Mecklenburg Democrat offers new solution after GOP ‘blame shifting’ on train stabbing
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- State Rep. Laura Budd proposed a four-part plan to boost public safety in North Carolina.
- The plan includes hiring 5,000 police, 5,000 co-responders, and reforms to courts.
- Budd urged bipartisan support while criticizing GOP for lacking a clear strategy.
State Rep. Laura Budd wants more police and mental health workers patrolling the streets, and she wants help from Republicans to make it happen.
Budd, a Democrat representing House District 103 in south Mecklenburg County, outlined a four-part plan during a news conference Monday that would devote more resources toward law enforcement, courts and state health care infrastructure.
Support from across the aisle is key because Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature and, therefore, set budget and legislative priorities. Democratic efforts to accomplish some of these goals have fallen flat in the past, she said.
“Oftentime those bills, no matter how good the ideas are, because they come with a D behind them, they are relegated to the dust files,” Budd said.
She also accused GOP leadership of lacking a plan in the wake of several high-profile tragedies, including the assassination of conservative media personality Charlie Kirk at a Utah college campus last week and the fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail in August. State Republican leaders have instead fallen back on “empty political theater” and finger pointing, she said.
Budd’s plan calls for giving judges and magistrates more freedom to initiate their own mental health commitment proceedings. This could have altered the outcome in cases like Zarutska’s death, she said. Suspect DeCarlos Brown appeared before a magistrate earlier this year showing signs of a mental health crisis but was released without needing to post bail.
Budd’s plan also suggested the state freeze the statute of limitations for people charged with violent crimes or who show an escalation of offenses and are incompetent to stand trial; grant school resource officers “confidential access” to a student’s mental health records so they can perform threat assessments when a student shows signs of trouble; and fund an additional 5,000 local police officers and 5,000 crisis assistance “co-responders.”
A co-responder is a mental health professional who joins police officers on calls involving behavioral health matters. The statute of limitations dictates the window during which a suspect can be charged with a crime. Charges can be dismissed if they are not acted upon within that time frame, Budd said. Her proposal would pause the clock while a suspect undergoes mental health treatment and keep them at a state hospital until they are determined to be competent.
Budd said she has not talked to her GOP colleagues about the specifics of her plan but is hopeful they will be receptive. Her frustration lies with party leadership, not rank and file legislators whose hands are often tied by higher-ranking lawmakers, Budd told The Charlotte Observer.
It’s not immediately clear how much money the plan would cost to implement. Budd also does not know how the state would allocate resources among local governments. She would rely on local crime data to determine need, she said.
“The key there is to remove the politics from it. It cannot be that the rural areas take at the expense of the urban because the Republicans have the legislative majority,” Budd said. “You’re not going to solve problems that way.”
Budd contrasted her response to that of Republican state leaders, who in a press conference last week said Charlotte and Mecklenburg County leaders “lost institutional control of their areas” due to soft-on-crime policies.
Senate Republican leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall said they are scouring the county and city budgets to see where they are spending money and where they shouldn’t be. The two lawmakers said they will reveal a crime omnibus bill when legislators return for session next week.
And the Federal Transit Administration launched an investigation into the Charlotte Area Transit System over its safety plans, security spending and risks to operators and customers.
“All we have heard is blame shifting, threats and what I call cheap political shots,” Budd said.
Budd wants to incorporate her plan into Republicans’ omnibus bill as an amendment, she said. If she is not given the opportunity, she will run her ideas as separate bills when filing opens next session.
At the national level, Budd criticized the Trump administration for failing to deliver a unifying message in the face of tragedy and offering no plan to address the underlying issues that led to recent acts of violence.
She wants Trump to adopt a similar plan to former President Bill Clinton’s 1994 plan to hire 100,000 more local law enforcement officers to combat crime and lead community initiatives. Going a step further, she called for the federal government to also fund 100,000 crisis assistance co-responders.
