September 15, 2025, letter to Charlotte City Council

Dear Mayor and City Council Members,

In light of the recent tragic murder of Iryna Zarutska, I want to share Sustain Charlotte’s perspective—and that of transit experts nationwide—on how to best understand and address violent attacks like this.

We recognize and share the urgency to ensure public safety. Still, we are deeply concerned that CATS is being unfairly blamed and pressured to implement additional security measures that may not prevent such tragedies in the future. As transportation safety experts emphasize, this was not fundamentally a transit system’s failure. It was the tragic result of untreated mental illness and homelessness.

As Todd Litman, executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, explained in his recent article Why It’s So Hard to Keep America’s Transit System Safe:

“Anywhere there are concentrations of homelessness and mental illness, you’re probably going to find more of these random attacks like what happened in Charlotte.”

He also reminds us that:

“Such attacks certainly are not exclusive to public transit systems.”

And importantly:

“Overall public transit is safe, and it becomes safer the more non-criminals are riding. The biggest safety is not whether or not there’s a police officer in the station. It’s whether the station is busy with normal people going about their normal business who are encouraged to intervene if some crazy person starts doing something irresponsible.”

Similarly, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, interim dean at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and a transit safety expert, explained the limits of a security-only approach:

“You cannot predict everything, or have someone stationed on each and every bus stop, on each and every transit station. At the end of the day, if someone has a knife and all of a sudden stabs someone, it’s kind of difficult to prevent it.”

The solution, therefore, lies not in placing blame on CATS or simply expanding transit security, but in ensuring that individuals experiencing mental illness and homelessness receive the support they need before they are roaming our streets—or our transit system—untreated and unsheltered.

We urge you to take these expert perspectives into account as you consider how to respond to this tragedy. 

Strengthening mental health services and housing support systems will do far more to prevent future tragedies than doubling down on transit security alone.

With respect and partnership,

Shannon Binns

Executive Director

Sustain Charlotte