CHARLOTTE — North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein proposed several solutions to make transit safer in the wake of the stabbing death on the Charlotte light rail last month.
During a news conference Thursday in the Queen City.
Stein was in the Queen City addressing the NCBiotech Summit, but held a news conference afterward where he outlined his priorities on public safety, health care, and teachers’ pay.
“Our judges and magistrates need better training and tools to respond when a defendant’s mental health situation and history of violence may create real concerns for public safety,” Stein said.
Stein says Iryna Zarutska’s murder on the light rail highlights the need for more funding for increased security -- by hiring more officers and increasing their pay.
“We ask them to put themselves in harm’s way, and we frequently will express our appreciation to them verbally, and it is time that we put our money where our mouth is,” Stein said.
The governor announced several proposals around mental health, including: having officers & mental health professionals respond to certain calls together, conducting mental health risk exams on certain offenders to determine whether “a defendant’s mental health situation and history of violence may...pose a real risk to public safety, and to give those people the right place to go for treatment.”
“We have to have enough mental health practitioners to conduct these exams and enough health care facilities to respond to behavioral health needs,” Stein added.
Channel 9’s Evan Donovan pushed the governor on whether he’ll ask the legislature to fund those proposals. He said that’s why he wants the legislature to fund Medicaid in the face of forced cuts this year -- due to a shortfall and changes by the Trump Administration.
“Going backwards on Medicaid is exactly the wrong direction when we need to go forward and provide more health care to people in need,” Stein said.
Since Zarutska’s murder, Channel 9 has reported on the role of Mecklenburg County magistrates, who decide whether to hold people in jail and under what conditions. That process has come under fire since it was reported publicly that the suspect in Zarutska’s murder, Decarlos Brown, was released from jail earlier this year.
Stein also proposed changes for magistrates, including: a clear, single supervisor to hold them accountable; published disciplinary processes; common sense removal procedures; and allowing judges to decide certain pre-trial conditions instead of magistrates.
Channel 9 reached out to the Federal Transit Administration for an update on the investigation it launched into the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) after Zarutska’s murder. CATS is now halfway through the 15-day deadline to respond to the FTA’s requests.
“We will begin our review once we have those requested documents,” an FTA spokesperson said.
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