outcomes as well as mitigate the effects of bias and discrimination, and increase accountability in law enforcement and criminal justice. The statistics that illustrate racial inequity in criminal justice are staggering, and they give three that black adults in America are about six times as likely to be incarcerated than why adults, twice is likely to be pulled over for a traffic stop than white adults, and more likely to be jailed before trial. And that's where the cash lists bail system comes into play. North Carolina's criminal justice system is afflicted with long standing systemic racism. It is pervasive and wrong and must be remedied. Okay, how can you make such a definitive claim? The evidence for this claim is in the quote disparate outcome and what that means, And this shows up in Supreme court rulings. I forget what the name of the case is now, but it had to do with like housing in New York City or something. And what it says is that if you have outcomes that disproportionately reflect one demographic population, then that is proof of discrimination or in this case, systemic racism. So if you have, for example, in this case, you have more black people being incarcerated as a percentage of their population, then you have white people being incarcerated as a percentage of their population. Then that means racism. And of course people like me were saying, this is a farce because you are ignoring all other contributing factors. You are assigning the cause without including all of the other factors such as, just to name a couple off the top of my head, fatherlessness. Right. The studies have shown if you don't have a father in the house, chances are not always, but chances are greater that you are going to have worse outcomes as an adult. Whether it's criminal activity, lower wages, or something, right, you're going to have worse outcomes. That's why when people succeed from a single parent home, particularly single mother homes, that's why it's such a it's such a success story because you have you've got a privilege that others don't enjoy. The fatherlessness. That's not racism, right, that's a factor. What else, Well, how about a culture that celebrates criminality. And this is not just in the black community, this is also in the white community. There are white communities that celebrate criminality different types of criminal activity as well. Part of that is the snitches get stitches mentality. Right, By the way, random question, have they ever caught any of the people that engaged in the massive mass shooting on Beatysford Road for the Juneteenth Street celebration. How long ago was that now? Four years, five years ago, something like that? Hundreds of people, a bunch of people shot and killed, others wounded, and still no suspects. Right. If you have a culture that celebrates criminality, and the great philosopher Chris Rock talked about this in one of his famous lectures, already talked about getting more respect coming out of prison than coming out of college. Right, if you have a culture, if you have an environment where that is overlooked or celebrated, you're going to get more of it. Right, So, therefore, might that be a contributing factor when you behave in an anti social way that the society then punishes you because you're behaving in an antisocial way. This has always been the scam of disparate outcome, always, but this is what was used to justify the policies that the leftists wanted to implement. This is how they rationalize it, this is how they justify it. 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 could search for my team name Pete's Peck. 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. We're 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. From the Task Force for Racial Equity and Criminal Justice, or the Trek their summary published in twenty twenty, Governor Roy Cooper convened the Trek and put in charge of it now Governor then Attorney General Josh Stein, along with Associate Justice Anita Earls, who is up for election in twenty twenty six, by the way, and so they chaired this committee and they met virtually because of COVID and all that. And in the summary, the executive summary, they say, our state can and must be a leader in continuing to fight and overcome racism. And so I'm assuming that their belief is these recommendations will help them do so. Governor Cooper asked the task Force to identify intentional and unintentional racial biases the criminal justice and law enforcement systems, and to highlight the unequal outcomes that result from these biases. By the way, reading through all of the report again this morning, having read it in about five years and reading through it again, they actually come up with no intentional racial biases. They just they couldn't find any. And that's the beauty really of the systemic racism argument is that you don't know who to hold accountable. Show me the racist, right, Okay, let's fire that guy. But if it's a systemic problem, well then we just get to write all sorts of new policies and stuff and do this other agenda without actually finding any racists inside the institutions. Right. Russ writes in on Twitter that Wilford Riley, he's a great writer researcher is constantly debunking these claims about disparate outcomes and racism by simply looking at multiple variables exactly, just look at different variables. But when you say, oh, we have a different outcome, therefore racism, no, that's not proof. A different outcome indicates that there's something going on, But what are the various variables that might contribute to those outcomes? For example, one of the most violent populations throughout American history, do you know who it's been Scott's Irish in Appalachia. Yeah, there's a book that I interviewed the author. I forget who it is now, but he's a famous researcher and author, The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America. And he said, we don't know why, and you could make some sort of educated guesses as to the culture that they came from with the boxing and fighting and all of that stuff. I don't know, but there are different population groups that have different violence stats. Does that mean that we're racist against the Scotts Irish according to Disbert outcome? Yeah, according to that theory. So what were the recommendations? Well, I'm going to run through a bunch of them real quick, reimagining public safety, improving policing practices, under which they say community policing, where they recommend that officers spend more time building relationships through non law enforcement activities such as community service and sports investigations. Black drivers are twice as likely to be pulled over as white drivers, So why is that they don't say? Is that racial profiling? That's what they want us to I guess assume that they're that they're DWB driving while black, or is it possible that they're being pulled over for break lights, being out right, driving erradically, driving too fast, driving too slow, Like, I don't know, I'm just throwing different reasons why people get pulled over, not wearing a seatbelt? Right? Is there something like, for example, whenever we talk about police shootings and these these videos that come out of police abuse of a person who's pulled over something or law enforcement interaction, there is a belief among a lot of people in the quote black community, which I hate that phrase because people are individuals, but there's a prevalent belief that you have a quote right to resist. Did you know that a right to resist? They believe that this is something they're allowed to do and should do, which then, of course escalates the situation because you're resisting and cops don't like that very much. North Carolina, I believe we put it into law that we were now going to teach as part of driver's ed how to behave during a traffic stop. Again, the philosopher Chris Rock had a fantastic instructional video on this years ago. The TREK members also recommended establishing and expanding access to diversion programs that help people get the healthcare treatment that they need for addiction. Trek also recommends law enforcement issue citations in lieu of arrests for misdemeanors whenever possible, So stop arresting people, give them citations, and then tell them to show up in court, and then if they don't, whatever, if they do, get it dismissed. I guess or whatever. So this is why you get labeled soft on crime is because these are the things that you are promoting because you think it's harming people's ability to get ahead, not engaging in the criminal activity, not playing by the rules, not following the law. That's not the case. It's that everything is geared oppressor versus oppressed, and all of the institutions are aimed against you. They talk about the appropriate use of force peaceful protests and demonstrations, in other words, handle them with kid gloves. Officer standards. They recommend the Standards Commission give themselves the authority to suspend, to revoke, or deny certification of officers for excessive or unjustified use of force or abuse of the power of their position. I agree with that one. And then there was this one body warn and dashboard cameras they recommend mandating body cams for all law enforcement agencies and dashboard cameras in most patrol and vehicles and field vehicles, and releasing law enforcement recordings of critical incidents within forty five days unless a court finds it would interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation. So merely five years ago, this was what the left wanted. They wanted the videos released immediately. Yet Mark Caputo over at axios dot com with a headline stabbing video fuels Maga's crime message. He points out that the rising number of surveillance cameras in public spaces, including Charlotte's light rail, has become a big accelerant in these cases, right spreading the video viral. It's easily shared and leaked and can instantly pollinate across social media, a visual counterpoint to statistics showing crime decreases. So well, that almost sounds like you're arguing that we don't have the videos. What changed? Was it the details of this specific case? All right, So you've heard me talk about creative video for almost a year. But did you know they also offer a game changing app for businesses that reward their teams with incentive trips. Well, they do it's called Incentive trip Kit. If you want a business or work at one that offers these incentive trips, this is a must have. It maximizes the impact and value of these motivational trips. It's a super easy to use app built just for your group, with private messaging, shared photos, important trip documents, even a find the group locator just in case somebody gets separated. And when I say it's private, I mean it. No personal emails, no phone numbers, no ads, no account sign ups. Everyone uses one shared login, so it's super easy, no hassles. During the trip, everybody can post their best photos and short video clips, and folks back at the office can even follow along. And then after the trip, Incentive trip Kit turns those memories into a professional storytelling video you can use to motivate, inspire, and get people fired up for next year's trip. More fun, more memories, more ROI check it out now at incentive tripkit dot com or call Eric at eight eight eight five three three seventy six thirty seven Extension two seven for the details. Let me finish off a couple of pieces real quick. From the executive summary from Roy Cooper's Task Force for Racial Equity and Criminal Justice released in twenty twenty, during the height of the summer of fiery but mostly peaceful riots, put together this task force to try to come up with all sorts of recommendations on how to be less racisty and such in the criminal justice system. And they have all these different things, like a lot of it focused on law enforcement, like psychological screenings of law enforcement officers, bodycam footage, all that stuff, best practices for recruitment and retention of officers, training, and that sort of stuff. And then there was this eliminating racial disparities in the courts. The committee or the task force members looked at various ways to improve racial equity in the court system at all stages, as disparities arise before an accused person trial, a person's trial even begins in the case of violent crime, which fortunately is rare in North Carolina. Spoiler it's not I have the stats. Anyway, the task force recommends emphasizing accountability for people who commit crimes and responses that will help make victims whole, rather than those that are entirely punitive. Did you catch that? In other words, less punishment, more restorative justice. And they use that term as practice is known as restorative justice. They then talk about the quote school to prison pipeline, which basically starts when a kid can't read by grade three. And if you cannot read at grade level by grade three, the data shows that you are going to have poor outcomes for the rest of your life, and that means higher rates of criminality. So maybe focus on getting kids to read by grade level by grade three. Right, that seems like a good idea, seems like a good focus. But for some reason, we want to read. You know, Johnny has seventeen dads to the kid instead. I don't know why I would think that you should probably try to focus on getting them to memorize the ABC's first, you know, requiring additional school personnel review complaints from school resource officers before they can be filed in juvenile court. So, in other words, add somebody else to act as a break to prevent a kid that has done something illegal from being referred to juvenile court by an SRO, which is a sworn law enforcement officer. So you're going to actually you're going to have school personnel stepping in when you have a law enforcement officer that says you're going to get arrested for doing this behavior. No no, no send in the guidance counselor, they say, decriminalize marijuana possession and other crimes. Recommends general statutes and municipal criminal codes be scrutinized with a view towards eliminating quote, unnecessary crimes. Unnecessary crimes, So okay, just wipe them off the books, and now it's not illegal anymore. Look at that, Isn't that amazing? They also recommend solutions to help prosecutors and prosecutorial staff identify and address unconscious bias, and provide additional funding so that prosecutors and defense attorneys can review case outcomes and address systemic racial disparities in charging decisions. Plea offers status offenses, and other aspects of their work. So when you get a recommendation like this from the governor, the Attorney General, and an associate Supreme Court justice, and it's been worked on by all of these experts, I'm sure all of the left in the state of North Carolina to cobble together this judicial philosophy overhaul. Right, The message is very clear that if you have too many people of a certain demographic that's overrepresented in the data, then you shouldn't be charging them with so much stuff or such high offense stuff. The message goes out, stop charging people with these crimes, and I think that might have something to do with the state we're in. 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 thepetecallanarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.