Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe addresses the people attending the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum in west Charlotte, March 2, 2010. (Photo: Qctymetro.com)

As CIAA festivities were winding down late Saturday night, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police established traffic patterns to funnel crowds away from uptown and onto major roads leading out of Charlotte, Chief Rodney Monroe said today.

Monroe, speaking at the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum, was responding to a question raised by Qcitymetro.com. A Raleigh man called the Web site on Sunday to complain that traffic patterns established by CMPD made it nearly impossible to retrieve his car.

The caller said his companion was forced to drive 10 miles out of town before she could circle back to where he had parked uptown. After setting out at 2 a.m., he said, they reached his car at 4 a.m.

“It was like they were glad to take our money but then wanted to push us out,” said the caller, who did not give Qcitymetro.com permission to use his name.

Monroe confirmed that traffic patterns were intentional, but he said the move was made only after 2 a.m. and only to control what had become an uptown logjam.

“That is exactly true,” he said. “It is a strategy we used because the uptown just got overwhelmed. It got overwhelmed not with people coming to a specific event, but with people just trying to cruise and park and observe the festivities... It’s time to go home.”

Monroe also answered questions about:

The high rate of incarceration among African-American males
“Unfortunately so, but we are a population of offenders,” he said. “We offend at a higher rate. I wish that were not the case, but it is.”

Monroe said that of the 55 homicides in Charlotte last year, 85 percent involved African American victims and African American perpetrators.

“Facts are fact...” he said. “When we see that population, we have to understand that we account for the large majority.”

Monroe said crime in the black community is a symptom of larger problems, such as unemployment, poverty, educational issues and even health.

“We have to do a better job of addressing those issues within our communities,” he said, “and I think that will help to eventually steer some of our young people from being involved in crime.”

The swiftness with which CMPD made an arrest in the rape-robbery cases in Dilworth and Myers Park versus the unsolved February, 2008, killing of 12-year-old Joshua Jackson, who was shot while attending a birthday party at Ramses Temple on Beatties Ford Road.
Monroe said CMPD is doing all it can to solve the Jackson case. The department featured it twice last year on Crime Stoppers, he said, and will do so again this year. Unfortunately, he said, investigators have not gotten the break they need.

“We have all sorts of ballistic evidence and other testimony from people about what happened that particular night, but it’s going to take somebody’s conscience to come forward and say, ‘This is what happened...’”

Monroe said CMPD closed 80 percent of the city’s homicide cases last year.

“I would like to say that 80 percent were solved based on scientific evidence that we were able to collect at various crime scenes, but that’s not the case,” he said. “That 80 percent was closed based on individuals coming forward saying, “That’s who did it, this is what I know, and this is what I want to say.’

“That’s what it’s going to take to close that particular case, somebody that was there that night and saw the gunplay that was going on...,” he said. “Somebody knows that, and we’re going to keep putting the word out here. I don’t think that a 12-year-old who loses their life at a birthday party should ever be forgotten.”
 

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