Leave it to Crime in Charlotte to detail the 26 armed carjackings/robberies that hit the Queen City Friday thru Sunday. The Uptown paper of record caught the bump in carjackings, not the larger crime wave. And of course the paper got the now standard denial from CMPD that the incidents were in any way connected.

Meanwhile, CMPD Chief Darrel Stephens was off playing editorialist, actually signing his name to his infamous declaration that, “if we could arrest our way out of the crime problem, we would have done it already” and whining that the Observer is too hard (!?!) on CMPD and issues of public safety.

As if we needed more proof that Stephens is totally detached from the community, he never mentioned Mildred Clontz or the Stokes. This joker cannot leave town fast enough.

Bonus Observation: City council better disabuse itself of the notion that there is anything like “competing visions” for Charlotte’s next chief among the city’s law-abiding citizens. No one wants another Chief Social Worker. Period.