Myers Park Neighbor of the Year Gregory Abrams

This video has been out for about a week maybe longer, so here's that back story as CP understands it. 

Over in Myers Park on Brandon Drive lives Gregory Abrams and his wife Jessica. They are from New Jersey via Florida. They've been a thorn in Myer's Park since they started an endless renovation project in 2016. 

The home has swelled from 3,200 in 2013 to just shy of 8,000 in 2019 and the construction projects continue. 

Literally every square inch of the back 2/3rds of Abrams lot is paved over or built on, creating massive amount of run-off that cascades into the adjoining neighbor's yards. 

This run off has repeatedly flooded neighbors yards and in the case of  the guy who confronts Dr. Abrams his garage which happens to be home to his 80 year old mother. 

Apparently her son the guy in the yellow shit decided to "have a word" with Greg about the flooding and the recent rains. Seems the son a Charlotte Country Day student is the one doing the video taping and can be heard encouraging his Greg to "woop his ass". 

Bonus fun: Entry in the property tax records states "discovered improvements" opps, no permit? 

A quick look at the county aerials shots and you can see why the neighbors hate the guy and construction has gone on for five years. Look at the mud covered street in the 2018 photo. Finally in 2020 it is done but the run off floods the neighbors yard.

And you can't do that. You are responsible for your runoff as I understand Mecklenburg County code. 

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

Cedar's Take:

Myers Park is or at least was until now home to Charlotte's "old money" and if you didn't live in Myers Park or Eastover you either hadn't "made it" or you never will. 

Those who didn't fit in moved to the Quail Hollow or the Carmel Road areas. As other neighborhoods developed they all tried to emulate Myers Park. And still Myers Park withstood the test of time, the people, the streets and tree canopy the entire area dripped Southerness like a fresh cut honey dew melon. 

And then there's the McMansions like Dr. Abrams', you see them in front of Freedom Park the neo classical style gone to hell. The bigger the better and more stuff the merrier to hell with the neighbors.

And here we are.

Charlotte's Mayor Wants You To Be Uncomfortable About Race - Mayor We are Uncomfortable

Charlotte's Mayor goes all in on race further adding to the division, adding more fuel to the fire and the building on to the entitlement culture of Black America that always blames the color of their skin for their failures and demands more from White America. 

But first Mayor Lyles:

It's Time for Charlotte to be uncomfortable about race

Growing up in South Carolina during the Civil Rights Movement, I am no stranger to racial injustice. I attended segregated schools. I was a toddler when Emmett Till was lynched. As a teen I witnessed the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Though I knew I couldn’t completely escape racism and discrimination at the time, I hoped things would be better in a more progressive city, so I set my sights on Charlotte for college. I quickly learned the battle Black America fights daily wasn’t limited to just one place. As protests against racial injustice and police brutality engulf our country, I’m reminded this ongoing fight isn’t limited to a moment in time.

The eight minutes and 46 seconds that George Floyd was pinned down by the police was not much different than the events I lived through in the 1960s. It’s why the same anger that exists in Minneapolis exists in other large cities and rural towns. Downtown and suburbia. It exists in Charlotte.

We share in the outrage and anger, because in mourning the death of George Floyd, we mourn the deaths of Keith Lamont Scott, Johnathan Ferrell, and Danquirs Franklin. We say their names. We march. We seek answers to why Black men and women continue to die at the hands of police.

In response, we call for reforms and create task forces. We do workshops and implement de-escalation tactics. Yet, we fall back into the comfortable places we’ve grown to know. We fall back into a place where black parents continue to have the ‘talk’ with their children – as I have done – on how to get out of traffic stops alive. We stop questioning why many in the Black community continue to live in segregated neighborhoods and accept low-wage jobs without healthcare or childcare. Professionally, members of the Black community become comfortable taking jobs at publicly-traded companies that lack diversity in the boardroom and in the c-suite.

We can no longer allow ourselves to fall back into those comfortable spaces. We aren’t just at a breaking point for systemic racism, but also a breaking point for the systemic comfort that we’ve grown to know.

It’s time to remain uncomfortable. We need to have the uncomfortable discussions, be uncomfortable in our approaches, and embrace the uncomfortable because that is where growth and change live.

We need more than policy and training changes and youth programs. The issue with systemic racism isn’t just a policing issue. It is education, jobs, development, planning. A systemic issue needs a systemic response.

For the corporations who call Charlotte home, we don’t just need their funding and messages of support but need the diversity in their offices and on their leadership teams. The actions of leadership must reflect those statements of solidarity, particularly in their hiring, promotion and customer service practices. We need these organizations to change the systemic practice of only recruiting in the top 10 percent of colleges and universities, which eliminates talented Black students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, state schools and community colleges.

And for our faith community, we need your support more than ever. we need to discuss your ideas and have your congregations join us in this call to action.

As mayor, I will continue to listen. I want to have the uncomfortable conversations that matter so we have a united community vision for systemic change.

We can model the change we want. We can work to eliminate systemic racism and define our future. It’s my commitment to help do that work and I ask you to join me in being uncomfortable. 

Vi Lyles is Mayor of Charlotte


Cedar's Take:

Vi Lyles is 67 and desperately trying to connect herself to the "events she lived through in 1960s". Keep in mind that she was only 12 in 1965.  

Next she'll tell you how confederate statues made her feel anxious while walking with Dr. King from Selma to Montgomery Alabama.

She continues and fortifies the myth of "systemic racism" never mind that our own city council maintains a solid people of color majority, and that every top level position within our city county government is occupied by an African American.

Mayor Lyles adds her voice to the claims of systemic racism in an effort to expand the territory of entitlement. Like Al Sharpton and so many others who continue to preach the victimhood of African Americans and the shame of White Guilt. 

Yet, Vi Lyles ignores the effect of crime on our community. Explaining "the talk" as if only black parents need to tell their children to be respectful of law enforcement officers. No, she preferrs blaming the police for doing their job and supporting the call to de-fund the police. Never mind that violent crime in Charlotte is solidly an African American issue. 

In our city of 32 homicides this year 28 are Young Black Men,  of the 18 known killers 100% are Young Black Men. Last year saw a 89% increase in homicides solely due to black on black violence.

The African American community has become a culture of violence embracing gun play and criminality as a way of life, and this has nothing to do with systemic racism. 

Mayor Lyles wants us to be uncomfortable about race, well mayor we are uncomfortable about race. We are uncomfortable with the surge in homicides, the increase in property crimes, drug dealing, armed robberies and domestic violence that is a solid a problem laid squarely at the feet of Charlotte's African American Community. 

Like all liberals Vi Lyles wants to blame White America for the pain of African Americans that can only be corrected by American Liberalism. Only the democrats can save Black Lives. Never mind they elect the same democrats year in and year out with absolutely zero reforms or progress. 

To Vi Lyles you aren't Black unless you're a democrat and if you are White and have not owned up to your slave owning history then you aren't legitimate. 

Painting Black Lives Matter on Tryon Street was just a easy way to for Mayor Lyles to remind African Americans how oppressed they are how bad they have it and that the only way for things to get better is to elect liberals because only the liberals will fight the oppression and systematic racism.

Never mind that she attended Queens College (Current Tuition $35,000 Annually) which has become fully divesityifed and lives in a 1/2 millon dollar home in South Charlotte far removed from the gun fire along Beatties Ford Road. 

Homicide No. 74 Kenny Ollemi - A Common Refrain

Charlotte's 74th murder victim Keneth "Kenny" Ollemi fits the usual profile of Charlotte homicide cases: African American male and likely involved in the drug business. 

Kenny Ollemi was also a "transplant" from up north, again a common refrain, perhaps seeking a better life in the ever expanding and growing job market in the Carolinas. 

Kenny managed to stay alive dodging bullets for 29 years using his "street smarts" when in 1995 he'd let his guard down and it nearly ended his life.

From the Daily Press in Newport New News Virginia December 1, 1995:

Hampton police are investigating a drug connection in a shooting that seriously wounded a 29-year-old resident of the Merrimac Apartments Wednesday night. 

Police found several small plastic bags of cocaine and a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol beside the body, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in Circuit Court Thursday. 

The affidavit identified the victim as Kenny Ollemi. 

Ollemi shares a second-floor apartment with a woman at 217 Regent St., neighbors said. Regent Street intersects Kecoughtan Road in the Southampton area. 

Denfield Carty lives in the same building as Ollemi and was one of the people who heard one or two shots and called 911. 

Carty said he then heard a man cry out, ''I've been shot.'' He waited about five minutes before he went outside and found Ollemi on the grass behind the building. Carty said he noticed blood on the lower right side of the man's black leather jacket. 

''I touched him. He was out cold,'' Denfield said. 

Police speculate the assailant waited behind some bushes and surprised Ollemi moments after he showed up in a Nissan 300 ZX. Ollemi was walking toward the back door of the apartment building when the bullet tore into his right side. 

''A large quantity of rock cocaine was found on the ground where Kenny Ollemi fell. A black .380-semiautomatic pistol was recovered from the ground at the scene,'' the affidavit said.

Rosa Walker, Ollemi's roommate, told police that she bought the pistol. Walker also directed police to a compartment in Ollemi's car which contained more than $4,000 in cash, the court document said. 

When asked about the source of the money, Walker ''claimed that she had just cashed a SSI check. ... However, she was unable to provide documentation to substantiate this,'' the detective noted in the affidavit. 

Carty claims he never saw a pistol or any plastic bags of cocaine with the body. ''The only thing I saw on the ground were his car keys,'' he said. 

The Nissan 300 ZX that Ollemi had driven is registered to another man. Police have impounded the car. A check of Ollemi's criminal record revealed a conviction for possession of cocaine and marijuana, the document said.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Moving to Charlotte might have seemed like a good idea but the violent crime of urban metroplexes like the Tide Water area of Virginia has moved south as well. 

On Monday night, Kenny must have felt safe in the up-scale business area of IBM and Classic Drives. But he was targeted followed and killed, he knew the shooter or shooters. But even if he didn't they knew he carried a good amount of cash. Still shooting someone for $100 and a bag of crack is all part of thug life in Charloot.

The shooting on Monday night happened around midnight, just outside the back office door of Classic Graphics. 

Officers said an employee came outside and saw the car crashed in the company picnic area and found 53-year-old Kenny Ollemi shot inside. 

That person called 911 and MEDIC arrived, performed CPR and rushed Ollemi to the hospital, where emergency room staff and doctors tried to once again save Kenny's life.

Investigators said they believe Ollemi was shot inside his car while waiting to pick up a friend from work. They spent the night talking to other employees who may have seen or heard something. By day-break crime scene tape still fluttered in the cool early morning breeze a hint of fall to come in the air. 

3rd shift employees headed home as the presses turned out another glossy annual report for a Inc 1000 company. By noon less than 12 hours later things had returned to normal the yellow tape was gone and CSI techs had finished their work and Kenny's car had already been towed to a secrue location for futher forensic investigation. 

And so it goes.....

1957 Chris Craft Capri

O

Special Flame Fabric

Maximilian 1957 Chris Craft Capri 19' LOA

Maximilian San Diego - Offered at 32,599.00

East Charlotte - CMPD's New West Charlotte

Veteran CMPD Officers know two things about homicide in Charlotte, first no amount of police work will keep people from killing one-another and second West Charlotte used to be the killing field.

But that all changed as builders encouraged by the rapid growth of Charlotte in the 80's and early 90's urged Charlotte City Council to approve apartment complex on top of apartment complex along Albemarle Road, Harris Blvd and Central Avenue. At first these were "high end" apartments with amenities like club houses, pools, weight rooms and tennis courts. But as the growth slowed the rents declined and the demographics shifted.

As the great black migration to the north reversed course many minority families returned to the South, and many to Charlotte but with a northern attitude about what was right and wrong. 

Once the home to yuppies and DINKs East Charlotte suddenly became home to low income single parents and families looking for affordable housing.

Born into this mess in the late 80's and early 90's are the two suspects who were arrested Monday in a fatal shooting that occurred at Farm Pond Lane and Albemarle Road in East Charlotte. As was the victim Monte Jarron Gay, who was 21. 

Monte Jarron Gay

Gay of course has a lengthily arrest record dating back to a juvenile. Many of his arrests where gun charges the other drugs, driving offenses and robbery.

Two 19-year-olds Terrence Parker and Brenton Samuels who are harged with the murder of Gay are well known to CMPD's Independence and Hickory Grove divisions.

Officers arrested Parker at a motel on Independence Boulevard. Samuels was arrested in Mint Hill.

Terrence Parker

Brenton Samuels 

Parker's arrest record is mainly breaking and entering charges and a couple of drug arrests.

Samuels long record includes several weapons, drug and robbery charges including shopping lifting, employees theft and assault on a handicapped person.

CMPD Officers responded to a call at 3:59 p.m. and found Gay suffering from a gun shot wound and unresponsive. Paramedics took the wounded man to Carolinas Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Hickory Grove Captain Chuck Henson,  "Chuckles" as he is known around the department explained the shooting as "not a random act of violence".  

But what is lost on Chuckles is the real cause of violent crime in East Charlotte. A broken system that has failed to institutionalize violent offenders. The first gun crime should be a life sentence. No exceptions no second chances no parole.