Yes, NC lawmakers are telling Charlotte to prioritize safety (12-01-2025--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 thepetecleanershow 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 the other day, the Mecklinberg County Commissioners invited a bunch of the officials from the local judicial system to come talk about the impact of Arena's law law signed into a bill that was signed into law by the Democrat governor Josh Stein. I mean, he waited the full ten days to do so, but he signed it. And I'm going to get now into the impacts on the jail because Mecklinberg County Sheriff Gary not my fault. McFadden was lamenting to the commissioners how this is going to impact the jail. And it is going to impact the jail, no doubt about it. Okay, no doubt about it. It's going to impact the court system because they've been allowing a lot of people to leave and that has kept the jail population lower. And they admit this. They have been using a strategy for twenty years. They called it a risk based system, which has been another failure. They've been using this rather than a charge based system, as I mentioned in the last hour. And so their model in Mecklimber County is not working. And this is the state saying to the local jurisdictions, your model has failed. You need to prioritize public safety in a different way, and here's how you're going to do it. And the local officials are upset because we have all of these things that we want to spend the money on and now we're not going to be able to because the state is telling us to do this stuff and it's going to cost us money. And that means we have to cut stuff that we value at a higher level. And to which I say, that is correct. Yes, this is the state forcing you to put a higher prioritization on criminal justice. So here is Gary not my fault, McFadden, our illustrious but often frustrated sheriff. Ever, the hero or the victim right, never his fault or anything. And he complained of how he was not even consulted by the state legislature when it drafted the law. So most of the people who have spoken, and we will also speak, most of these going to be from paper. And what I mean they're speaking from an aspect of paper and function of the criminal justice system. We're going to be functioning twenty four hours a day. It's not nine to five to us, and it's not paper, and it's not numbers to us. These are going to be people lives that we are going to be entrusted with even more. Okay, first off, are you telling me that the court system doesn't deal with people? The absolute arrogance and hubris of this man, like, Oh, it's much harder for us we're having to deal with people. Yeah, because because what the the cops aren't dealing with people when they're making the arrests. No, they don't deal with people, right are the judges and the district attorneys and the public defenders? They aren't dealing with the very same people they of course are. But you know, it's always worse for McFadden. He's always got bigger obstacles that he has to overcome, always the victim. This victimhood mindset that he's got. The main part is that we're going to be the main corporate of all of this in three oh seven. And of course it was created because of a stabbing on a bus light I mean on a light rail, and the law we had no put, no impact, I mean no input. We're never invited to a meeting to even think about how could this work through our system. So we're just coming on the tail end of it. Yeah, probably because they don't trust you and they don't think you have the same priorities as they do. Right the lawmakers and Raleigh, they know what your approach is, they know what your priorities are, and they don't agree with you. So there's there isn't any reason to include you in any of this. That's just a guess. I don't know that to be true, but that if I had to guess, that would be why. So the current state of the detention center is those numbers are going to change. Each time you see fifteen sixty, now it is fifteen eighty. We fluctuate every night between seventy seventy five people coming in and fifty going out. And that's the fluctuation of our detention center. On the average of every day, we cannot tell Pineview, Matthew's Midhill and anybody else how to not to arrest somebody, so they're going to be in and out of the facilit a lot of times. We don't understand when we talk about logistics, everybody now with detention center does not can be housed together. It is by classification, and classification sometimes is a very big burden. Also, we're going to talk about the jail capacity. When you heard missus Harper say functional capacity, we're at eighty five percent functional capacity today, but we are ninety nine percent operational capacity. So this is why you may see the issue about the word stack of bunks. Stack of bunks is where we have to put people on these bunk beds and their families will call in and say they are sleeping on the floor, but they are not actually sleeping on the floor. They're actually on what they call a. Stack of bunk. Okay, So I've seen a picture of these things. It's basically a plastic cot Okay. It sits about six inches off the ground, it's got a mattress in it, and then when you're done sleeping, you pick it up and you can see. It's not like these are bunk beds. Okay, that's so, that's what people complain about. My oh, you know, my baby is sleeping on the floor in the jail. And they're not sleeping on the floor. They're on one of these cots, these plastic formed cots with a mattress in it. That's what they're actually sleeping on. Because there are capacity issues. Again, there were twenty two thousand bookings at the jail last year and that number is expected to increase. But we also have to remind you that we are still fighting a House Bill three eighteen, which is the immigration bill. And so what happens with the immigration bill after a judicial official a magistrate has deemed that a person has fulfilled all of their obligation to be released from the Meccnburg County Detention Center, House Build three eighteen now mandates us to hold them an additional forty eight hours. So after a signed the release, they will be held inside the detention center for an forty eight hours, and that is going to cause some cumbersome more problems. We're dealing with all these other people that we have to have inside and outside, and when we're talking about IBC artists. We will be responsible for the transportation as it stands now. And additionally, most people do not recognize this, but my deputies take care of people back and forth to the hospital each and every day because of their medical conditions that they have to have treated. So all of that is on top of the law and also the immigration immigration bill. Right, so what is the forty eight hour hold? Well, that's what the state law or the bill because it hasn't been hasn't been overridden. The veto that Josh Stein did has not been overridden. It would require them to hold the illegal aliens for an additional forty eight hours. And so he's saying, this is going to be an even bigger problem. Correct, Why you guys are artificially deflating the capacity numbers by releasing people. Right, if you had the space, you would house them, but you don't want to house them, You don't have the space, you don't want to build more space, so you're keeping the numbers low by releasing a lot of people. Right, That's what this That's what it sounds like to me. He says, they're going to need more personnel, and they're going to need more funding and that's not coming from the state, so that's going to have to come from Mecklenburg County. Correct commissioners then got to ask like one or two questions a piece. Mostly they complained about the unfunded mandate from the state. What is that additional cost? Well, they don't know yet. We cannot tell people not to arrest anyone, but the community has to have an input that people don't continuously come to jail to be incarcerated. We haven't looked at how can we decrease that, and that will decrease my workload, that will decrease their workload, and that's definitely to increase the courthouse workload. We have to tap into the community. How can we be a better community and provide the services so people will not continuously come to jail to be incarcerated. There you go, that's the philosophy. We don't want them to be taken to the jail in the first place. That's the philosophy. We have to tap into the community with more violence interrupters than such. When you understand the philosophy, the outcome makes sense. Right. He doesn't want there to be people in the jail at all. And I'm not saying we should lock up innocent people. But I am saying, though, is that if people have proven that they cannot behave in a civilized society, they cannot follow the general norse forms of a society, then they need to be removed from the society. That's my philosophy. If you engage in anti social behavior and you're hurting other people and taking their stuff, then you have abdicated and surrendered your rights to further participate in that civilized society. 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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Let me jump over and chat with Craig. Hello, Craig, Welcome to the show. May be Hey, what's up. I've noticed. I've noticed three things that artificially created problems in this country that the Democrats are the ones behind it. One is the expansion of fission based nuclear power fuel refineries and building new prisons. They seem to always behave that prisons are fixed, that there's a fixed number of cells, and if we need more, we can't build more. We could alleviate all this overcrowding problem if we were to just build more prisons, and if we it's a supply demand. If we have more criminals, we need more prisons. Right, one would think yeah, one would think that's obvious. And I'm reminded of an axiom that I heard recently, where we you know how much time could be saved if we didn't have to deal with every single argument, beginning with Democrats pretending not to understand the issue. It's like it is, yeah, like, oh, we don't have enough jail space. Okay, why don't we build a jail. I don't understand why would we need to build a jail, Like, well, because you just said we don't have jail space. But again, it's like the fundamental assumption there, as you heard from McFadden in that last clip, they don't want more people coming to jail. They want a jail population of zero. And some of the more radical elements of their base they will come out and say that this is the decarceration movement right. They don't believe there should be any jails at all, which. Is bizarre, Yes, very bizarre. Yeah, Craig, I appreciate the call, buddy, thank you. Email from Bill he said I was attending Oh wait, this is sorry a subject line to add to caller Jeff's prior comments about prioritization and where's all the money going. I attended the Panthers game yesterday. Great game, by the way, Carolina Panthers. I was awe struck at the amount of advertising that Blue Cross Blue Shield was spending, including warm beanie hats for all of those in attendance. Yet we wonder why insurance rates costs so much, insurance healthcare the pharmaceutical company should be outlawed to advertise. Yeah, it does make you wonder when you see that kind of because I mean, what's a beanie cost? What even if it's two bucks? How many people were in the stands there? It's capacity seventy thousand? Like that adds up, you know, not that I think there were seventy thousand people there. They may have been. Was it sold out? I don't even know. Yeah, all right, I got time for this clip. Let me do this. This is not my fault. McFadden, our sheriff, lamenting that there is no additional funding provided in the law. If you go back, if you go back to the forty eight hour whole rule for the House Bill three eighteen for ice to hold and undocument a presumably undocumented immigrant for an additional forty eight hours at the cost to the Mecklenburg taxpayers at three hundred and ninety eight dollars per hole. That cost is on you now. So we're not looking to get a cost when you're talking about numbers. When this law was mentioned, only mentioned, our population went up one hundred and eighteen at just the mention of it went up one hundred and eighteen, and it was the highest that it has ever been as me being sheriff at sixteen oh nine. That's one six hundred and nine people in housing side of detention center. So that's just the mention of it that caused that increase. I belive it. Okay. I don't even know what he's trying to get at there. Just make whatever assertion you're trying to make. I don't understand. Why was that from the hold? Was that from the immigration bill? Was that from Marina's law? Like? What are you talking about? Wow, miss lawyer? Oh my god, Laura. Mike, thank you, thank you very much. That was my big question was being an unfunded mandate. I just really want the public to understand and I just want this to be honed in on that we're being forced to do all this without money from the state. Correct correct, Yes, okay. And so I'm assuming that in our as the budget cycle starts, this is going to be something that we're going to be seeing. We're going to be seeing your request rise a little bit. Correct, correct, Okay, I just want to make I want to mind you. Of course, today we're discussing this house build legislation and the fiscal impact. You're kind of shifting to the fiscal discussion, but be mindful that you're going to have other competing needs as well, Yes, to support your priorities also, So I just want to manage your expectations and be mindful of that as you provide feedback and direction and guidance that this is just one piece of the larger pie as well. Yes, again, this is the state legislatu. You're telling you you have not adequately prioritized this element of your responsibility public safety, right, you have put other things above this on a prioritization scale. And that means yes, I means you're going to have to make some cuts to these other priorities. Or here's my prediction. They're going to blame the state and they're going to raise everyone's taxes and they're going to say, not our fault. Vote out the Republicans in Raleigh. And I say this because that's what every single local government body that's controlled by Democrats have done over the last fourteen years when they fail to prioritize the number one priority that they're supposed to be funding, and they fail to prioritize it, they then blame the Republicans in Raleigh for why they have to raise your taxes to fund the things that they're actually supposed to be doing. 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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He's a former Navy jag officer, special assistant US Attorney also, when he's not doing all of the lawyer stuff, a national best selling author. To boot, Hey, Don, how are you, Pete? Thanks for that. I'm doing well. You're too kind. As a matter of fact, I'm standing in the long line of the border elections in Raleigh and step down the line just to talk to you, because you're doing special. Even if I got to go back to the end of the line, it's good to be with you. Why would you do that? Oh my gosh, we could have booked this at a different time. Done. You know? We love BT. I've been a BT fan all my life when I used to listen to the Tar Heels one hundred years ago, what he Durham? So, yeah, you two p well, I appreciate it. I missed this opportunity, you bet. So. A lot of people don't know that you're running for US Senate. But in order to run for that federal office, everybody's got to go to Raleigh to file. That's right. Yeah, Well, you've got the federal officers, in other words, congressional candidates. The judicial candidates are here. I see Judge mczeenie here and some others and and uh, North Countine Legislature believes here too. So we've got quite a quite a long line here on the very first day. But we just wanted to get it out of the way and continue to move on after this, so we just came on up and here we are. Yeah, alrighty, So, oh, did you see Roy Cooper, or as I call him, my good friend Ray. I've not seeing Governor Corn cob yet, but I don't know that he's here. But if he's here, I'll call I'll call it in, I'll take a picture, I'll let you know. P all right, I'll have a scoop on them before we out. That's all right, I appreciate that. Okay, So let's talk about today. The Arena's law was passed by the North Carolina General Assembly and it took him all the ten days, but the governor, Josh Stein, Democrats, signed it into law. It takes effect today. A couple of days ago, county commissioners had this big meeting with judicial officials talking about the impact of this law on all of their operations, and they're they're decrying the unfunded mandate from the state and how it's going to impact all of them at the local level. So I guess what's your what is your response to this, you know, to this this complaint that the state is now making the local jurisdiction bear the cost of implementing these tougher on crime policies. Oh look, you have a Democrat Order of Commissions in Meckenburg County and a Democrat sheriff wanting because they don't have to sufficient facilities when they could have taken ice detainers and turned them over to ice and considerably loosen the load and have created the problem themselves to a large degree by their approach toward you know, soft on crime, approach toward immigration. So I don't really have a lot of sympathy for what they are saying. We do have to Arena's laws a step in the right direction, as you know and your your listeners know, is designed to stop or at least slow down this revolving door policy of letting out you know, violent offenders, designed to end cash this bail and ending cash us bail is a positive step. How can the Democrats complain about that? And it's also designed to force mental evaluations for folks that tend to be just just you know, either mentally ill to the point they can't function. But it's it's designed to to address that issue as well. But we got to go farther and we have to pee. We've got to understand, we've got to have long term psychiatric facilities to hold folks because the criminal justice system principal goal must be to protect people on the street. And there are some people that you can't try it. You can't try them, you can't put them back on the street. So both the federal and state governments are eventually going to have to come together. We close down Dorothea Dickt's hospital, we're going to have to reopen hospitals like that and get to work on that roller sleeves up. Yeah. Well, and that's going to require obviously funding as well. That would I would argue that would be a state funding issue, and it would be a federal funding issue. Sure, but how do you build the consensus to get that stuff funded? Even though I think now there is there may be a window of opportunity here for Democrats because of their rhetoric against like Arena's law, saying that we need to focus on mental health. Well, okay, the involuntary commitment portion of the law doesn't take effect until next year, So why not use this as an opportunity to build some bipartisan coalition. Right? You got to have long term syscast facilities for folks who cannot be tried. If this guy that killed Areena had been a long term psychiatic facility, she might be alive. But look, here's the thing. We're gonna have to prioritize short term how we're spending money. I was in Durham the other night and spoke with the Democrat candidate from mayor there, and they have this thing called the Heart program where they put a shriek in the car with with with police officers and other words. They're putting, you know, counselors in the car with police officers, paying them a salary. Cut that salary and use it to fund these more urgent criminal justice matters designed to protect people. So the Democrats can whine, we're gonna have to cut a lot out of the budget is designed for social fluff and all that kind of stuff in order to make you know, to make the dollars available for it. It's going to be a matter of prioritizing to put public safety first and not a bunch of this woke mumbo jumbo to the governments are funding right now. Well, and I think this is this is the problem is that they, you know, Michlmure County has been running a model for about two decades now. Yeah, and they called it a risk based system and it's now flipped to a charge based system. And in my understanding of listening to this presentation the other day, that just tells me that the Mecklenburg model has failed. And that the locals have not been prioritizing, you know, the construction of another jail. They do not want to build. Democrats do not want to build another jail, despite the fact that we've got this massive population growth, and they think that well, with all of the people coming here that were not going to be like having you know, new criminals move into of course we will. You know, you know, Pete Aftra Arena was murdered. Our campaign was the only US Senate campaign to call for President Trump to see the National Guardian. About two weeks after that, the Charlotte Police union paternal part of a police lodge gone also call for the National Guardian. I talked to the president of that of that lodge, and he was telling me that Charlotte has fewer police officers today than in twenty eighteen with a population of sixty thousand more so that there's a strang on law enforcements and these fluff programs that have failed. We got to cut the money for that and spend that money on housing for people that need to be off the street. You know, not every person who is who last capacity to stand trial is dangerous, Pete, but some are, and those folks You can't just bring them in and bring them out because they don't have capacity. You got to find a place for That's why long term criminal psychiatric facilities are what we're gonna have to look at. But for the short term, we got to cut this fluff stuff. It is that the Democrats want to keep funding, but they don't want to send spend any more money on housing dangerous people. Would you consider would you consider fluff spending to include the recording studio that Sheriff Gary not my fault McFadden built at the jail. Is that fluff there? You go, I just throw you a little softball, Pete, and you knock it out of the ballpark with a basically load of don't you brother? Yeah, well, I mean that's an easy one. Yeah, that's the type of thing we know. We really need a doge at the local level to go into this county and city government and just cut the crap spending. Just like you you describe. We we can loosen up the money to enforce this law, but the Democrats don't want to talk about that. The don't want to talk about all the junk they're spending money on and all the all these fluff programs and all these woke programs that do nothing other than sap money from me and you and all the other hardworking citizens of the area. Don Brown, he is a candidate for US Senate here in North Carolina and the Republican primary. And Don, thanks so much for your time. I feel terrible that you got out of line, So go get back in line and go go file to run, sir. We'll do it. Pete, my best, all my friends at BT talk to you soon. All right, man, see him? That is all right. That's Don Brown. By the way, you can get more information on Don at his website, Don Brown four NC, and that's spelled out fo R Don brownfoenc dot com. 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. From a Twitter message, Russ says, Sheriff Gary, not my fault. Mcfatten makes it sound like one hundred and eighteen folks suddenly decided to get arrested and they heard about the law, rather than framing it as one hundred eighteen people who would have been released who probably shouldn't be. Also, I am so weary of government neglecting core responsibilities for shiny new things and feel good stuff and then squeezing us from more taxes to cover the basics. Right, And that's how you end up with the pattern of conservatives and Republicans moving out of urban areas as it becomes more and more urban. Right as the city grows and gets built up, people who and they prefer lower taxes and focusing government spending on core services. They leave because they see that the core services are not being funded and their taxes keep going up to pay for stuff that they didn't want. And then you have people who move in because they want to take advantage of all of the government services that are being paid for via tax dollars off of the businesses that conservatives built. It's a cycle. But let me talk about the budget real quick. Because County Commissioner Lee Altman, she said she mentioned state funding of the criminal justice system. I don't know where she got this data point from. You're going to hear her mention it, but she talks about state funding of criminal justice in order to pivot to more mental health funding. Our first duty the state, federal government, local government is public safety. That is our first obligation. And yet I was just confirming the statistic. My understanding is the state of North Carolina has allocated a paltry two point eight percent of the state budget to the criminal justice system. And you know, Sheriff McFadden said, you know, how do we decrease workload? How do we prevent people from continuously coming to the jail? And we know that a huge part of the jail population have mental health issues, and so this is really something that we need to think about on a bipartisan basis. We want to be safe all of us, and we need to do that by having the resources to prevent tragedy. Okay, So I don't know what she's talking about. Two point eight percent for the criminal justice system. The criminal justice system actually makes a lot of money. It does. It makes a lot of money with fines and court costs and all of that stuff. But I'm look, you want to increase funding for criminal justice. Sure, but let's look at the numbers. North Carolina's budget total two point sorry, twenty seven point nine billion dollars almost thirty billion dollars okay per year. Education takes up like fifty nine percent of that, Health and Human services takes up another twenty four percent, and then coming in third at twelve and a half percent, Justice and public safety three point five billion dollars, okay, twelve point four percent. Let's take a look now at the Mecklenburg County budget. Mecklenburg's total budget two point five billion dollars. You know what they fund more than Justice in public safety? Parks and rec. The Justice in public safety budget in Mecklenburg County is two hundred and eight million dollars or eight point three percent of the total budget. Okay, two oh eight. Parks and rec gets two Sorry, parks and rec gets two hundred and seventeen million, So almost nine million more goes to parks and rec than Justice in public safety. So who's actually prioritizing more? Right? Also funded to a higher level government facilities at three hundred and sixty million, health and human services four hundred nine million, and education at one billion dollars. A billion dollars a year. Mecklenberg County funds for education to wait for justice in public safety? And what did she just say at the beginning of that clip, Let me rerack it. We'll take a listen. What is it again? Our first duty the state, federal government, local government is public safety. Your first duty is public safety, but your number one priority is education number two, Health and human services number three, government facilities number four, Parks and rec and number five public safety, which is weird if that's your number one duty. Now, I'm not advocating we spend a billion dollars on justice in public safety. That's probably not necessary. But to make the argument somehow that the state is the reason why you have the public safety system that you have in Meclimber County, that's not true. It's just not true. Once again, local governments are administrative units of the state, and what the state is telling you here is that your priorities are not currently and have not been, in line with what the state legislature is prioritizing. They want the state lawmakers want the locals to increase the prioritization of public safety because you have obviously proven that you don't want to. That's why you haven't built another jail. You don't want to, right, That's it. If you wanted to build another jail, you would have built another jail by now. But you don't want to build another jail, hence you haven't. In fact, you closed one jail north. Right. You don't want these facilities because your incentives in the Democrat primaries and to win the general races in Mecklimber County as a Democrat is to appease this not small part of your base that does not want any incarceration. 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.