Law enforcement recently accused a dead man of committing a string of decades-old sex crimes, and Charlotte’s media unthinkingly went along, declaring the cases closed and the suspect guilty. “Genetic genealogy helping solve cold cases tonight in Charlotte,” WCNC anchor Fred Shropshire intoned earlier this month during an evening broadcast. “Charlotte-Mecklenburg police detectives have ID’d […]
Ruben Galindo’s hands were up when a police officer shot him. Danquirs Franklin was putting his gun on the ground when a cop shot him. Both men died, and now two federal judges have said the shootings were reasonable and constitutional and that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and the City of Charlotte are not liable […]
Imagine if a municipal utilities department couldn’t deliver clean water, or a garbage department couldn’t pick up trash, or a fire department couldn’t extinguish conflagrations. Now suppose these departments, confronted by an undeniable failure to successfully perform their core duties, disavowed any further intent to provide potable water, or collect refuse, or put out fires. […]
If there is an article of political faith shared by elected officials from left to right and from city councils to the Oval Office, it is that public dollars should not be squandered on wasteful, ineffective government programs — with one seeming exception: law enforcement. Why should that be? Let’s ask of the police department […]
Behold the human imagination! Author of the cave drawings of Lascaux, Great Pyramid of Giza, and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; written language, Euclidean geometry, and astrophysics; Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam; classical music, jazz, and rock; the steam engine, jumbo jet, and lunar rover. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder earlier this year at […]
Most people do not approve of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s performance, according to a survey conducted by CMPD. A majority also believes the department should be subject to additional independent oversight. “We have no legitimacy as a police department if we don’t have the support of our community,” Deputy Chief Sherie Pearsall said at a […]
As protests roiled Charlotte this summer in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, local officials trotted out a reliable trope to cast doubt on the authenticity of the demonstrations. “There were outside agitators,” Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden said on June 1. “The agitators started throwing things, they started doing things, and guess what happened […]
Law enforcement’s primary tactic for deflecting criticism and resisting reform made a recent appearance when City Council debated whether to temporarily halt Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s purchase of chemical weapons. While expressing support for CMPD’s right to continue gassing his own constituents, one councilman read a letter signed by the spouses of hundreds of officers, lamenting […]
To Our Honorable Mayor and City Council, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department recently trapped and gassed citizen-protesters on the streets of uptown. To try to appease critics of this brutality, you took the practically meaningless, symbolically meager step of temporarily halting CMPD’s purchase of new chemical weapons — even as you now seem prepared to fight in […]
We ought to condemn murder committed in plain sight. This should be an unremarkable observation, and usually is — except when the murderers wear badges. When Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officers David Guerra and Courtney Suggs shot and killed Ruben Galindo on September 6, 2017, CMPD Chief Kerr Putney immediately started spinning the facts to shield his […]
Charlotte Citizen 