The freakout over fighting crime in DC (08-12-2025--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 of the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendarshow 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, so, one of the last hour we were talking about mass transit. Obviously, Mecklimburg County has this big referendum coming up to add a penny to the sales tax to pay for this big transit plan. But one of the issues associated with mass transit is safety is crime because the use of mass transit relies on a high trust society. Okay, otherwise nobody rides it. People will not ride in a you know, in a cylindrical coffin with forty fifty sixty other people if there's no guarantee of safety, or if you know, there's if there is some sort of violence that erupts that there's then no justice for the victims, and so people will not put themselves into that situation when they have other means available to them. Right, So, if you have high crime, if you have the perception of high crime, if the perception is that the mass transit system is not going to be safe for you, and you have a vehicle, you're not going to ride mass transit and you're not going to vote to raise taxes to support more of the mass transit. Look. I grew up on Long Island, New York, and about oh, probably three quarters of a mile from my house out on the island was the Long Island Railroad. Now, I did not have a stop that was near there that that was just the tracks, But I could go to the next town over, and people did this all the time. They had station cars, not to be confused with the station wagon, which was usually used by people who didn't take it to the train station. The station cars were like these were beater cars. You would take like you would find some five hundred dollars nineteen seventy two Honda Civic and I say that because that's what I owned, and actually mine was a seventy seven. But you would take this to the train station. You wouldn't even lock the doors, if they even locked it all, no air conditioning, no heat. Right, the thing barely got you to the station. The point was that you could leave it there all day and nobody would steal this thing. And you didn't use it if you were going on a trip. You were you know, in your home on the weekends. You didn't drive it any other time except to the station. And the trade off there is that you get on the train and then you ride it into the city if you're working in the city, and a lot of people do that. They live out on the island, they have a better quality of life. They get on the train and then they drive, they ride it into the station, and you could go in a car. They got like the quiet cars now where you go in there and you're not allowed to talk, dimly lit, you know, can't play music out loud, that sort of thing, and they actually have a conductor that walks through and you know, takes your ticket, you know, stamps it or whatever or punches out the little card and you know, enforces the quiet car stuff. And the trade off on all of this is just to say that you can go in there and you can read, you can sleep right, you can watch a movie like you get your time back that you would otherwise spend sitting in traffic, and so that is part of the equation as well. But if you don't feel safe going to the station, parking the car at the station, someone's going to steal your car or slash the tires or something. You're going to be accosted at the station, You're going to be attacked on the subway car, you have to walk multiple miles after you get to the city, or you've got to make multiple transfers. Like, all of these things factor into the equation, and safety is a very big part of it, which is why I think Democrats are completely stupid to be having this meltdown over Donald Trump sending troops and taking over the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, d C. First off, it's a federal district. He is he can do this, It's he can only do it for thirty days. Then Congress has to, you know, has to give him permission to continue to do it. But I gotta believe that deep down, a lot of the people that are complaining about this are secretly kind of happy that somebody is going to do something thing about the crime in Washington, DC. And like we keep hearing these stories. We see the stats and they're trying to gaslight us, saying, well, actually, our crime stats are down. And I went over this the other day. You had the NBC story from a month ago that reported how a commander had been suspended for falsifying the crime data they've been and the report said that there were all these anonymous sources, and one on the record was the local chapter of the FOP that was saying that they're juice in the stats. They're falsifying the data. When they go to a scene and it's a violent attack of some kind, it's you know, some sort of a bad crime stat they'll they'll mark it down as a lower offense so it doesn't get registered as a violent crime, and then it doesn't get reported to the FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics. That's a problem, right, That's a problem. And Donald Trump said this at his press conference yesterday. I just want to play this clip real quick and tell me if this sounds like a familiar philosophy that he is expressing here. You know, my father always used to tell me I had a wonderful father, very smart, and he used to say, son, when you walk into a restaurant and you see a dirty front door, don't go in, because if the front door is dirty, the kitchens dirty. Also, same thing. With the capital. If are capital's dirty, our whole country is dirty, and their all respect us. So it's a very good question. Yeah, what is that. It's a form of the broken windows philosophy of policing. If you care about the little stuff, it sends a message that you care about the big stuff too. In fact, you care about the big stuff even more. You know, if you allow people to do things that create chaos and so disorder in your high trust society, people lose trust because the bad actors, the sociopaths and psychopaths among us, they will take every inch you give them. They will continue to behave in antisocial ways, and the people who are not antisocial will now remove themselves from the equation. There was a story that the president of El Salvador told Okayley is his name, and he was asked about this crackdown on gangs and cartels and crime in general, and he talked about you know a guy who grows tomatoes I think he said, was the example, and takes them into the market to sell, and he may be there all day long trying to sell the tomatoes from the farm, and he may sell five dollars worth of tomatoes, and on the way back from the market, he gets attacked by the gang and they take his five dollars. So what is the message that the farmer now takes away from this? It is better for him to go and take five dollars from somebody else who's selling their stuff than it is to actually do the work and play by the rules and engage in commerce. And when you have enough people. That decide that that is the preferred path because that's what's being rewarded or at least, you know, not enforced, then you have a breakdown in your society. Then all you have is like Gangland. That's not a high trust society. Right. Your number one job as gov CO is to provide the umbrella of security to allow for commerce among free people to occur. And if you can't get that right, City of Charlotte, Washington, DC, then you need to reprioritize the other things that you are doing that is distracting you from this core service. It is the thing, the only reason why people band together and create a government power in the first place. That's it. Mutual defense, that's it. If you can't provide that, you have no reason to exist. It's not for the buses, people, it's not for the trains. It's for mutual protection, enforcement of law, for violators, punishment. 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 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. Here is a message from Mark. It's a Pete mail. Pete. The DC mayor Muriel Bowser of the of the What Mario Brothers fame is stating that violent crime is way down, the lowest in thirty years. However, murders are at record levels. That's because you can't juice a murder stat it can't be shown as a lesser offense. That's exactly right. It's a great point, Mark. It lays bare the fraud that are the DC crime stats. Right they keep talking about in their defense of DC and in opposition to the you know Orange Hitler that how dare he help us police our streets when we've got we've got a violent crime that's way down. Yes, because the commander who just got suspended was falsifying and apparently this has been running rampant. They've been declassify, not declassified, but. They've been what would I say that to demoting or something like they they define it down right, they're making them less serious offenses at the point of the police report, so it doesn't get coded as a violent crime. Hence the miraculous turnaround. But here's the thing, if you even compare it to twenty eighteen, it's still higher than it was before COVID twenty eighteen. I see them talk about twenty nineteen, but it's still higher. It's been going up and up and up and up. And by the way, the carjacking numbers are through the roof, it's like four hundred five hundred percent increase. So President Trump announced that he was federalizing the police force in Washington, DC and mobilizing the National Guard to clean up the streets of the district. Washington, writes David Strawm at hot air dot com, as one of the most dangerous cities in America. It's in the same basic category as Chicago, New Orleans, and Saint Louis. Its murder rates exceed those of Bogata and Mexico City, both famously dangerous cities. The city, which famously puts taxation without representation on its license plates, also wants to be a state. If it were its own state, it would be the most dangerous state in America. DC has a higher violent crime, higher murder, and higher robbery rates than all fifty states, recording a homicide rate in twenty twenty four of twenty seven and a half murders per hundred thousand residents. It also experienced the nation's highest vehicle theft rate, with eight hundred forty two thefts per hundred thousand residents. Eight hundred forty two thefts. That is three times the national average. So they're part of that average, which they drive up, and there's still three times more than that. The District of Columbia is, by some measures, among the top twenty percent of the most dangerous cities in the world, not to mention the fact that DC is cooking the books to make things look better than they actually are. One thing the establishmentarians are saying is that they don't care what happens to people as long as those people aren't themselves. Basically, it's been amazing to watch all of these quote unquote elites. I got to come up with a better word than that elites. Fo leats these folites right, because they think they're elites, but they're not. Okay, and they're like, oh, what is all upset about? I work in DC every day, and I go in there by an uber and I don't ever have any problems whatsoever. And I live in Arlington, Virginia, and it's no problem to me. Yeah, so a problem to you because you don't live there and you don't take mass transit in I got a quote here. Hang on, let's play this quote. See if you can peg who this is. It's from a couple of years ago. But take a listen. Driving home, my staff lives here in the hill reminded me, don't stop at a stop light until I'm out of town if I see a red light late at night, since there's very little traffic slow up at the other block, so I never come to a full stop except in the middle of the block. Because of carjackets. Stopping to light, people standing in a corner walking up with a gun. Do you know who that was? Can you tell? It was from nineteen ninety two that my friends is Senator Joe Biden. Now, people in DC that are Democrats and media, But I repeat myself. They may claim that. It's not a problem at all, but I have seen reports that carjackers are now getting carjacked in d C too. That's how bad it has become by the way. I did this in nineteen ninety six, I believe it was I went to see The Grateful Dead Bob Dylan opened, and that's why I went, because I wanted to see Bob Dylan because I thought Bob was old and he was going to die, and I wanted to see Bob Dylan in concert before he died. And then a month later, Jerry died. But so we went to d C to RFK Stadium. And yeah, they checked our vaccinations and all of that before we went in. If you had that scenes then they wouldn't let you in. But no RFK Stadium. And we got lost because we didn't have map Quest or any GPS stuff. And we were driving around trying to get out of DC, and it was very late at night and it was summer. Windows were down, no AC in the car, and we're driving around. I stop at a stoplight and I hear some people on the corner saying, you're not from around here, and they said that because of our skin color in the vehicle and all of the Grateful Dead stickers on the car. Probably but they yeah. And so that was the last stoplight I stopped at in downtown DC. And that was thirty years ago. Okay, this is not a new phenomenon. People, 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 Asheville 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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This is from hot air dot com by David Strom, who points out that liberals cannot wrap their minds around the idea that Americans are tired of watching everything get worse. That is true. We are we are tired of it. I keep saying it. This is a choice. And now that enough Americans are choosing a different path, and that's what Donald Trump is reacting to. Donald Trump is giving voice to. Donald Trump is saying no, we don't have to live under these conditions. We can make these things better. And I think that's really the fear, is that people are going to see that the city becomes safer. People are going to feel safer, and then they may start wondering, well, why hasn't this been done before? Why aren't the people that we keep voting for, why aren't they doing these things? This is from the National Review by Rich Lowry, And I would just point out before I get into this, that San Francisco cleaned itself up for the commie leader of China, Winnie the Pooh, when he came to town. Right, why did they do that? How did they do that? How could they do that? Right? They obviously know what to do and how to do it, but they just won't do it for their American citizens. I mean, think about the contempt and the disdain that they must have for their own citizens to live under those conditions. But when the communist leader from China shows up with his jar of honey, and then it's like, well, clean the streets, you know, rouse the hoboes, get them all out of here, so it all looks nice and clean for the communists. So the communist gets to see that, he gets to experience the best foot forward in San Francisco, anyway, Rich Lowry says, At its best, Washington, DC is a city of timeless grandeur, of iconic monuments and world historical centers of power. At its worst, it's a harrowing place where a remorseless fourteen year old could steal your car. The Metropolitan Government of Washington has never been worthy of the seat of government of the greatest and most powerful nation that has ever existed. Ever, it's consistently been an embarrassment, and for decades now has tolerated and worse, created the conditions for disorderly and dangerous streets. He then runs through a brief history. The federal government had to put a financial control board in charge in the nineties because the district was on the brink of bankruptcy. In the grand scheme of things, Trump's intervention is more the norm than an exception in DC's history. Way back in the nineteenth century, Congress governed the district via committees before giving home rule a try in eighteen seventy one, and then it had to quickly pull back after the district was yes financially mismanaged. DC has enjoyed home rules since nineteen seventy three, although with the Financial Board exercising significant power from nineteen ninety five through two thousand and one. As usual, Lowry says, Trump is opting for the sledge hammer over the scalpel. Still, his indictment of Washington, d c. For allowing lawless young people to blight the city is accurate. The critics object that violent crime is actually falling in Washington. Yes, it is, although from an unacceptably high level. As of twenty twenty four, d C had the fourth highest homicide rate of major US cities and a higher homicide rate than all fifty states. Charles Layman of the Manhattan Institute points out that the city's homicide rate for young black men has been above the national average for decades. The killings overwhelmingly involve males who have already been entangled in the criminal justice system with substantial rap sheets and prison time. Layman cites a report by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform that found that about five hundred people that are identified. Five hundred people are in this category of you know, substantial criminal histories in prison time. These five hundred people account for sixty to seventy percent of all the gun violence in the city. They know who the people are. The carjackings tend to be carried out by miners. And I actually have a text here from Ellen who says miners are not included in the DC numbers. Yeah, those go down as auto thefts, right, which are violent. Carjackings are violent. Layman argues that the the DC cops or sorry. The DC needs more cops who are more active making stops, making arrests, and there need to be more prosecutions. Right, if you do not punish the anti social behavior, you will get more of it. And people who heretofore were not antisocial and did not engage in that behavior, they will see no reason to not join with the anti social behavior if they don't leave. It is a rational response, right, It is rational to do so if like, Okay, well this is the way it is, and my government's not going to protect me, then I'm going to engage in the behavior because why not. You offer no incentives to get people. Off of that career path if you will and onto a legit one. Don't know who this is from. On the text line, I lived in Charlotte my whole life, forty six years. I rode the light rail when it was new and vagrants didn't pay their fares. Then these pro trained liberals have no clue. Who will ride straight into their safe quote unquote safe suburbs. That's always been the argument against mass transit is that you now allow a criminal population to spread out more whereas before it may have been localized. And by the way, at the heart of this crime issue is the victims, and the people who are most victimized by these soft on crime policies are the poor and minority neighborhoods. They're the ones that bear the brunt of this. 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 generations. 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This is the Washington DC Police Chief, Pamela Smith. They're doing a news conference and Smith was apparently formerly before she became chief, she was the chief equity officer at the Metro PD. And she was asked a question by a reporter and see if you can spot something. That is suboptimal. Let's say, does what the share of command is? Now? What does that mean? Quote? Is it cam Bondi's Greeks does his work? So? Okay? So now they bring in the mayor. So she has asked, so can you explain what the chain of command is now? And her response is what does that mean? She is the chief of police and does not know what the chain of command means? Doesn't know what the term means. Guys, I think I think I may know the problem. In DC. Raphael Mangul he is the he's a contributing editor at the City Journal, and he does public safety issues for the Manhattan Institute, and he says a good portion of my work has been focused on trying to remind people that poor mostly minority neighborhoods bear a disproportionately large chunk of America's crime problem. The collateral consequences of violent crime for a community are enormous, and not just for the immediate victims. The ripple effect goes far beyond what most people who casually take positions on criminal justice policy have ever considered. It's long past time for conservatives and other quote unquote tough on crime folks to reoccupy the moral high ground in these debates and take up the job of defending the pro social against the anti social. Bottom line, there is absolutely nothing moral about failing to meaningfully incapacitate repeat offenders who have exhibited through a long pattern of criminal conduct, that they will not play by society's rules. He's exactly right people who are talking about soft on crime policies and why they should be adopted, people that want to just treat the judicial system as a turnstyle for repeat, repeat offenders. You do not occupy the moral high ground. You are revictimizing entire communities of people. It's grotesque. It's more grotesque given that you promote yourself as the caring one that you care more about these very neighborhoods and communities that you allow to be repeatedly victimized by the same people, over and over and over again. Which brings me to the District Attorney of Mecklenberg County who has announced that there will be no charges against police officers Charlotte Mecklimberg police officers in the shooting death of Reggie Allen Knight. This occurred on March seventh. It started at about four point forty in the afternoon March seventh, at one two five two four, Headquarters Farm Road in Charlotte. Earlier that day, CMPD received a nine to one to one call stating that Reggie Knight was wanted by police and had recently been seen at this residence. Six cops respond to the scene. Prior to approaching the house, the officers met at a nearby location and they briefed right, they looked at they got the photo of him right, they pulled his rap sheet and stuff, and they worked out their plan. This guy had unserved Mecklenberg County arrest warrants four possession of meth, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, carrying a concealed weapon, resisting a public officer, possession of drug paraphernalia, communicating threats, domestic violence, two counts of assault on a female, assault with a deadly weapon, and assault by strangulation. Unserved warrants on this guy. Additionally, he had pending orders for arrest for a felony probation, violation, intoxicated and disruptive behavior, driving while license revoked, and driving while impaired. Three cops go to the front door. One places himself on the right side of the house, one on the left, one in the backyard. They ring the bell. The mother answers the door and lies to the police and says she hadn't even seen her son in a while. Meanwhile, her son is leaving out the second floor, comes out on the deck, proceeds down the stairs, starts making his way across the backyard. He's told to stop, he refuses. He starts to run, then he stops, turns around and opens fire on the cops. One of the cops hit in the leg, the other one got hit in the belt, but the belt stop the bullet, and the one cop that got shot in the leg takes the guy down, wrestles with the gun and gets it out of his hand. As his colleagues. Open fire on the suspect, killing him, which saved us all a bunch of court costs. 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.