Zarutska family to sue over Charlotte light rail murder | Hour 3

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. Okay, so, the family of Arena Zarutzka is now planning to file a civil lawsuit as the one year anniversary of her death approaches. It's actually tomorrow. It was a year ago tomorrow, August twenty second, twenty twenty five, the twenty three year old Ukrainian refugee was stabbed to death aboard the Charlotte light rail line in South End to Carlos Brown Junior, charged with her murder. The planned lawsuit, and he, by the way, is deemed to be mentally incompetent to stand trial at this time, and so he's he's being treated with the expectation as if they can make him competent to stand trial to assist in his own defense because That's one of the things you have to be able to do if you're standing trial, particularly for murder with the death penalty on the table, you have to be able to participate in your own defense. And if he regains his mental capacity, then we can try him and maybe put him to death. But until then he is he's in the psych ward. So the family of Arena Zarutska is they've hired an attorney, and according to Queen City News, the planned lawsuit will target outside parties over a leg security and safety failures that the family believes contributed to the killing. Okay, so I don't know, so outside parties, I'm assuming that that is a reference to, Like, I guess the inside party. Would be to Carlos Brown Junior. Right. Outside parties would be the city Cats, the private security firm. Right. I guess those are the entities the outside parties that they would be suing over alleged security and safety failures. I assume it doesn't say in the story, and they have not filed the lawsuit yet, but the attorney, Lauren Newton, the attorney for the family, says, we know that violent crime was already an issue, and you can't turn a blind eye, you have to do something. And I agree, by. The way, like I don't know any other way to hold government officials accountable. And you're going to hear an example of this where they are constantly trying to deflect attention from the failures of the system. Right. And as my colleague Brett Winterble always. Says, oh, the system failed, system failed, right, I mean he says it in a mocking tone like this is the excuse that is offered up. So this way, no individual is ever held accountable. They just say, oh, the system failed, and you know, oh, we'll put together, you know, you know, some sort of a commission to review it, a blue ribbon commission even better, you know. So this is the way you hold these systems accountable for their failures. Earlier this week, the North Carolina State Auditor Dave Bullock released a report recommending that KATS install turnstiles or gates at every light rail station. I have been talking about this for a while. I was a. Reporter when the original light rail line, the Blue Line, or as we called it at the time, the mcquarie Line, when that was being built, and questions were raised at the time about the access points on the platforms. How are you going to. How are you going to restrict access to the trains if it's just an open air platform and anybody can get on, anybody checking tickets. And it was essentially built as an honor system. And twenty five years ago that wasn't that wasn't a huge deal. That was not one of the things that people really argued over at the time. People asked about it, and the explanation was, you know, from a cost perspective, this would keep down costs because you don't have to build i mean think about it, at every single stop along the light rail lines you have to put in turnstiles. Okay, well what does that mean. It means you actually have to build walls, right, you have to build some controlled access point, and that means walls like Donald Trump would like, you know, so you'd have to build either you know, gates or fencing or something to keep people out of the platform where they gain access to the trains. So that's the structure of some kind. Now you don't have to put a ceiling on it per se, right, you can just put up a fence around it and then put a turnstyle in so people have to go through the turnstyle, right, but it's got to be something. If it's a fence, people may be able to scale it, they could climb over it, which case, then you know you got to put like spikes and stuff on the top of it, maybe a couple of skulls as a warning for anybody trying to climb over. I don't know, but like you have to make them so that people cannot scale them to gain access to the restricted areas, or you build an actual structure. And so if you're building an actual structure along however many stops there are, I forget how many, was it like twelve or fifteen or something, Now that's going to run you millions of dollars in construction costs, right, and then ongoing maintenance, capital, replacement, all of it. So how or so at the time in the early two thousands, when the original light rail line was being built, people heard, Okay, it's you know, you're going to have the kiosks there and you're going to have to have it. You buy your ticket there, whatever, and you get on the train, and it was just sort of accepted that, all right, this this is the way it's going to be. Because I would submit back then we were more of a high trust society, so pitching it as an honor system was not as wild of an eye idea as it would be today. As it is today, I feel because now it's absurd. We now have enough evidence that this idea of open platforms anybody can get on it's absurd. And as we found out from the auditor's report, sixty percent of everybody on the light rail line doesn't pay. So we're basically running a free train system. And by the way, we have known this for some time. There are people who come to visit Charlotte and they write reviews, you know, they do blog posts or whatever, and they talk about the free train system. So even people who are not criminals or not trying to take advantage of the thing, people believe that the system is free to ride because if you get onto the platform and get on the train, you're from out of town and you don't know any better. You wouldn't know any better, you would just get on the train. So something should be done. And the auditor says you should look at installing turnstiles gates at all of the stops, because you're losing five to six and a half million dollars a year in fair evasion. Okay, so five million a year. Keep that number in mind as I go through this story, because it's going to come back. Okay, we were losing five million a year in fair evasion. The auditor spoke to Queen City News after speaking to the Charlotte Rotary Club on Tuesday, and he said, at some point there ought to be a mechanism to actually enforce the fares. Either that or there needs to be a public policy of eliminating the fares altogether. Right. And when I spoke with the auditor on the show the other day, I talked about this high trust low trust dynamic because it at some point, if I'm riding the train every day and I'm paying my fare and I find out that sixty percent of the people on the train don't pay, I'm going to stop paying, right because the message that you're sending to everybody is we're not going to check to make sure you paid. And if we actually somehow find out that you did not pay, there really aren't any ramifications for it. We collected like what five hundred to seven hundred dollars in fines for not paying. So we are losing five million, but we collected five hundred dollars. Okay, that math doesn't math right. So at some point, as a writer, I'm going to say I'm the sucker, right, I'm now not going to participate in paying for my ticket when sixty percent of my fellow writers aren't. The lawyer for the Zaruzka family said, you have to keep people safe, and the way you do that at a basic level is you enforce fares. You have physical barriers, you have validators, you have to collect the fairs. You have to have a plan, you have to have the guard on the train, you have to have something for deterrence. She's exactly right. I'll get into the cost of turnstiles and stuff here in a minute. And the argument that I suspect is going to be heard in this ongoing discussion. All right. For over a year now, you've heard me talking about Create a Video, great local company in mint Hill that has helped more than two million families preserve their memories by turning old photos, VHS, tapes, film reels and slides into lasting keepsakes. 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Remember last week, I guess it was or maybe two weeks ago, we were talking about the quote unquote teen takeovers, and you remember when the Charlotte mcklenburg police chief asked for a curfew, right, And what did we hear in reply that, Oh, no, you're creating more interactions between law enforcement and youth, particularly people of color minorities, right, and that's going to put them into the pre in pipeline. So we're we shouldn't be having this with the city council members. We're saying, like, I'm very concerned about increasing the opportunities for interactions with law enforcement and then they're going to end up in jail and their life is ruined like in all of this, Right, So they don't want to have interactions with law enforcement, even if the kids are breaking the law. They want to minimize the interactions. Okay, let's take that argument and apply it to the transit system. How do you go about limiting interactions with law enforcement in order to disrupt the light rail to prison pipeline. How would you do that, Well, I guess yes. One way to do it would be sort of our current effort, which is to just not have any cops, you know, on the transit system. That is one way to limit the interactions. Another way is turnstiles. Right, If you prevent people from getting on the train and limit the fair evasion, then you don't have the interactions with law enforcement. See, so that's your argument. You're actually making the argument for turnstiles, for creating restricted areas and preventing people without tickets from entering the platforms and getting on the trains. Right. The auditor pointed out that. You either need to actually enforce the fares, or if you don't want to enforce the fares, then there needs to be a public policy that eliminates the fares. But you can't keep doing this sort of two tier approach. Right. You're losing somewhere between five to six and a half million dollars in lost revenue. Each year due to fair evasion. Auditor Bullock acknowledged that adding gates could be difficult and expensive, particularly because many Charlotte light rail stations have multiple open air access points. I mean, it's not even access points. I mean, it's just it's a patio. Okay, It's just a patio next to the next to the rail line, right, he said. What I've heard in feedback is that it's hard and difficult to do. But just because something's hard and difficult doesn't mean we should not do it. Okay. So, Charlotte City Council member dimple Ajhmira. Is quoted in the Queen City News piece questioning whether spending millions of dollars on turnstiles is the right approach without more evidence that they would improve safety. She said, before we throw away millions of dollars in installing gates and turnstiles, we need to make sure that the evidence shows that it will help us keep our system safe. She said, CATS should instead focus on enforcing its exclusion list, which is intended to keep people who repeatedly violate transit rules from using the system. Okay, so many questions have I for example, if we are losing five million a year, what's the cost of installing turnstiles, gates, whatever. Just for the sake of discussion, I'm just going to keep calling them turnstiles. But that also includes whatever, you know, wall structure, fencing, or actual building has to be built as well. I'm just going to call it turnstiles. So what is the cost of installing a turnstile at one location? Do we know that cost? You should probably have that cost because at some point, right, if you are going to have an analysis about the efficacy of installing turnstiles, you should have a comparison to offset the five million or five to six and a half million in lost revenue, right, because if you build the structure, you're going to capture more of that revenue. Now, I don't think you're going to get five million because there are people who evade the fares that will not ride it now. Right, the only reason that they are on the train is because it's free to them. They are they're fair jumping. If you can't fair jump, you're not going to pay. Right, there's a certain population they're not going to pay to get on the train. So you're not going to capture one hundred percent of all of the lost revenue, but you're going to capture a lot of it. So what's that number? Look like, what's it cost to build a turnstile? And let's say it costs it is government, So let's say it costs four million dollars five million. That's just absurd. It's not going to cost that much. But like, let's say it cost a million dollars to build one of these structures, so you could in one year build five of them for the cost of the fair evasion losses. Right, So you're already losing five million if you build enough. And then over a couple years, and by the way, remember they increased their security budget. They went up to a twenty three million dollars security budget, twenty three million, so add that to the mix, because you wouldn't need a twenty three million dollar security budget if you're controlling access. Right, So at twenty three million. Dollars, you could probably take half of that and build build turnstiles on one leg of the line, right on the blue line. Next year, come back with another ten do the the red line. And then she says, we would be you know, before we throw away millions of dollars. Why do you say it's throwing away. Why is creating turnstiles throwing money away? You're improving safety. How do we know We have to make sure, we have to make sure, we need evidence that shows us it's going to help keep the system safe. Yeah, we have studies on this. There are studies. They've been done for a while, right, fair evasion when people treat it as the as the commons. This goes back literally hundreds of years. There's actually an economic theory principle built all around this idea. It's called the tragedy of the commons. Okay, when nobody owns something, they treat it like garbage. If they own it, they take better care of it. Right, So, if people are paying to access something, there is a different mindset of the user when they enter the space. Also, people who are criminal, people who are homeless, mentally unstable, addicts, right, they are no longer going to pay to get access to the train where it used to be a safe space for them to engage in criminality or bad behavior, anti social behavior, which, by the way, those behaviors, the anti social behavior, drives away ticket paying customers. So you would end up increasing ridership because now people do feel safe riding the train and now it's a good deal for them. See see how that works. Let's chat with Calvin. Welcome to the program. Calvin. How are you. I'm all right? Good? What's up? Well? You know, getting to argue at this point about why they don't want to spend the money to stop his free riders, But look, who's running the city. That's just another way that the taxpayers are footing the build to have poor black ride free every where they want to get, which is, ok. Yeah, it's not just breaking but yeah, but it's not just it's not just poor blacks, it's homeless white people. It's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean there's it's it's a multi it's an all racial. Thing, but it's primarily black. Look at who's so okay? So all right, so what's the all right, So let's say you're you're correct, you've got what uh your your allegation here is that black city council leaders and cats officials they want poor black people to ride the trains and be victimized by other black people. They don't care who they're victimized by. They just don't want to have to spend the money. And then, right, so the black thing then really is in relevant. It relates back to who's running the city. Right, But why why not? Why not? You've made the you've made the assertion. I'm asking you to defend your assertion. Well, but because black people are being victimized. Also, in fact, black people are victimized most by black people because most crime is intra racial. That happens everywhere in the city. It didn't have to be on the light rain. In fact, they're probably committing more crimes it gets their own race than they are. Right right, That's what that's That's what I'm saying. So I don't understand why black city council members would be wanting their own black people to be victimized. They don't want them victimized, but they want They don't know any other way to do it. They're they're getting all right, So I come back to my question, then, why is it a black thing? Why would you point out the race of the people. Well, they're willing to give up the assaults and whatnot just so that they can have free public transportation. That's the only way they could ever get it. If they tried to pass a law that says that they could ride free, they would probably get voted down. Right. You know who tried free public transit Atlanta, Asheville, Nashville. Asheville, North Carolina as as Asheville. Yeah, yeah, they were running free buses and there's like a think it's like maybe ten percent of the population is black up there, so it's that was not a poor black thing that I'm only pushing back on this thing because you seem to be wanting to sort of like blame black people for victimizing black people or something on the train system, and I don't think it's a racial thing at all. Now you you then shifted to Okay, well, then why even bother, why even bother saying it in the form in the why frame it like that as you did? Well, I don't think their intent was that they would be assaulted on these trun on these trains that they couldn't think that forehead. I think they were just they don't want to do it now, but they're getting hosed by the security company that they're paying millions of dollars to and they're not getting anything back for it. To get a couple of overweight guards standing around that don't even have guns. They're standing around on these light rests. I rode the light rail and they're all standing up. None were on the light rail. They were all on the pads. One downtown in the middle of the that's not when they need to be there nighttime. Is when they need to be there. I'm not going there at nighttime. Yeah, all right, So again, see all of that is a race neutral argument, but your initial comment was not. And that's what I was pushing back against, because it's not this isn't a race thing. This is this is a poor governance thing. This is an ideological thing. It's not. It's not a race thing. I still believe race has something to do with it. Then ex say that don't. Well, I mean I can't just say if you I mean, if you think that, then there's nothing I'm going to be able to say to you to make you not think race is involved. So to me, it's governance. To me, this is their ideology. You may be exactly right that they want a free public transit system, but they don't want to say that, right, that's possible, and I think that's what Dave Bullet told them as well, that he said, like, look, you either have to install the turnstiles in order to control fair evasion, or you need to do a policy change and make public transportation free, because that's but you're running this sort of hybrid system where people are told to pay, some people do, but only forty percent on the light rail line, and that means sixty percent are not paying and that's not cool, that's not fair, it's not transparent, right, and we're subsidizing five to six and a half million a year in lost revenue. As for this exclusion list, Council member dimple Ashmira said that CATS should instead focus on enforcing its exclusion list, which is a list of people that the CATS drivers have and CATS I guess security have, and it's a list of people who repeatedly violated transit rules and so they are, you know, kicked off the system. They're not allowed to ride. They've got a three month or six month ban or a lifetime ban or whatever. How many people are on this list probably a lot. So what you expect the drivers, the train conductors or the security guards to be what like looking at everybody's faces as they're coming through and comparing them to a list that they've got on a phone or something, or like a document like that doesn't make any sense to me, and that might be why we've only collected five hundred to seven hundred dollars in fines from people, right because it's this does not seem to be like a good system that is after you catch somebody doing something else. Right, If you catch somebody engaging in anti social behavior on the train or the bus, and then you catch them, you actually have somebody then get their name and run it across the list, and then you find out that they're not supposed to be on the train. So it like this is not this doesn't actually prevent the person from getting on the train. I find this to be just ridiculous. All right, here's a. Little segment we like to call Pregaming with Brett Winterble on one oh seven point nine a FM WBT. Pregaming with Brett winter Bull is brought to you by Brett. You can hear him three to six right here on WBT. Hello Brett, it's great to be here. Thank you so much. Good. I did not ask you if it was great to be here, but I'm glad to hear that it is. It's always great to be here when I see you. All Right, So we've been talking about this radical idea of putting turnstiles at the light rail stops. Sure have you ever seen a turnstile at a train station? Yes? Really? Yes? Do they work? Yes? Really? Yes? Huh. Now I'm talking, I'm talking the new ones, the ones that have like the bars that go across each other and like a full body size, not like the half No, not like the little turnstiles like at. The movie theater. No, No, because people just jump right over those things. Yeah. Absolutely, you got to have the gate you do that's got like the tongs what do they call them, or the times and that stick out like horizontally. Sure, so you can't walk through, you can't do it. So you like these things, I think they're phenomenal, but they they keep people who should not be in out and they have people that can go in that would otherwise be. Out right, So I'm thinking pilot project Charlotte. Okay, turnstiles, Yes, Like we're talking about the full like seven foot tall ones with the horizontal ties that spins so you can't like slip through it or anything. Yeah, but no other fencing or walls. You just get just the turns. You're just gonna have the turnstyle. That is so Monty Python. Okay, I mean that is so many Python. It can save us a lot of money. Will you electrify it at the same. Time just because there may be people, No, because you want the people to go through it. And then anybody that does not go through the turnstyle, then nothing will happen to them, Like we're not gonna kick them off, We're not gonna even check to see if they bought a ticket. Oh I hate see, I hate that kind. Of deal, the ticket checkers. Yeah, the guy that comes along with the little punch you No, I like the punch. I'm a I'm a person that believes in order. I like order. I do not like disorder. Disorder, Yeah, yeah, that is that? Really what the word is? Unordered? Unordered? Yeah yeah, malorder, mal order. That sounds like something you'd have to stay home for a day or so. I got more apply the ordering. Yes, either way can be addressed either way. But yes, But but then at the same time, you're trying to get away from these people who smell I guess. Yeah, yeah, no, you don't want to be near them. Malorder is smelly drunks. So the disorder you are against the disorder I've been I've been referring to it as antisocial behavior. Why can't because it just it scoops up everything. It's criminal behavior. It's the you know insanity, you know on display, it's the it's this, it's smelly people. I guess you could say too, like all of that stuff is just anti And I'm not saying smelly as in like, oh, it's. A long day and my dear just wore off kind of a thing. I'm saying like, like really really pungent, overpowering. Yeah, yeah, drinking, drinking all day and with vomitousness. Yeah, like that kind of smell no good. So the city council member demble Ashmier, who would very much like to be mayor, she said, before we throw away millions of dollars in installing gates and turnstiles, oh gosh, we need to make sure that the evidence shows that it will help us keep our system safe. Okay, so she's she's on the fence, or dare I say on the gate about whether or not restricting access to a facility helps provide greater security, which is why the Government Center allows everybody to just walk in without any kind of screening. Oh no, wait right now, you gotta get hang on a second. No, they do screen people when they come in. They do like TSA style you big time. Yeah yeah, you don't want that. So security for the yep, but not for me. That's true? What do you think it would cost to put up the turnstile with the fencing at a single platform? Boy, I would say probably. Approaching. It's a government project. Keep in mind. Approaching fourteen million dollars is that it? No? Probably not. I think we could do it cheaper. Really, I think, I hope. So all right, that's Bret Winner, Bill stick around, he's up next. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. 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