The vital Crime in Charlotte blog again peels back the truth about crime in Charlotte.
Several local TV newscasts led last night with the dramatic story of a Huntersville woman who scared off three would-be burglars with a pistol shot. Interesting in and of itself. And made more so by police catching the bad guys thanks to the license plate the woman provided. Now here is the rest of the story.
A commenter at CinC reports that one of the men arrested after the Huntersville incident, Patrick McCollough, stole an SUV in November 2005. The unedited comment in full:
Patrick McCollough is the same scumbag who stole by vehicle from my house in Nov 2005. The police caught him and two other hoodlums IN MY SUV with guns, marijuana, and latex gloves. The DA later dropped the vehicle theft charges without explanation (again, they were caught in my vehicle). Despite repeated letters/calls to Gilcrest and his ADAs I have yet to receive an explanation. However, I have been subpeonaed 4 times to appear in court (what exactly am I to testify to?) Our great justice system at work.
Mecklenburg County records do in fact show that McCollough was arrested by CMPD on November 9, 2005 on two felony car theft charges and two misdemeanor gun and drug charges. But the North Carolina Department of Corrections has no record of McCollough being sentenced at all, which certainly suggests that all charges were dropped.
McCollough did spend a few hours in jail back in November 2005 and at this moment is still in jail on the latest charges. But do not blink.
Now back to Mayor Pat McCrory’s campaign to go to Raleigh to get state law changed to allow hotel managers to testify in cases involving theft from hotel guests. As we said the other day, a complete waste of time. Local car owners cannot even get full-on felonies prosecuted in Mecklenburg.
And, to be blunt, screw the hotel managers. And screw the out-of-town guests. Charlotte has a full-on crime emergency and here’s Mayor Pat worried about how that impacts tourism. Well, screw tourism, Pat.
Were it not for an armed private citizen, who knows what kind of mayhem McCollough and friends would have perpetrated yesterday. That is the reality of crime in Charlotte in 2007.
By all means, let’s pretend it is not a crisis. Don’t want to scare away the tourists. We need their money to help pay for the $1 billion and counting we’ve spent on not roads, not schools, and not prosecutors.
Charlotte, a hollow shell. Just like Mayor Pat.
Bonus observation: None of the McCollough gang appears to be an illegal alien or a gay penguin.
