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Mayor Vi Lyles rejected calls to mobilize the National Guard in Charlotte on Friday, saying she believes the local community is engaged enough to make the city safer on its own without outside forces.
“I believe in Charlotte, first and foremost,” Lyles said. “What I believe is, given the time that we have to work with the White House and other federal offices, that we will not need the guard to come to Charlotte.”
Her comments come on the heels of a critical report from the N.C. State Auditor this week, which found armed security in the public transit system has decreased by about 40% since 2018 despite an increase in security funding and overall personnel.
Security spending grew from $5.9 million in 2022 to $18.4 million in 2025, according to the report. Officials have not explained the decrease in armed security.
And the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police issued a letter to city leaders on Thursday requesting intervention from federal law enforcement including the National Guard due to “the ongoing failure of city and police leadership” to address a police staffing shortage and unsustainable crime-fighting strategies.
Charlotte has been under pressure from state and federal leaders to improve transit safety ever since the fatal stabbing of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee. Zarutska was killed in an unprovoked attack while riding the Lynx Blue Line light rail in South End on Aug. 22.
The union said there have been an additional 15 suspected homicides since Zarutska’s death.
The police union also requested help from Gov. Josh Stein and President Donald Trump, the letter said.
The National Guard was almost always deployed at the request of a state’s governor before Trump began his second term in office this year. Trump has since sent national troops into Los Angeles without the support of state leadership and has pledged to do the same in Memphis and Portland. Experts question the legality of these actions.
Lyles joined other city officials during a press conference Friday to talk about new safety measures they are implementing in response. The city unveiled four utility terrain vehicles and four patrol bikes that were rolled out along transit lines this week. The new equipment will improve officer mobility for Professional Security Services, the private security firm contracted to patrol the Charlotte Area Transit System.
But the press conference came too late, according to the union.
“Too many lives have already been lost while waiting for action,” the letter reads. “Why has it taken so long to address safety concerns when we have been raising alarms for years?”
How Charlotte is responding to crime
About 40% of the city’s general fund is devoted to police, City Manager Marcus Jones said. Fire services account for roughly another 20%.
Since 2019, the city has increased police starting salary by 34% and increased top-out salary by 42%, Jones said. Charlotte has also added more recruit classes, and both retention and vacancies now “trend in the right direction,” he said.
The new patrol vehicles follow a string of other improvements the city has already implemented.
City Council in September voted to expand the jurisdiction of Professional Security Services, which does business as Professional Police Services, beyond city-owned transit property like light rails and stations. The private security officers can now enforce laws and make arrests along the entire rail trail, sidewalks surrounding transit centers and other areas adjacent to transit property.
CATS also said it ramped up fare enforcement efforts and entered into an agreement with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department to deploy off-duty officers for 966 hours per week to assist with transit patrol.
Lyles intends to introduce a resolution regarding fare evasion at the next Metropolitan Transit Commission meeting, she said. Lyles chairs the commission, which is the policy board for CATS.
“No one in Charlotte should feel unsafe about getting to work, school or home to their family,” Lyles said. “Safety has been and will continue to be our top priority.”
CATS increases security, but decreases armed officers
The State Auditor’s Office said it “will release a final report after conducting a full review.” Preliminary findings on Tuesday reported CATS armed security personnel shrunk from between 68 and 88 in 2018 to 39 this year.
City Council approved the new PSS contract in December 2024, which increased security personnel by more than 100% and tripled the amount of funding for transit security, according to CATS. Most of those new personnel are unarmed.
The Charlotte Observer asked CATS spokesperson Brett Baldeck whether the agency was intentionally shifting away from armed security.
Baldeck did not directly address the question. In a written statement, he said “armed security guards are just one layer of CATS overall safety and security plan … While not every contracted security guard is armed with a firearm, they receive training for the use of other less-lethal options for de-escalating situations.”
City Councilman Ed Driggs, chair of the city’s committee on transportation, told the Observer he did not know how the decrease happened. However, a lot of security incidents do not involve weapons, he said.
“They involve simply having a person that goes over and says to somebody, ‘stop doing that,’ or, ‘come with me, please,’” Driggs said. “I think the experts, the professionals, are making choices about who needs weapons and who doesn’t, and I’m frankly just trusting them.”
This story was originally published October 3, 2025 at 2:53 PM.
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Nick Sullivan
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