The city's perceived "pro-crime" policies are under fire following the August 22nd murder of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska. Officials have talked up police statistics showing crime is trending downward across the city, but the public is not buying it.
For many residents and conservative leaders, the stabbing death highlights what they see as a dangerous disconnect between statistics and reality on the streets, where suspect DeCarlos Brown Jr was allowed to be after multiple previous arrests.
American Family News has reported that the legacy media has tried to ignore the story or find a way to deflect blame from Brown because he is black, and Charisma Peoples, an ambassador for the Project 21 Black Leadership Network, says, "It's all by design."
"You will begin to notice that if the perpetrator is black, it's like a revenge tour on white America," she says. "And then they had the nerve to say that it was just mental illness."
Peoples agrees with those who are calling for the removal of Teresa Stokes, the Mecklenburg County magistrate judge who released Brown despite his long record of violent crime and mental illness.
"After seeing his record of being arrested 14 times, she shouldn't have released him," Peoples asserts. "But because he was a black man, and because she's a liberal, she released him. It's like black code: look out for your people. It doesn't matter; as long as you are a black man, I will be there for you."
Stokes (pictured left) is reportedly married to Ayanna Ballard, a healthcare provider affiliated with a mental health and addiction clinic that specializes in court-ordered evaluations in the same jurisdiction over which her wife presides. That "extreme connection" has also been scrutinized.
"It's just wrong," Peoples contends. "It's really wrong."
In North Carolina, magistrates are not required to have a law degree, and over 80% of them do not hold a Doctor of Jurisprudence, the primary qualifying degree to practice law in the United States.
Eligible magistrate applicants must have a four-year degree, an associate degree plus four years of relevant work experience, or eight years of experience as a clerk of superior court. They are nominated by the clerk of superior court and appointed by a senior resident superior court judge.
Stokes reportedly graduated from Western Michigan University Cooley Law School but has not passed the bar exam.
Ten House Republicans from North Carolina have signed a letter calling for formal proceedings to remove her, and many see the need for reform in the local criminal justice system.
