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The city of Charlotte is under fire for approving a $3.4 million marketing campaign for the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), following recent stabbings on the light-rail system.
The Charlotte City Council voted this month to hire a Texas-based firm to support a multiyear communications and branding effort for CATS. City officials have said the contract was unrelated to the recent stabbings on the light-rail system and that the timing was coincidental, but not connected to the incidents.
Mecklenburg County GOP Chairperson Kyle Kirby rejected that explanation, telling Fox News Digital that the multimillion-dollar public relations blitz is a “cover-up” as the city grapples with public safety issues.
“It’s pretty outrageous that the city would be allocating $3.4 million for a PR campaign basically to cover up the lack of safety and security on the light rail system rather than actually putting that money to good use where we could have enclosed platforms, we could have a police officer on every rail car,” he said.
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Two stabbings in less than four months
The marketing contract comes as CATS has faced recent stabbing attacks on board Blue Line trains.
Aug. 22:
Iryna Zarutska, 23, was commuting home on public transportation when she was stabbed to death, allegedly by Decarlos Brown Jr., 34.
The attack was captured on CATS’ surveillance footage and showed the young commuter cowering as her alleged killer towered behind her.
WATCH: Video shows moments before woman stabbed to death on Charlotte light-rail
Dec. 5:
According to police, on Dec. 5, Oscar Gerardo Solorzano-Garcia, 33, stabbed Kenyon Kareem-Shemar Dobie on the light-rail system during an argument. Prior to the attack, he broke into a railroad car “with the intent to commit a felony” while carrying a large fixed-blade knife, authorities said.
While intoxicated, he challenged Dobie to a fight, cursing and shouting at others and using “unintelligible and slurred words,” according to court documents.
He was arrested by responding Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers as he walked away from the scene. Dobie was taken to a hospital with a stab wound to the upper left chest and survived, police said.
Solorzano-Garcia is charged with one count of illegal reentry by a removed alien and one count of committing an act of violence on a mass transportation system.
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Kirby pointed to these past incidents as evidence of the city prioritizing optics rather than public safety.
“$3.4 million could have been spent better going to the Sheriff’s Department to enforce Iryna’s Law to help keep violent criminals behind bars,” he said. “But instead, the city council decides that their top priority is to allocate that money for a totally unneeded set of circumstances, like putting that toward a public relations campaign.”
Kirby said that following the stabbings, the public transportation has been “very empty.”
“If you were to get on the light rail today and ride it from the bottom of the tracks all the way up to UNC Charlotte, you would see a very empty rail car because people are afraid,” he said.
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden has argued that the community’s fear is, in part, due to the media shaping public perception.
“And we believe that the only reason that this caught national attention is because it was caught on video and it was displayed across the United States, and our local politicians at that time saw it was a political agenda, or they could highlight her as a refugee and not an immigrant,” McFadden said. “This is why they created Iryna’s Law.”
Kirby has said that both stabbings were preventable if proactive policing was implemented.
“Perception in this case is absolutely reality,” he said.
“The Sheriff’s Department, just a month before this, refused to help Border Patrol with their immigration enforcement in Charlotte,” he said of the Dec. 5 case.
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He added that Zarutska’s killing could have been prevented “had Mecklenburg magistrates and judges taken violent criminal offenders seriously and not released them on their own recognizance.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office and CATS for comment.
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