Inadequate answers to Charlotte transit safety questions (09-23-2025--Hour2)

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 dpeakclendershow 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. So I watched the Charlotte City Council meeting last night, so you didn't have to. You're welcome. I'm a giver. And it went a while, It lasted a long time. There were a lot of people that showed up a lot of people during the public hearing portion or the public forum I should say portion of the meeting. And I want to say there was probably like I think there were fifteen of them, and because there were so many, they got their time chopped by one minute. So instead of a three minute speech that a lot of them had prepared, they got chopped down to two minutes. So that means like everybody. Gets cut off and most of the people they are talking, we're talking about safety, you know, crime issues and safety issues specifically on the light rail line and on the buses in the transit system. Because there was a vote last night by the Charlotte City Council later on in the meeting to expand the jurisdiction of the private security company that is contracted with CATS the Charlotte Area Transit system that is already in place. This company is called PPS Professional Police Services. Now I do have some audio and you will hear it referred to as PSS, but that was a mistake which they later on corrected. It's PPS. So if you hear PSS, they're talking about the same entity. And the Charlotte City Council unanimously approved a mutual aid agreement that gives PPS authority to enforce laws beyond city owned transit property like buses, light rails, and stations. Under the agreement, according to the piece by Nick Sullivan at the Charlotte Observer, PPS officers jurisdiction will include the entire rail trail, sidewalks surrounding the transit centers, and other areas adjacent to transit property. Now, you may have heard on this very program we brought to you the story. I think it was a WBTV story or it may have been WSOC I forget, but they were doing a story on an attack on the rail trail and the guy was let out of jail. Within twenty four hours he was back out on the street. So you know, again, it doesn't appear to be an arresting problem. It appears to be a court problem. People being turned out through a turnstile process, not like turnstiles like we have at our light rail platforms, because we don't have any of them at our light rail platforms, but you know, like they have in other train systems around the world, turnstiles and don't We're going to get to the fair evasion issue because this came up last night too. Back to the Observer piece, officials say the change will make it easier for CAT security personnel to respond to safety concerns at bus and train stations. Charlotte began working with this company in twenty twenty three. The company's contract is set to expire next year next July, but it has optional one year extensions and we don't know what will happen if the sales tax is voted in and the new transit authority is created. There is an idea that the transit authority would then have its own police force, which may be what PPS is angling to do. I don't know this, but it may be. I mean, it's an option. I guess you could kind of maybe get yourself folded into the transit authority, maybe because it's like a ready made I don't know, but they do a lot of contracted security work contracts for the local government. PPS officers adhere to the same training standards as Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department officers, and they are certified and sworn officers. According to Celestine Ratliffe, the deputy chief for PPS, security officers have the same powers as city police too. According to Brent Cagel, the interim CEO of cats Now, there was something he said last night when they were talking about fair enforcement, fair collection, you know too, to catch the the people who you know aren't paying and still writing the freeloaders. Okay. He said that the PPS personnel do have the power to do fair enforcement and they can even make arrests. He says, they are certified law enforcement officers. In fractions are written as civil citations. And this this got me thinking, like, what is a what is a civil citation, And so I went on too the the interweb and I asked. An AI. Program here on the Brave platform or browser, and it comes back as saying that North Carolina does not have a legal category known as civil siteations for traffic or similar offenses. Which I knew that about traffic. Like you ever get pulled over, like usually the officers or the state troopers, they'll tell you, they're like, like, this is technically an arrest. You're just free to go, but you have to you got to come to court. So it's like a it's like an. Accelerated like we're not going to bring you in front of a magistrate for the speeding ticket, but that's a criminal violation, criminal citation, it's not civil. So I'm not clear, you know, because if you don't pay your speeding tickets, they can come pick you up. Right. All citations issued for violations of state law, including traffic infractions and misdemeanors, are considered criminal charges under North Carolina law. A citation is a formal directive issued by a law enforcement officer or authorized person requiring an individual to appear in court to answer a misdemeanor or infraction charge. So I don't know what Brent Cagele meant when he said that these are civil citations. I don't know what he meant, and nobody followed up to ask him. Which was one of the things that I noticed last night in watching the city council members who have been under immense pressure and scrutiny during this election cycle about crime and specifically safety on the transit system, and what I noticed was that there weren't a lot of follow up questions. People would ask a question, Brent Caagel would answer in, you know, and I don't mean this as an insult, just like I don't mean it as an insult when I talk about how like police officers speak, and cops speak, right, they have codes and acronyms, and you know, they use words like the you know, the defendant and stuff like that, where most people. Are just like, that's the bad guy. You know. It's just a different language, and I understand why they adopt it, just like there's corporate speak, right, sure, So Cagel just seemed to answer in this bureaucrat speak, this language, and it is really a gift, I think to be able to talk for two, three, four minutes and sound like you're answering a question without actually answering a question or really saying much at all. You know, it's a gift, it really is. I can't do it. I just usually will answer the question and then like there'll be dead air or something because I'm done answering your question. So I don't know what the civil citation means. Back to the Yeah, back to the Charlotte Observer story. PPS the firm is a support for CMPD, it's not a replacement, he said. To address safety concerns, Katz has also ramped up its fair enforcement efforts, which is a responsibility of PPS for now, and they've entered into an agreement with CMPD the police department, to deploy off duty officer for eight hundred hours per week to assist with transit patrol. Right, so they are they're beefing up the presence of law enforcement on the line, which is a good thing. The presence of law enforcement acts as a deterrent. Okay, we have known this for a long time. We forgot it during the summer of fiery but mostly peaceful rioting, and there was this push like, oh my gosh, if we see cops, we just have to riot, like no, no, that that's actually not the science. Okay. In fact, I did a little bit of research yesterday, as I am known to do, and I have come across various studies on the very matter. In fact, here's one from twenty twenty three evaluating fair evasion risk in bust transit networks, written by several researchers out of Italy. But it's referred to as Barabino and apparently he's like he's a cited he's an often cited researcher in this field. And there's I've got another study too, which basically say more fair evasion, more crime, more cops, less evasion. 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. 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The jury has apparently reached a verdict in the trial of Ryan Ruth. That was the second attempted assassination of Donald Trump. He has been acting as his own attorney in that case. The jury has come back I think pretty quickly with a verdict. So probably not a good outcome for him. I hear he had a moron for a client anyway, So we will, Yeah, we'll bring that to you when it happens. We'll let you know what happens there. This is down in Florida. So last night the Charlotte City Council has its meeting and it expands its contract allowing the private security company PPS to now patrol more areas. They're adding more police as support personnel, basically for improved security, increasing security on the light rail line, the rail trail around the transit center and stuff. Now, one of the things, I've got some. Audio to play here, all right, And like what I'm deciding here is like do I play this audio because it's two minutes. I don't want to have to chop it up and then bring the verdict in here. But all right, we'll give it a shot. Here's Edwin Peacock City Councilmen, Republican. He asked about the crime stats that he has requested from CATS, And he asked for this a month ago, and he wanted to look back in the transit related or transit system crime stats looking back three years. Where is the criminal activity occurring across all of our system? You told us last time we have forty eight trains, we have four transit centers, we have a lot even more bus stations. But are you able to appin just broadly speaking, where is the majority of the criminal activity occurring on CATS right now? Criminal activity, just like in our community, occurs all over. It occurs throughout the system. Certainly there are areas that PSS and our security team in collaboration with CMPD that become hotspots at certain times. Right, Well, that's what. He's asking, where is the majority of the crime happening? And cagel answers, well, it's all over the system, but obviously there are some hot spots. Right Where what are those hot spots? That's what he was asking, and they they respond accordingly. But these these incidents occur throughout the system, just like they do throughout that community. That's a repeat of what he just said. Our security has the ability to respond and deal with those incidents when they come up, irrelevant and somebody say, we are working on that data for you. We're going back to twenty twenty two, so a little bit longer than the thirty six months, and we are pulling that data for you as well as the rest of the councilor. There so will counsel have the ability to help PSS to staff at all? Right, so this is what I mean. Peacock asked the question. Cagel doesn't give him answer. He just says we are, we still working on it, and then Peacock just moves on. He he doesn't he doesn't challenge this, He just allows it to stand. Like you just said there were hot spots, name me some such as it's the best follow up questions to ask, such as. How so. Give me some more information. I've asked you for this weeks ago. You're working on it. That's fantastic. You know there are hot spots, So give me a couple of hot spots, like like, like which ones the transit center? Might that be a hot spot? I would suspect it would be, just because everybody's coming into that main hub, right, What of the train cars? Do you have a lot of crime? Are these hot spots at the train stations? Which train station see the most calls for service? Stuff like that, give me some data something, But he's got nothing, So peacock moved on adequately. If we notice that you have much more crime than and maybe we originally anticipated, I mean, where does the staffing model come from? Is what I want to know. I want to know how you all are determining where individuals are going to be placed along all of our light rail and along our bus system. Yes see, this is why peacocky is completely correct to ask for this information, because that's how you determine staffing. Where do you surge your police officers in the general community where there is a high rate of crime. Well, if you don't know where your crime is happening on your bus system and train system, how are you surging personnel to those areas? How are you building a staffing model? And the fact that Cagel doesn't know these answers right now, that is the indictment. That's the smoking gun, right because you should already know this information because you're all already staffing. Ostensibly, you're already staffing for security in the areas that need it the most. What are those areas? We're still compiling that information, So how have you been doing your staffing? And Peacock frames this as a look forward. It shouldn't be a look forward, it should be a right now, how do you have people staffed right now at a particular location? How did you come up with that number? PPS? Was there? Ask them? Hey, Pps, ms Ratliff, why do you have, like many? How many of. Your staff do you have at the transit center? You got three? Okay? Why three? How'd you come up with that number? Seriously? Like, but there isn't any follow up here. There isn't any connecting of the dots all right back to the clip here. PSS works through that. They are the professionals. That's why we hire them and their background, and so they're making those decisions on deployment and how to deploy throughout the system to protect the customers, the employees, the assets across the entire system. Okay, so this is strictly out of Katz's hands. So they've taken no role in this. They've turned the entire thing over to PPS. Well, why is Kagel answering this question? Then? Why is in PPS answering that question? She was never brought to the mic to answer that question. She was standing right next to Cagle, and she never answered the question. How are you staffing this? What is your model? Game on? 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In New York, call eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text hope and why four six seven three six nine. In Connecticut, help is available for a problem gambling Call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org. Play Responsibly on behalf of boothill, casino and resort Kansas. Fees may apply in Illinois twenty one plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario. Bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. See Sportsbook dot DraftKings dot com. Slash promos NFL Sunday Ticket offer for new subscribers only and auto renews until canceled. Digital games and commercial use excluded. Restrictions apply additional NFL Sunday Ticket terms or at YouTube dot com slash go Slash NFL Sunday Ticket Slash terms Limited time offer. This is from an anonymous person. I'm not convinced that PPS has the resources required. Who vetted them? I can't believe they have staff to analyze proper proper staffing needs. Yeah, this is the problem that when you ask them, where are the crime hot spots happening, and cats can't answer because they've offloaded all of those operations to this private firm, and the private firm representative is standing right there and doesn't offer any explanation or insight into that data, but then says that they have enough staff to cover the whole transit system and protect everything and everybody and all the things at all the time and whatever. Yeah, but that doesn't help me understand how you are allocating your personnel because you would allocate personnel based on the higher crime areas, right, you would target that, and if you don't know where those areas are, then you cannot target those areas. So we didn't get an answer to that last night. Brian, Welcome to the show. Hey Brian, Hey bet Hey man, what's up. Hey. I just wanted to let everybody know what I observe. I'm an uber driver and i work the South End, the lower South End, Dilworth Uptown area at nights, and there's one area that I've noticed that's very, very troublesome, and that's on South Boulevard, in the Loso area. Get I think it's called Loso, Yeah, the lower South End. Yeah, So if you're going if you're going. If you're on South Boulevard and you're going south and you're heading towards Pineville. As soon as if you cross the stoplight of Clanton Road, there's a section on the right there's an apartment complex or whatever that is. It's a housing complex, and you could see people congregating there. Okay, then in my observation, they look very scary, and I've seen them hassle pedestrians. I've seen them try to intimidate people who are walking or jogging down the sidewalk. There go of cats in this PPS or PSS, whatever that firm is called. If they want to know a hotspot, I'd point them in that direction. Start there. Well, I mean theoretically they are already aware of it. What right, theoretically, Yeah, that's what they want us to believe. That's what they know the system. I'm not convinced at all at all. After hearing that gentleman's does simon it to Ed Peacock, Yeah, I don't even know what he does at the company. He saw an absolutely clueless He was non responses to the question. Yeah, and because he doesn't have the information, I mean, that's not right. And he said that he said, you know, we're still compiling the data right because they don't have it and they have him in tracking it, which tells you also another piece of information that's kind of a head scratcher is that that CATS does not know what the crime footprint looks like in its system. It's unbelievable. I mean you're like going, really, yeah, what do you actually do there? CMPD has been crime mapping for twenty something years. You can go on to the website, you can type in an address. You can find all of the police reports for all of the crimes in any given area, broken down by dates and types of offences, all of this stuff. They've been running the crime mapping service for twenty years. The CATS doesn't know it could be in probably easy to do. Yeah, it's bizarre. Let me make one more common. I urge all uber and lyft drivers who work in these areas in the Uptown South and Lower South End area to make observations in the carl WBT when you see something that this obviously needs to be reported to the place of somebody in authority and say hey, this is what I'm seeing in the community, and we can be the eyes and ears for some of Arlotte. That's my proposal anyways. Well, yeah, I mean, look, identifying the areas if nothing else, it alerts your fellow citizens about, you know, potentially problematic areas. But also you know, if there are city officials that hear this, maybe puts it on their radar. We'll see what comes out, right, we'll see it. I'll be you know, when we get the data when it comes, when they're finished compiling it. If they've got some hot spot areas they identify in that Loso area, Clanton is not identified, I'm going to have some questions about that then too. So yeah, Brian appreciated, buddy. Thanks, stay safe. Thanks. Renee Johnson City council member Renee Johnson, Democrat. She said she doesn't understand why it's taking so long to get this data, given the international attention and the scrutiny that the city is under. She's right, yeah, she's right. She said there's a culture of a lack of transparency and that the council is publicly accountable. She is. She just came through another primary battle. She has been at odds with the mayor and the mayor's little clique on council, her little voting block that the mayor has put together, and Renee Johnson has been on the other side of that voting block a lot over the years, and she was like, look, we just got beat up on the campaign trail over this issue because you guys don't have the data and you haven't provided it to us. She then said, is why are the police the CMPD not the police force for transit? It's just a question. Sorry, sorry, this is back to Edwin Peacock asking the question why isn't CMPD the police force. It's just a question that I get from citizens. They asked me why is CMPD not the primary law enforcement agency? Why are they not the only Why are they not the first responders for. All of this? We have for many years had a corporate security model. This is not new in the last three years or the last ten years, I don't believe. And so this is the model that we have utilized. But again we are working with PSS as part of this action and other things so that they can work really to be a transit police ento te right although they are contracted. This has been the model that has been deployed at CATS for many years. Okay, So the answer is because that's the way it's always been done. That's the answer. Right, Why isn't CMPD the police force, Well, it hasn't been before. That's the way it's always been done. That's the answer. I find that to be inadequate. 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 trip Kit. 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Charlotte is run by a city manager, right, the same as the city council really doesn't do anything except hold a little heat and talk about things and give housing permeits. But I don't think comment on that. But it seems like we're false at the wrong people are asking the wrong people the questions here. So you are correct. In North Carolina, we have a council manager form of government. Managers are very powerful. The idea was to take the power away from elected officials and give it to you, this bureaucratic professional expert class and it would be you know, professionally run and all of that. So Marcus Jones is our city manager, and yeah he is. He's in charge, but the city council hires and fires him. So they need to be applying the pressure to Marcus Jones, who then would apply the pressure to the people and the agencies that they run under his direction. He did, and now he was there last night, he was at the city council meeting. He sits right next to the mayor. That was a change I noticed when I came back to town. The manager used to sit off to the side at the very end of the diis now he's front and center with the mayor, right next to the mayor. I don't know when that change happened, but he did say, like, for example, the current model, the policing model, it doesn't they like it because it does not reallocate officers away from other areas. And then of course he. Made the pitch that hey, you know, if the sales tax referendum passes, then the new authority could have the money for its own police force. So there'd be a new transit authority police force. So more bureaucracy sounds yeah. Well yeah, and it would be another agency that would report to him, making him a little bit more powerful or the next city manager. Yeah, that's a good point, Harry, I do appreciate it. The council can the council can pressure and direct its city manager. The problem is in this form of government, in this model is that the council members become very reliant on staff because staff can make your priorities go away, make them harder to achieve. So you want a good relationship with the city staff. And if they don't like the way you're treating their boss and friend, Marcus Jones, then they may not be willing to help you out so much. And some council members I think are probably running up against this very dynamic. Look, I don't know if it's better to have CMPD doing this security or PPS this corporate model. I don't know what is better, but there's been no comparison provided to us to show the costs to police with CMPD versus PPS, so we don't know, and that's the problem. 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 thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.