CATS Security Just a Lot of Smoke and Mirrors

Local investigative news in Charlotte is normally pretty sad. Few news stations are willing to go toe to toe with City Grifters.

But when the national press found out about the murder of Iryna Zarutska the halogen spot light sent the local government rats and grifters running for cover. 

Then the state auditor pulled the covers off CATS and it was pretty ugly. 

CMPD's Police Chief and been totally absent. The mayor was doing an ever changing shimmy dance to address this young woman's death. Not one of her press releases was the truth and each was nothing but spin. 

Meanwhile the city attorney who like the CMPD chief is on his way out and soon to be replaced with a female version has said nothing.

In fact when the mayor and CATS director Brent Cagle held a presser twice delayed to address CATS Safety the City Attorney and CMPD Chief were no where to be found.

Meanwhile Charlotte's FOP Lodge is asking city leaders to send in some help

And most of Charlotte's news is silent.

But Hunter Saenz has been asking questions and here is his take that he posted to "X" yesterday.

One of the solutions the City of Charlotte is doing to boost security on the light rail system is offering 966 hours of off-duty shifts per week. 24 officers needed a week. Any officers who want to make some extra money can patrol the light rail system for $80-85/hour. 

After hearing from multiple CMPD sources who told me it's a struggle to fill those off-duty slots, I asked City Manager Marcus Jones how many of the slots are being filled or have been filled. 

"My understanding is that all of those slots have been subscribed."

But multiple sources tell me officers are not signing up partly because they are not getting paid the extra, off-duty pay thru their city paycheck. 

Instead, they are paid thru a system called "power detail" that CMPD uses for off-duty services.

For this job, the employer is technically Transit Management of Charlotte. 

Since they are paid the extra money in this way - CMPD officers cannot count this as overtime and it does not count toward the pay that could help determine their future pensions.

Marcus Jones told me, "They are being paid thru CATS and not thru the city's general fund - just like an off duty for another entity."

But several of my contacts say there is growing frustration with this pay structure. 

I asked Jones if the city is choosing to save money over keeping the community safe.

His response: 

"No, not at all," Jones said. "I have not heard up to this point that there has been issue with the off duty officers filling the slots that CATS has made available."

But just this past Tuesday, this internal email I obtained, shows there were still some 100 openings for these off-duty shifts that still needed to be filled.

Here is how Councilman Ed Driggs explained the pay structure for the off-duty shifts: 

"The Charlotte officers who are hired by CATS are working off the CMPD clock. This is not overtime pay which they get when they fill in duties for CMPD that normally would be filled by...

...other officers. They do that the same way they do when they provide security in neighborhoods like mine. And as such, that pay doesn't qualify as the union suggested for their inclusion in their CMPD service compensation."

(FYI, the FOP union did not suggest this to me)

When officers work the off-duty job for this, I'm told they are in their CMPD uniforms and in CMPD patrol cars.

FOP's Letter