Charlotte police union slams woke mayor, local leadership over soft-on-crime policies that let repeat offenders walk free

The statement starts with the FOP quoting Mayor Vi Lyles, who said, “We need a bipartisan solution to address repeat offenders who do not face consequences for their actions.” The FOP fired back, posting, “What a concept [eyes rolling emoji]. Maybe if the mayor followed our Facebook page for maybe the past 5 years or so, she’d see we’ve been complaining about this and calling for action. It’s been met with [crickets emoji].”

The police union added that when its Lodge President previously called for the resignation of Chief District Court Judge Elizabeth Trosch, “Mayor Lyles could have called him to find out more – she didn’t.”

“This poor young girl was killed because of failures in a system designed to protect her. It never should have happened,” the group wrote. “While we’ve been calling for change for years now, our ‘leaders’ finally care.”

In a post from July, before the killing of Zarutska, the FOP pointed to ongoing violence in the city, writing, “Since July 4th, there have been multiple homicides, shootings, and a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officer shot in Uptown Charlotte. People do not feel safe in this city despite crime being ‘statistically’ down,” they said in a Facebook post.

The union slammed judges and prosecutors, stating, “We have judges who release violent offenders, judges that rule on emotion when it comes to juvenile offenders, and a DA’s office that is so backlogged that charges are dropped or plea deals are made that are offensive to victims of these crimes.”

“Until our elected leaders take crime serious, we will keep burying our citizens at an alarming rate.”