Sheriff McFadden: "I don't like being sheriff" (10-22-2025--Hour1)

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 of 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. All Right, I gotta tell you I'm a little I'm a little excited. I'm well, okay, I'm cautiously optimistic. Let me temper my expectations here, because I got a little bit of good news. It's a little bit of good news as reported at the Charlotte Observer by Ryan Orley that Mecklenburg County Sheriff Gary not my fault. McFadden still has not decided whether he will seek re election. Please please, O, please please please, there's still a chance. We still have a chance. And I have an idea, because you know me, I'm all about solutions, and so I have I have an idea on how we might be able to improve the situation at the Sheriff's office. I mean, I don't want to say we're going to save lives here, but we're basically going to save some lives this if we can pull this off. Okay, all right, so hang on, but let me get to the details here in the story. There are three other Democrat candidates that have entered the race. The filing deadline is December nineteenth. So if sheriff not my fault, McFadden is going to run again, then he will have to file before December nineteenth. The primary is on March third. He said that he to decide sometime this autumn when he visits his childhood home in South Carolina and praise and reflects. Okay, and then he says, quote, is it necessary for me to still do this work? No? No, it is absolutely not necessary. You have earned your flowers, you have earned your retirement. You should take the w and ride off into the sunset, back to like wherever it is you're gonna retire, or if you're going back to your childhood home, or wherever it is that you see yourself go like write the next chapter of your life. You have won all of the awards that you can win. Really, at this point, I've seen. It's all about me wall. I've seen it, even though you did not. During that interview with the Charlotte Optimist publication the other day, like I don't when he was saying, I don't need all the recognition on my wall, and then he points to the wall where there is like and just innumerable number of awards hanging on the wall. So but yeah, so like you've already won all of these awards. You've you've been recognized, right, you've done all this great work. I mean, not any sheriff would have been able to put up a recording studio in the jail, right, I mean that was a big deal. You set up a bookmobile, I think, right, it's like that, Just bang up, work man. There's nothing else left to do. You've done it all. You've done it all, so best to go out while you're on top. He said. He is weighing the parts of the job that he likes, namely being in the community. That's the that's the part of the jobs. And apparently you are. You're just not able to be in the community if you're not a sheriff. I was not aware of this, But that's a pretty big deal. Now that I think about it, like, yeah, if you you know, you're really juiced up about being in the community and the only way to be in the community is to be a sheriff, then I mean it makes sense then that you would have to be a sheriff. So that's tough. Like, that's definitely one of the factors to consider here. He says, quote, I love what I do. I don't love being the sheriff. Huh. That is a heck of a campaign slogan. If you are going to run for reelection, I would advise you don't use that. That might send the wrong message there that you don't love being the sheriff, the job that you asked voters to give you, and you would be asking voters to return you to right, so you probably actually, you probably should. Not have said that. Do you know? That's he says, I love what I do, I don't love being the sheriff because you come with this crazy title. I don't even know what that means. Okay, I'm sorry, I don't even know what that means. You come with this crazy title. Sheriff is crazy. That's a crazy title. That's not a crazy title. What are he's talking about? I'm confused. Look, you said I don't love being the sheriff. You have now given all of the other Democrat candidates, and if there's a Republican that's running as well, you've given them all mailer material. That is, that's billboard material, as they say in the sports world. That stuff is going. To be That line is going to get hung on every campaign office wall, It's going to be put in all of the mailers, it's going to be put in any commercials, any digital ads. I love what I do. I don't love being the sheriff, which does kind of actually confirm Yeah, it confirms my suspicion. For almost a year now, former high ranking employees have publicly quit, sued McFadden, and complained about what they describe as a toxic workplace. The Sheriff's wife is not well and has spent time in the hospital recently, he said, and negative news coverage has been taxing on his family. He again called criticism from his former chief of detention quote the ultimate betrayal, which that is an improvement because he said the word ultimate instead of the ultipole, which we were not clear if that was a word. And then we later on that no it's not a word, unlike the word flustrated, which he did use also, but that actually is a word. I mean, it hasn't been used in like one hundred and fifty years, but it was. It's a combo word of like fluss straight or frustrated and flustered, word frustrated and so. Yeah. So see he's teaching people new stuff, and you taught me a new word. Although ultipole is not a word but ultimate, so he's using that where the ultimate betrayal, unless, of course the reporter cleaned that up for him. I'm not sure to join a race now. And add to it all, quote, why don't we just sit in our backyard and cook, he said of he and his wife. Yes, I like this idea for you. This is a fantastic next chapter for you, Sheriff Gary McFadden. Great idea, just to hang out, sit on the porch, watch the sunset, play with the grand kids. You can still it may take some doing. Maybe you can get like a special citation or something, or a permit to go out in the community without the title of sheriff or as you call it, the crazy title of sheriff. But you can probably find some place to do that, you know, somewhere where you can go into the community and do the work that you love. I mean, not being the sheriff, because you don't love being the sheriff, but you are considering staying the sheriff. So anyway, so I had this idea. He says, let's just sit in our backyard and cook. I'm thinking gas grill. I'm thinking we gift him a gas grill contingent upon his retirement. So if you want it, and I'm not saying just any gas grill, I'm saying like or I guess it could be charcoal or something. Maybe a fire pit, maybe a big fire bit that you could cook over. Oh, maybe like an oven like the pizza ovens, you know, the outdoor pizza oven thing that people built with the it's got the fire place in it, it's got a brick oven in it. We can get a gas line in there. I mean, we could go all out. We're gonna have to get some sponsors, probably raise some money. Oh you know that probably Actually we're probably not allowed to gift an elected officials something like this. It might be considered a bribe, which in this case it actually would be. That would be what we would be. Doing is to say, if you leave, we will give you this grill as part as a retirement gift. Yeah, it's probably not allowed. Cautiously optimistic. I am though cautiously optimistic. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generation. They help us process the meaning of life and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven in Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. 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William Allen is Government of Fail associate and grassroots Outreach coordinator at the John Locke Foundation John Locke dot org, conservative think tank, and he had a piece on a solution because once again, I am all about solutions, and I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but there's been some focus on Charlotte and North Carolina recently about our public safety concerns, which are mere perceptions. I am told by Charlotte city officials that people just have this perception of a lack of safety, and what they really want to say is that you have a misperception that you actually are safe, but you just erroneously believe you're not. Okay, that's what they say. When there's this perception that people have that they're not safe, and that means that they're not safe, Like, we don't want to minimize the fact that you don't feel safe, but you act actually are safe. So we're basically saying you're a liar, you're a bit paranoid. And it's the media's fault and all that. So he has some ideas the murders of the Ukrainian refugee and an aspiring teacher, brought to lightholes in the judicial system, including a lack of bail bond guides from magistrates. I've been talking about this for gosh, now it's actually been two months. Yeah, A let's see here. I got a press release from the Mechlammer County Republican Party that I guess an hour ago they held a press conference at the Government Center to mark the sixty day. Anniversary. I don't like that word for this, but to mark sixty days since the murder of Arena Zarutzka and the subsequent wave of violent crime that has plagued Charlotte. They mentioned the the murder of four year old Jace Edwards. That's the little boy that was sleeping at I think his grandma's house and some repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat offenders showed up to steal a car in the parking lot. Somebody in the house turned a light on or something, and then some repeat offender just fired off a bunch of shots at the house and struck and. Killed this little boy, killed him. And what did we hear the other day the fifteen year old with one hundred and eleven crimes in two years, and those are just the ones that they charged him with. Yeah, so it seems like a bit of a problem. On Monday, I went through the MacArthur Foundation and their grants that have helped to codify and train people in these quote soft on crime policies, and I talked about how the bail guidelines are set at the local level, and this is done by the judges that are in charge of the local district. Some judicial officials may be overwhelmed by the number of arrestees that are brought before them, so that could be why they're not you know, if it's a magistrate or something, and there they've got, you know, seventy people in front of them that got arrested on a Friday night and they're trying to blow through the paperwork and get people, you know, through the system as quickly as possible. Maybe they're not doing background checks on all these people. Maybe they're not looking at all of the information to make a better decision about whether somebody is or is not a threat to the community. Right, that's possible, But also some of these people might be lax in conducting a criminal background check on the arrestees. Why would they be lax? Well, the MacArthur found A has been doing trainings for people in the court system, helping them identify their implicit bias, right, and so what does that mean? Your implicit bias training is usually if like you are a white magistrate and a black person comes before you, or if you're a black magistrate and a black person comes before you, or if you're a Hispanic magistrate and a black person comes before you. Oh, I'm kidding, but that's basically what this stuff is. It's like, hey, you know what, this is a historically oppressed or aggrieved population. They've had all you know, as a race, they have had all of these problems against them. And so this individual who appears before us, we are going to go lighter on this person because some other people that shared some genetic similarity with this person in the past, hundreds of years ago, they were oppressed. So therefore this person now is going to get off on his you know, one hundred and ninth arrest. North Carolina needs to implement here's the recommend or one of the recommendations from William Allen. North Carolina needs to implement a statewide systematic guide for magistrates to use when assigning bail to an arrestee, and mandate that all magistrates conduct criminal background checks, including prior charges, prior arrests, and prior convictions on all arrestees that are brought before them. Right, so give it to him, like like I want this thing to look like a grid, you know, like here is the grid. This is like find the charge on the left side, how many priors? Here are the different circumstances. But here it doesn't need like this can all be done digitally. Like I am at the point now with this topic where like I would always want to kind of defer to the judges because you never know, like every case is different. You're dealing with an individual before you. So I get that magistrates are dealing with this individual, and the magistrate is just there to make sure that the person shows up for their first appearance, right, that's the point. They're not the judge. They just are there to ensure that this person shows up for court. And they may not have all the information, or the judge in charge of their district may tell them, Hey, if somebody comes in for this and it's a misdemeanor stalking charge, well you know, what Just give them a give them a release, cashless spail with a promise to appear, and I'm done with this. I'm sorry, guys, you've abused your discretion. And now I think the state needs to come in and actually set guidelines. And once you set all the guidelines, plug them into some program, let AI do its thing or whatever. And then somebody comes in, you pull up their rap sheet, feed it into the program and it'll tell you this is how much to charge for bond. And that takes all the racial bias. Out of this stuff. You don't need to do implicit bias training anymore. You have AI. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. 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Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. A text frum, Skip, he says, Pete the sheriff of Mecklemburg County, Gary, not my fault. McFadden is saying that he likes the power of the job, but not the accountability of being sheriff. I think that is accurate. Skip, Wayne says, you are killing it and making me laugh out loud about not my fault, McFadden. Well, thank you, Wayne, Glad Glad I could provide some comic relief. Here's a random seven oh four number who says, maybe that McFadden could use three hundred thousand dollars worth of one dollar bills to fire up to the grill. Oh, I see that's the Chief Jennings. Ah, the gas grill would probably be cheaper than the severance retirement go away hush money whatever that the Charlotte City Council paid to its police chief. I don't know if McFadden would get a similar kind of a bonus like that from the Mecklimburg County commissioners, because his is an elected position after all. All right, so. This is over at the John Locke Foundation by William Allen, offering a proposal statewide bail guidelines as well as background checks. He said, you know, last month the legislature passed House Bill three seven, called Arena's Law, named after Arena Zarutzka, murdered on the light rail line. Josh Stein did eventually sign it into law on the very last day that he could, and Alan says, while Arena's Law is a great first step in protecting the citizens of North Carolina. More needs to be done. Two critical needs would be to implement a statewide systematic bail slash bond guide. This would be a standardized evidence based reference with offense categories. It would give recommended bail ranges, and then it would give risk factors as part of it. See, and that's the thing. Once you compile all of that data and you put it into an algorithm of some kind and AI, as the kids would say, once you put it into a program like that, it could draw from the court records, the arrest records, the risk factors based on those you know, prior convictions, based on the nature of the charges they are facing. Right, it would pull that stuff in, and it would not pull in racial information, age information. Right, It wouldn't pull in that stuff, So you wouldn't have the human bias that we are told is institutional and systemic, even in and maybe more so in Democrat controlled court systems, which is a bit of a head scratcher. I thought they were the party that's against the racism, but yeah, I don't know. Then again, it was the Democrats, the ACLU that went and argued at the Supreme Court that white Democrats refuse to vote for black Democrats in primaries, and so they have to they have to have the protection of the Equal Rights Act there for the racist white Democrats in Louisiana. Anyway, I like this idea statewide guide. I would say, put it into some sort of a computer program. Somebody needs to develop this, somebody smarter than me, although it is my idea. So I'm copywriting it right now. Timestamp this audio, Nick, thank you very much, So it's right now. Okay. So now, if anybody does this, I'm going to get a residual. I think that's how that works. I've watched a lot of Shark Tank over the years. Okay. Also, he says, mandate that all magistrates in North Carolina conduct a criminal background check of each arrestee that is brought before them. Now, that obviously is going to impact turnaround times. Right, He does recognize that. He goes on to say the current process that magistrates in North Carolina used to set bail is often based on their own discretion, sometimes with very little data. This process can lead to inconsistent bail amounts, release of repeat offenders, and public safety concerns. Some counties in North Carolina have policies in place regarding bail ranges for certain felonies and misdemeanors, although they still allow magistrates to use their discretion. The sitting Superior Court judge and chief district Judge are the ones responsible for setting pre trial release policies for all of the magistrates that are in their district right. And if you listen to this program, you know this because I covered this two weeks ago, I think or three weeks ago. I went over some of the things I mentioned. How you stalking is something that you can just walk free on to continue stalking like that, That's absurd to me. If somebody is stalking a victim, you don't let them back out to continue the stalking. You need to be giving them some sort of a secured bond. He says that the judges are responsible for setting these policies so long as they do not extend beyond the provisions of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits successive bail and fines as well as cruel and unusual punishments. This process, though, is a bit problematic because number One, these policies can vary widely across jurisdictions, and we heard this also when there was the Congressional field hearing held in Charlotte, and there was a story told by I think it may have been it may have been Tim Moore, the former Speaker of the House now a member of Congress, and he talked about how somebody got arrested. Oh, it was him, And when he came into the studio and he told us the story about the guy who was arrested on the sexual assault charge at Belmont Abbey College, and he was first picked up in Mecklemburg County, and then when they went and brought him back to Gaston, he started crying because he knew it was a different structure in Gaston County. They were not going to let this guy back out onto the street. He thought he would be returning to the street in Mecklenburg. So that's number one. Number two, the policies are often vague enough to allow for broad discretion by the magistrates, and so either through incompetence or they're just harried, you know, they don't have enough time to go do the background checks on everybody or whatever, or they have an ideology that's like turn them loose, turn. Everybody loose for justice. Social justice. You know. There have to be some guardrails. Now, 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. Russ writes in on the Twitter machine, how about this pete we can offer, not my fault McFadden, a big green egg. Everybody I know who gets one goes all in on grilling and smoking like everything, and they pretty much disappear into their backyard. It's so true. That is so true. The big green egg. We could give Gary the egg. And it's green, so it's the same color as the as the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's office colors. Right, it's green and gold, I think. On the bail stuff, Russ says, is it crazy to say bail is only for first time offenders? If you have a criminal history, no bail. If it's a violent first defense, we could hold them at least until we can have a preliminary hearing like in self defense cases, and then decide if we are comfortable with them being out on preach trial release. Yeah, like I'm I'm okay with this idea. Yeah, if you're you're brought in and you've got a criminal record within the last say five years, you don't get to walk. You got to post some money. That is a ramification for your prior arrests. Especially And here's the thing too, people are getting arrested so often that their cases aren't even adjudicated, and they just keep racking up more and more and more arrests. So the idea from William Allen at the John Locke Foundation is number one, uh you uh, We've got to create a statewide bail bond guide. And number two, we have to make the magistrates conduct a criminal background check of every person that is arrested and brought before them. And he highlights the the reasons why the limitations of the current system. He says, even though current law does not provide a simple checklist for determining bail, it does mandate judicial officials to consider a specific list of factors when setting pre trial conditions pre trial release conditions. Those include the nature of the offense, evidence against the defendant, family ties, great show, financial resources, employment, character, mental condition, intoxication, length of residence, criminal record, history of avoiding prosecution in any other relevant evidence. While the decision for bail is always individualized, a few judicial districts use their own worksheets as a tool for structured decision making. And it sounds like that's what Mecklenberg does. I've seen the chart, so and I gave give you some of this stuff from the chart. During a bail hearing, the judge or the magistrate is supposed to evaluate public safety risks the defendant's likelihood of appearing in court, in other words, are they a flight risk or not, as well as arguments from the defense regarding community ties, why they're not going to flee, they have a job, or there are certain details. Of the case. Right to impose a secured bond, a judge or magistrate has to first consider the less restrictive options like unsecured bond or just personal recognizance release, and then the magistrate has to document the reasons for requiring a secured bond, especially if it is mandated by local policy. They're supposed to fill out this form, but sometimes magistrates don't have time to conduct the background check, and sometimes they simply choose not to do so. Mandating that would close this loophole. 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.