Charlotte-area news outlets have been all over the story of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska’s murder on Charlotte’s light rail system since Day One. But it took the national media two weeks to get around to “covering” it, and that was in large part due to the release of the shocking video of her murder, which horrified Americans in part due to the outright randomness, brazenness, and senselessness of the attack.
As RedState previously reported, the reactions of local Democrat “leaders” in and around Charlotte have come under heavy scrutiny, with Mayor Vi Lyles’ soft-on-crime statements focusing more on sympathy for the alleged murderer, a violent repeat offender who police have identified as 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr., than on the actual victim. Zarutska fled a war-torn part of the world, only to see her young life cut short as she presumably was headed home after her shift at a local pizzeria was over..
The national media’s newfound interest in the story was not the only belated response to it. Other Democrat officials in NC are also now finally weighing in after ignoring it even as it blew up, including Gov. Josh Stein (D), who proclaimed that these issues will be resolved once we get more officers on the streets:
I am heartbroken for the family of Iryna Zarutska, who lost their loved one to this senseless act of violence, and I am appalled by the footage of her murder. We need more cops on the beat to keep people safe. That’s why my budget calls for more funding to hire more well-trained police officers. I call upon the legislature to pass my law enforcement recruitment and retention package to address vacancies in our state and local agencies so they can stop these horrific crimes and hold violent criminals accountable.
What Stein left out was that he used to be the state’s Attorney General, and that he was on the infamous NC Task Force for Racial Equity and Criminal Justice that then-Gov. Roy Cooper (D) – who is now a candidate for the U.S. Senate – created in the early days of the George Floyd riots:
Governor, your task force for racial equity in criminal justice specifically called for increasing pre-trial release. And decriminalizing “public behavior,” meaning homelessness and being a public nuisance.
Both of these policies contributed to Decarlo Brown being on the streets and having the opportunity to commit murder on the Charlotte light rail. Are you going to roll back these policies that your racial task force initiated that are making North Carolinians unsafe?