New Charlotte Police Chief: A settlement and an appearance (11-03-2025--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 dpetecleanershow 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. Okay, So, as I said in the last segment there in the last hour, I know it is the honeymoon period for the new chief of Charlotte Mickleburgh Police Estella Patterson. I say again, I wish her all the best. I want her to be successful. I want her to to be able to reduce the vacancies. Right, these are the things that she said. She's going to focus on, getting recruitment up, reducing the number of vacancies on CMPD staff, working with the community to basically convince members of the community to help police. That's a big deal. She also wants to implement technology solutions to help with the crime fighting. I like all of that and I want I want that to work. I want cops happy. I want them trained, I want them compensated, I want high morale. I want them to have the support of the local court system when they arrest particularly repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat offenders. I want those offenders to stay in jail. I don't want cops demoralized because they are still doing the paperwork on an arrested offender and then the person's already walking out the jail house door. Right now. That being said, I have some questions, and I feel like these questions should be answered. I'm not making these as accusations. I am just asking questions. I am I'm just kind of curious about the timing, and I feel like the City of Charlotte should explain what occurred here. So Number one, there was a story back in well, actually this thing dates back years, okay, years and years ago. There was a dispute in twenty eighteen, so seven years ago, a legal dispute between Battalion Chief Lance Patterson of the Charlotte Fire Department and this of Charlotte. Lance Patterson is Estella Patterson's husband. Okay, he sued the city and that case has been going on for seven years. And at the website, Law three sixty dot com story dated October twenty seventh of this year. So like a week ago headline, NC fire chief settles race bias suit for real this time. So they settled the case like a week ago. Now, far be it for me to suggest that the City of Charlotte, maybe Charlotte leadership, city manager, mayor, and council. I don't know who would be involved in that. I do actually it would be Yeah, it would be the city attorney, the city manager, and the mayor and council. If they're going to enter into a settlement, they would have to sign off on this, perhaps in a closed session, and by perhaps, I mean definitely in a closed session. And then they should be releasing that vote. They should be releasing that information after the settlement is agreed upon. And is it weird that that settlement happened a week ago? After seven years in the court system? Now it is kind of coincidental in that the timing of the case, and I'm going to go through this because the timing of the case ended up they were going to trial in like I think December second was when they were expected to go to court. December ninth, jury selection was set to begin December ninth, so they still had a month's six weeks, all right. So this first from July twenty ninth this year over at fire law blog dot com and it focuses on fire department, firefighters and stuff like that, lawsuits and such piece by Kurt Varone. A long running employment discrimination case involving the Charlotte Fire Department is heading back to trial after a federal judge ruled that enforcable settlement was never actually reached between the City of Charlotte and Captain Lance Patterson, a twenty year veteran of the department. So this is why I say, like this could be completely coincidental and the timing just fell this way. It just landed like this, okay, Because Patterson, along with a co plaintiff, Captain Sylvia Smith Pfeiffer. These two Charlotte Fire employees alleged that the city engaged in systemic race and gender discrimination in violation of Title seven forty two USC. Nineteen eighty one, nineteen eighty three and the North Carolina Constitution. Both plaintiffs claimed that they were denied promotions, special assignments, and training opportunities due to race, gender, and prior protected activity so I'm not sure what that amounts to. So this again goes back to a complaint from twenty eighteen. That's when this dispute first arose. Fast forward four years November twenty twenty two, Captain Smith Peiffer's trial was underway, but her case was resolved through a written settlement Captain Patti And by the way, that happens all the time. Okay, like a lot of lawyers, you know, they try to avoid going to court if at all possible because it's expensive and so if you can avoid the trial, best to do so. And a lot of times that happens, like during jury selection, even as you know you're you're like, oh, yeah, well we'll see you in court. Okay, that's fine, Yeah, that's fine, that's fine. Everybody talks real tough. And then when you get to the courthouse and you're sitting through jury selection, it's like, you know what, maybe we'll go ahead and just settle now because you don't feel as confident as you've been saying. So while their trials underway, the co or coplaintiff in this case, she settles, but Captain Patterson's case was scheduled to start a couple weeks later, and so he entered into settlement talks and they that appeared to result in an agreement. This is twenty twenty two. So a mediator circulates the terms of this agreement, including a one hundred and eighty thousand dollars payment, of which seventy nine thousand goes to Captain Patterson and one hundred and one thousand goes to the attorney, plus twenty two one hundred hours, so two two hundred hours of sick leave, which would bridge him to retirement at twenty five years. To get him to the retirement period, the city responded with what Patterson viewed as a confirmation of the deal. So the mediator sends the terms around. Patterson sees the reply from the city. He thinks, okay, we're good. But when the city sends over its draft legal agreement, it cuts the twenty two hundred hours down to thirteen seventy five of sick leave, a difference of about eight hundred and twenty five hours, and they say that's all that's required to get him to the twenty five year retirement mark. The city also contended that the seventy nine thousand dollars payment to him would not be pension eligible and that Captain Patterson would retire. So that's what the city thought the mediator had worked out. So when the city drafts its agreement, it sends it out. The negotiations then break down. That prompts Patterson to seek enforcement through the court of what he argued was a finalized agreement. He's like, hey, the mediator sent this agreement around. Look at the city. It seems like they said yes and then they come back with something else. So the court needs to enforce the original agreement. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. 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And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. Okay, so where we left off here? Twenty eighteen complaint filed by two members of the Charlotte Fire Department. One is Captain Lance Patterson, husband of now the CMPD, newly appointed newly hired chief Estella Patterson, twenty five year veteran of the CMPD and former police chief of Raleigh, most recently. Lance Patterson one of the complaint one of the plaintiffs, I should say, twenty years in Charlotte Fire his co plaintiff, Captain Sylvia Smith Pfeiffer. Her case goes to trial. First, they allege bias due to race and gender and prior protected activity quote unquote, So they both go to or she goes to trial, and then it gets settled. They so the trial ends with a settlement. Captain Patterson has a settlement agreement drawn up with the city where apparently the city agrees to pay one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in November of twenty twenty two. We're going to pay you the money you're asking one hundred and eighty k seventy nine thousand to go to Captain Patterson, one hundred one thousand to the low. And then there was a chunk of sick leave that would be used to basically get Patterson to retirement eligibility, twenty two hundred hours of sick time that would bridge that gap that would get him to retirement. So the mediator sends out the terms of this agreement. Patterson thinks the city has agreed to it. But the city then sends out like a draft of its agreement and it doesn't have the twenty two hundred hours. It has thirteen seventy five. And they in the city says, well, that's all that's needed to get you to the retirement Oh and also your seventy nine thousand dollars would not be pension eligible. So they go back to court and they go to the district court. Captain Patterson files a motion to enforce the mediator's agreement. The district court grants that motion to enforce. The city then appeals. Now we're into twenty twenty four. The Fourth Circuit vacates the order, so this is now in federal court right. The Fourth Circuit vacates the order so gets rid of it, saying the factual disputes existed over whether a binding agreement had been reached and whether the parties intended to be bound absent assigned writing. The case was then remanded for a full evidentiary hearing. Now we're into June of this year, they have a hearing. Captain Patterson's council argues the mediator's email and the city's response constituted mutual agreement or assent. The city counter that all parties understood the settlement would be contingent on assigned written agreement and city approval. Testimony from the city's attorney confirmed that approval by the city and a full executed document were prerequisites to any final deal. Then in July of this year, a couple months ago, Judge Timothy Raith denied Captain Patterson's motion to enforce the settlement on the terms that he sought concluding the email exchange represented only a preliminary agreement in principle, not an enforceable settlement. The court emphasized that the absence of assigned written agreement and unresolved material terms meant that there was no meeting of the minds necessary to form a binding contract. As a result, the court returned the matter to the trial calendar, setting jury selection to begin on December ninth, so in like six weeks from now until October twenty seventh. A Charlotte, North Carolina, fire chief says he has reached the settlement with the city over his claims of racial bias, years after he thought the deal was done the first time. Battalion Chief Lance Patterson of the Charlotte Fire Department was headed for trial in December after a federal court found the twenty twenty two settlement he tried to enforce was never fully finalized, but he told the court last week the parties have reached another deal. The settlement ends a dispute from twenty eighteen in which Patterson and a colleague claimed they hit a glass ceiling in the fire department because they are black. In November twenty twenty two, they allegedly reached separate agreements with the department that included early retirements, but claimed the city wasn't honoring their deal by deducting retirement funds from their settlement payouts. And then this is from Law three sixty dot com where it goes through sort of the lengthy process that led to here. Okay, twenty twenty, so this goes back to twenty eighteen. I don't know. I wasn't here in twenty eighteen, so I don't know all the ins and outs of the case. I haven't seen what the evidence they had to support this. I just note the timing that this settlement finally gets done after all these years. It gets done just as Patterson's wife is selected to be the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police chief. And again, like I cannot speak to the merits of the claim of the court case or anything like that, I have no idea. What I do see, though, is the City of Charlotte once again doing a settlement with somebody in there soon to be employee, much like the Chief Johnny Jennings settlement. And that makes me pause. I think, I think we need some additional information from this, and I know it's Chief Patterson's honeymoon. I understand that, not like intermarriage, but like with the city. So right now, everybody's feeling good about it, everybody's like happy and all of that, but the timing of yet another settlement it raises questions. 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 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 WBT text line, this is from Happily Retired, who says, Pete, I am a retired firefighter, and I knew both of the plaintiffs in these cases, one of whom is the husband of the new Charlotte Mecklinburg police chief. He says, or she says. It was I don't know who this person is, but it was not discriminatory practices. It was their abilities. Neither one should have made chief. They're both great people, but were not battalion chief qualified. They used the race card to get the positions that they wanted, right, And so that's going to be the accusation, of course, because that's you know, they were suing over this in Charlotte, and like I feel the need to point this out, Charlotte has had for quite some time now a black police chief. Right before Jennings at Rodney Monroe, black city manager, black city attorney, black mayor, majority black council like this, So now I don't know what the racial makeup of the Charlotte Fire Department was in twenty eighteen and may again, I cannot speak to the merits of their complaints, but the settlement that was arrived at a week before the announcement of the new police chief being hired, and that settlement is with her husband. And this case had been going on for a very long time since twenty eighteen, but it had been working its way up and down through the court. So they were fixing to go to trial in December. And you know, his co plaintiff had settled when she went to trial, So it seems like they were close to terms three years prior. And I don't know what the nature of the agreement. I don't know what the terms that they eventually did settle upon were. I don't know what they were, but I feel like the city needs to provide that information now. Especially. Look, and here's the thing. If we hadn't just come through the Chief Johnny Jennings settlement, if we hadn't just gone through that whole scandal, then this would not be landing the same way. It just wouldn't. But it is. It's landing this way now because you had a Charlotte City Council within the last six months that gave three hundred thousand dollars to the police chief on his way out the door, and then didn't want anybody to know the terms of the deal. So yeah, then there's this from Jason. Not that it matters, but this new chief of police will get my support until proven otherwise. Right, I'm in the same like, I am cautiously optimistic. I'm giving her a wide berth let like wide lanes to run down. We'll see how she does. Right, The proof will be in the pudding, he says. I do cringe a little with her getting such high praise from this city council, but that's just me not being a huge fan of the council say the best. Yeah, that's that's the Yeah, that's that's. Part of the problem is that you're being hired by this city, this city manager of this city council. And it's kind of like, mmmm, I do take some solace in the FOP endorsement because they would know. Now another issue. This was from local blogger Cedar Posts, and this was from September eleventh, twenty twenty five years ago. There was apparently an event held at the YWCA Central Carolina and the YWCA. According to them, they are quote on a mission to eliminate racism, empower women, and promote peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all. They held a panel discussion focusing again this is September twenty twenty. They held a panel discussion on ending violence by law enforcement, also fearing deportation, slash detainment, keep being safe from mass shootings and gun violence, ending sexual harassment at work or sexual assault and domestic violence at home, and fearing consequences of white nationalism and hate crimes. That was the panel discussion, although they were going to cover all of those topics, and one of the panelists was then Deputy Chief Estella Patterson. She spoke at this event and according to the YWCA Twitter account that posted her comments, she is quoted as saying, when solving white nationalism, we need to look at the places where this exists, especially people's places of work, to see some hidden or overt biases and racism. People may have you start where you are, You start in your home and your work and determine white nationalists and expose them. So I would like some further clarification about that is this a big problem. Are there are the white nationalists in the room with you right now? Where are these white nationalists? Do you encounter them often? Are they in the police department? Were they in the fire department? How big of a problem do you think this is? Like I would just I have some follow up questions. Again, not an accusation. Don't know the context that this was spoken in, except that it was this panel discussion. But like, yeah, like Cedar Post points out, like what crimes of white nationalism is she speaking of? How many have there been in Charlotte? How many hate crimes have been committed by groups like the Proud Boys or the White Arian Nation or something? Are these groups active in Charlotte? Because I've not heard that that would be a big deal. No, So again, just some follow up questions there. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina? Just a quick drive up the mountain and cabins of Ashville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. 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There may not be anything to them. That's why you need to do the follow up questioning, right, That's why people need need to explain some of these decisions and comments. That's all, and then we move on. But again, like I want this chief to be successful in you know, reducing crime, in filling the vacancies CMPD, improving morale, hiring more police, all of what she said she wanted to do. And I I support that. I think everybody should support that. Well, not everybody, Shirley the lefty over on the WBT text line driven by Liberty Buick gmc. Well, the text line is driven by Liberty Buick GMC, not Shirley. But this is typical of how Shirley engages. In fact, if I were to scroll back through, I could see all of her comments and they are all basically the same, which is, we don't care, move on, talk about Republicans crawling at the feet of King Trump. See, this is how broken of a brain Shirley has when it comes to Donald Trump. A new police chief in the city of Charlotte will have more impact, more direct impact on your life than Donald Trump. But Shirley's a hate listener. She loves to hate listen. It's sort of along the lines like some people aren't happy unless they're miserable. You know, they discovered this a long time ago with Howard Stern, right, it was in the movie Private Parts I believe was the name of the movie based on the book written by Howard Stern, And what they found was that the people that hate Howard Stern listened for longer than the people who liked him. I don't know why that is. I don't generally like I will not listen to people that I don't like. I'm not going to sit there and listen to I'm not going to sit there and be outraged and just keep listening to it over and over and over again. Not going to do it. But surely does. She sends me these messages periodically. Oh I missed this earlier when new police chief overqualified. That's how get the big jobs overqualified, like pilots, et cetera. I don't know what that means. And then here's another one cheaters talking about cheating. Move on? Move on? Yeah, so anyway, doesn't want me talking about the police chief. Doesn't want us looking at, you know, her record and qualifications and these outstanding issues. Move on, I don't want to talk about this. I want to be mad about Donald Trump. That's what animates me, and that's all I want to talk about, those dastardly Republicans crawling at the feet of Trump. Like, why, I don't even know what you're talking about there? I don't like, I don't even know, Like that's just. And also when you tell me to talk about something, especially as nebulous as that, I'm not going to talk about it. That's just I got a bit of a contrarian streak to me. So, but if you have any uh, I was going to say links, but I don't open the links. Oh, she just responded, I not miserable. You are bashing people on a daily basis for money. I'm good. You might want to work on the texting, Sureley, Like there's a lot of grammatical mistakes there. Again, did I thought I've been pretty clear? Have I registered an opinion about the new police chief and whether or not I hope she's successful, and whether I think she's qualified for the job? Oh? I yes, I did. Actually, I've said it repeatedly. She is supremely qualified for the job, and she has the endorsement of the FOP. She has a lot of support among rank and file cops. She made the right decision in the Keith Lamont Scott investigation. I hope she's successful. I've said all of these things repeatedly, but to Shirley's ear, that doesn't register. None of that registers. That's why I say, you're not happy unless you're miserable. I've not bashed anybody. I didn't bash the fire Captain Lance Patterson. I didn't bash him. I didn't bash his co plaintiff. I didn't even bash the city council or the city manager. I haven't bashed anybody. I pointed out that because of the settlement with Chief Jennings that people now have questions about this settlement to Patterson's husband, that just coincidentally lined up with her hiring as the police chief. Now, I also made it very clear it's possible that the timing was simply coincidental, because if you look at the timeline, it's been going on since twenty eighteen, it's going back and forth, it's been going up and down in the court system. So yeah, see, surely just here's what she wants to hear. You might call it a dog with right. Jim says the CMPD chief hiring topic is fair game. Sureley should go pound sand and focus her wrath on King Donald. Also, I loved here are the white nationalists in the room with you now, President. I thought Shirley was an important person. Yeah, I don't. Everybody is important in some way. Okay, Now there is one other one other interesting note here is that the same firm, the City of Charlotte used Ralph Anderson and Associates to do this nationwide search to find the woman that worked here for twenty five years and then went to Raleigh for three and a half years. A nationwide search, and like, it does make you wonder, like, how how many times like we keep hiring these national search firms and then they end up finding the guy who's like or gal who's you know who worked for us? Oh, look at that, a nationwide search and they happened to be in house the whole time. But the same firm is the one that brought Johnny Jennings in and apparently the city attorney Andrea Leslie fight and the placement of Shahid Reina as Director of Economic Development in Charlotte, who came from Mecklinberg County. Ath so there's that too, 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 thepetecallnershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.