The most important thing to know about Mecklenburg Sheriff Garry McFadden is that his favorite word is “my.” The jail is “my building,” he explained this week, and its lobby is “my lobby.” Female inmates at the jail are, to use McFadden’s creepy, sexist moniker, “my queens.” Fatalities in the jail are “my deaths,” according […]
As COVID-19 runs rampant at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte has a simple message for the students who will soon live and learn in the school’s human petri dishes: “We care.” That’s been the thrust of UNCC’s public relations efforts in the lead-up to thousands of students returning to campus next […]
Tariq Bokhari’s corruption will go on — with an assist from the city’s attorney. Charlotte City Attorney Patrick Baker informed City Council this weekend that a 17-page, 5,000-word complaint detailing Councilman Bokhari’s long-standing merger of his public office with his private financial interests fails to meet the “minimum technical requirements” necessary to warrant an independent […]
What’s most remarkable about Tariq Bokhari’s corruption is how long it went unnoticed. While the media and other elected officials only recently began to scrutinize the Charlotte city councilman’s merger of his private-sector work with his public duties, Bokhari’s entire time in office has been one, long advertisement for himself, his industry in general, and […]
My elementary school handed out good citizenship awards at quarterly, school-wide assemblies. The yellow cardstock certificates commemorated the recipients’ exhibition of those behaviors the school deemed proper for responsible young people: obedience, respect for authority, and adherence to the rules. In other words, to be a good citizen was to be compliant. At no time […]
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 […]
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Hey, City Council, Gas Yourselves!
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 […]
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Sacrificing Our Kids To Gun Lust
“And Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.” Genesis 22:9 This time, the altar was in Charlotte. We bound our children and, like Abraham, we chose to carry out a sacrifice: Riley Howell and Ellis Parlier, the […]
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Chief Says Cops Can Kill With Impunity
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 […]
