Award-winning columnist, writer, speaker and editor
Shotspotter lost a huge contract and some face when Chicago opted out of its partnership with the gunfire-identification tech company.
Why can’t new policing tech seem to break the old patterns and problems?
Guest: Jim Daley, investigations editor at South Side Weekly
A strike by Charlotte Area Transit System bus drivers is averted and discussions begin regarding a new deal with the drivers’ union this week. In addition, CATS will look for a new company to run the bus system. We’ll dig into details and hear what Interim CATS CEO Brent Cagle said to city council’s transportation committee this week.
A consultant for the city of Charlotte thinks naming rights in the new proposed Hornets practice facility and the new festival district could generate nearly $140 million.
Mecklenburg County Commissioners have passed their 2023 legislative agenda. This week, the county leaders are asking state and federal lawmakers to expand Medicaid, and additional funding for public education. Will they get what they want?
A bill was passed by the North Carolina Senate this week that would require teachers to alert parents before calling a student by a different name or pronoun in class. This comes after warnings to the senate about how this could endanger LGBTQ students.
Shirley Fulton, the first female African American Superior Court Judge in North Carolina, died this week at the age of 71. We’ll talk about her accomplishments and her legacy.
And a look at North and South Carolina lawmakers’ takes on the State of the Union address this week.
Mike Collins and our roundtable of reporters delve into those and more.
GUESTS:
Erik Spanberg, managing editor for the Charlotte Business Journal
Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”
Joe Bruno, WSOC-TV reporter
David Boraks, WFAE reporter
Black Lives Matter.
Now, can everyone understand the desperate, defiant power of those three words? Can all those who tried to act as though they didn’t get why the phrase needed to be said — over and over — finally stop pretending?
After viewing, listening to, reading about the video that laid bare the torture of Tyre Nichols by an armed gang, operating under the cover of law in Memphis, can anyone honestly insist that it’s the slogan that’s the problem?
Is there anyone out there still wondering that if only protesters’ signs had read “All Lives Matter,” the police would have looked at Tyre Nichols and seen a son and a father, a handsome young man who loved his mother’s home-cooked meals, who photographed sunsets and practiced skateboard tricks?
Would tacking a “too” onto the phrase have made the police listen to the 29-year-old on the night of Jan. 7, or answer his questions about why he was being detained? Would it have stopped the police from barking out 71 confusing, conflicting commands in 13 minutes, as The New York Times calculated, from punishing his slight body mercilessly when he was unable to comply?
When politicians call for nonviolence from those weary of being treated as “less than,” where are the calls for nonviolence from those charged with keeping the peace?
America is a country steeped in violence — no explanation needed after a litany of mass shootings in this new year. And now, the country has experienced a countdown to the release of a horrific video of a Black man being treated, as one of his lawyers put it, like a “human piñata.”
More proof, though none was needed, that Black Lives Matter is not in the training in any of the 18,000 police departments with different rules and regulations but depressingly similar outcomes.
As Congress deliberates this week on what should be included in the reconciliation bill, child care and specifically universal pre-K is being debated. Educators, parents and doctors have long advocated for pre-K. Another group has added its voice to the chorus: law enforcement.
Mary C. Curtis sits down with Sheriff Vernon Stanforth, the president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, to discuss how early education helps develop life skills.
It has been more than a year since the killing of George Floyd sparked cries for police reform and even defunding. But it has all but stalled on the national level as time has passed and as the FBI reports a historic rise in murder rates.
Mary C. Curtis speaks with author and professor David Kennedy, director of the National Network for Safe Communities, to understand why and what the next steps should be. Also, ‘Equal Time’ checks in on COVID-19 vaccine equity with Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, who leads President Joe Biden’s health equity task force.
It was both politically smart, and the right thing to do.
By opening the hearing of the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol with the testimony of police officers on the front line, still suffering from the effects of the violence of that day, the world got to hear what really happened and to see the human cost.
Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell compared it with his Army service, “different” because the Jan. 6 attackers were “our own citizens.” He described warning his worried wife away when she tried to hug him on his return home because his uniform was drenched with chemical spray. D.C. Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges said white rioters tried to recruit him as one of their own: “Are you my brother?” one asked. Another told Hodges he would “die on your knees.” MPD Officer Michael Fanone thought he would be killed and almost was, before his plea that he had kids moved a few.
Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who is African American, is still in therapy after being booed and showered with obscenities and racial slurs. “Frankly, I guess it is America,” he said.
This week marked the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, a time defined by a subsequent international reckoning on racial justice, a debate about overhauling police departments and an election that brought social and cultural issues violently into the foreground.
Mary C. Curtis, host of the Equal Time podcast and a CQ Roll Call columnist joins us on Political Theater to discuss where we are, where we’ve been and where we might be headed.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Police reform is back in the spotlight.
It comes as protests continue in the fatal shooting of a Black man by deputies in Elizabeth City.
Andrew Brown Jr. will be laid to rest on Monday.
