2 pages and 11 minutes: Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson releases public safety plan for NC

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign released his public safety plan at a news conference in Statesville Tuesday, and in short order.

The 11-minute press conference, which featured Robinson flanked by 30 sheriffs from across the state, explained how he would fight crime in North Carolina. He spent much of that time criticizing Attorney General Josh Stein, his Democratic opponent for governor. His plan mentions the death penalty, immigration and cash bail.

“Unfortunately, there are elected officials out there who have let law enforcement down,” Robinson said, lumping Stein into the group.

He ended the news conference to go to former President Donald Trump’s rally in Asheboro, his spokesperson Mike Lonergan said.

Two August polls on the race, from the New York Times and the Carolina Journal, both show Stein with several-point leads outside the margin of error in North Carolina’s gubernatorial race. And the Real Clear Politics average of polls gives Stein a 5.5% lead.

“We pay attention to the polls, of course, but we’ve got our ear to the ground,” Robinson said when asked about him trailing. “And our ear to the ground tells us that we are going to win this race hands down. We have a wide swath of support across this state.”

What’s in the public safety plan?

A news release about Robinson’s public safety platform is a little over a page in length — much of it criticizing Stein and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.

The platform is “laid out in very thorough manner,” Lonergan said when a Charlotte Observer reporter asked over text for a policy document.

The release says that Robinson will stand with law enforcement, “secure the border” to fight drugs and “crack down on violent criminals.”

More specifically, it says that Robinson will:

• “Reject once and for all extremist groups that want to defund the police.”

• Prioritize raises for law enforcement officers in state budgets.

• “Reinstate the death penalty for those that kill police and corrections officers.”

• Ask the legislature to pass a bill that “bans sanctuary cities once and for all” and that makes law enforcement “cooperate with federal immigration authorities” like ICE.

• Reject proposals to end the cash bail system.

• Appoint judges who will “follow the law and stop letting violent criminals out on the street with a slap on the wrist.”

Immigration laws in NC

The state’s General Assembly has tried to pass bills that would require sheriffs to cooperate with ICE — including in 2022 when such a bill passed the legislature and received Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto. Cooper said the bill was only “about scoring political points” and that current law already allows the state to jail and prosecute criminals regardless of immigration status. The legislature didn’t override Cooper’s veto.

Another similar bill passed this year along party lines, but the legislature’s two chambers haven’t finished working out differences between the two versions. Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden and other sheriffs previously said those bills would make counties less safe.

This year, Republicans seized on two particular cases involving immigrants.

In one Gates County case, an Eritrean national, Awet Hagos, entered the United States “as a nonimmigrant in 2016 and violated terms of admission,” The News & Observer reported in March. He was arrested after a four-hour police standoff outside at a place where he previously worked, the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald reported.

In another Charlotte case, 18-year-old Carlos Roberto-Diaz allegedly drove around the city shooting people at random. The Observer’s news partner WSOC-TV reported the man, then 14, and his father were released into the U.S. after a border encounter “likely because of a lack of bedspace at the time.” He was ordered to be removed from the U.S. in a September 2022 immigration court hearing in Charlotte, WSOC-TV reported.

Juvenile crime

Asked about juvenile crime in Charlotte, something Police Chief Johnny Jennings has raised concerns about, the lieutenant governor said gangs are a big part of the problem.

“We have to stop these gangs, and we have to come up with ways to break these gangs up before they can get into our schools, before they can get onto our streets and recruit these young people,” Robinson said.

He also said it’s important that the “right age range” can be charged with felonies.

In June, Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed a bill to require more teenagers facing criminal charges to be tried initially as adults. Jennings called it a “disappointing development.” But lawmakers overrode Cooper’s veto. The change will go into effect in December, the bill says.

“North Carolinians won’t be fooled by Mark Robinson’s press stunt today,” Stein’s campaign said in its own news release. “His long and well-reported history of promoting violence and stoking division proves just how unsafe he will make North Carolina.”

Stein has protected kids from child sex abuse, cleared the state’s backlog of rape kits and cracked down on the state’s fentanyl crisis, among other things, Stein’s campaign said in a news release.

“Actions prove what words cannot,” Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather said in a statement. “There’s one candidate for Governor who has a history of standing up for victims of crime and families, a proven record of supporting law enforcement officers, and a reputation for the kind of responsible leadership in public safety worthy of our state. And that’s Josh Stein.”

Crime is up, Robinson says. Stats disagree.

Robinson’s main claim during his news conference: Crime is up.

“Under the current administration — under Harris and Biden and Stein — we see metrics in crime rising across the board,” he said.

Nationally, the Biden administration celebrated a historic drop in crime this year. The murder rate fell dramatically, as did other crimes.

Statewide, property and violent crime rates declined from 2021 to 2022, the most recent year with State Bureau of Investigation data. In 2022, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries and arson incidents all dropped.

There are exceptions. Charlotte has bucked the national trend so far this year. More people were killed from January through June of this year in Charlotte than in the first six months of any year since at least 2015, the Observer previously reported.

And a report from the SBI says that, statewide, there was a 17.4% increase in domestic violence-related homicides in 2023.

In our Reality Check stories, Charlotte Observer journalists dig deeper into questions over facts, consequences and accountability. Read more. Story idea? RealityCheck@charlotteobserver.com.