Downtown Raleigh used to be cool.
But not any longer. Raleigh, along with many other major cities, is currently trapped in the “broken window” loop of crime. The broken window theory states if smaller crimes such as breaking windows are observed as not being punishable offenses, then other more serious crimes are committed by people assuming they, too, will not be prosecuted or punished.
San Francisco is the poster child for the broken glass theory. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his liberal Democrat colleagues don’t believe in punishing anyone who steals products up to $999 in value and ― as night follows day ― Nordstrom’s, Target and other major department chains are shuttering stores and fleeing the state.
Nothing destroys cities quicker than looting, crime and murder. Do progressive lefties really not understand that basic fact of life?
Raleigh has experienced the same thing as San Francisco, albeit on a smaller scale.
Following the George Floyd riots on Memorial Day 2020 and the recent spate of violent crime along the Glenwood Avenue South corridor, citizens of Raleigh have had enough. Local business owners recently testified before a City Council meeting that many of their employees are afraid to come downtown out of fear for their personal safety.
“A lot of our business owners are having to clean up human feces outside of our shops, needles from our patios, and deal with folks exposing themselves inside their bars mid-afternoons,” one owner said.
“My staff has been spit on; my staff has been thrown up against glass windows, my staff has been sexually groped, my staff has been threatened with bricks and they have had their lives threatened on a regular basis,” said another.
None of this had to happen. All of it could have been avoided had Raleigh Mayor Mary Ann Baldwin and the City Council allowed the police to do their job during the Floyd riots and set the tone that violence against anyone’s personal life or property would be prosecuted and convicted.
There is no moral, ethical or religious reason which can justify anyone’s claim to unilaterally inflict damage to anyone else’s body or property. There is not any rationale to support inflicting harm or bodily injury on any innocent bystander — ever. Use of force for self-defense, sure ― but there was no self-defense for any of the so-called “mostly peaceful” protestors in Raleigh or any other city during the summer of 2020.
Raleigh was not cool in the 1970s or 1980s. Downtown Raleigh looked like a ghost town until the city council finally wised up and got rid of the ban on automobile traffic and abolished the downtown mall concept ― simply because no one was walking in or around downtown Raleigh, and especially not after dark.
The real boom in downtown Raleigh activity and panache came after the turn of the century when Greg Hatem started investing in near-empty office buildings and restaurants on Fayetteville and Hargett streets after no one else did. After surviving the Crash of 2008-10, Hatem and other developers such as John Kane, with the support of business-friendly elected city councils, laid the framework and foundations for a veritable boom in downtown Raleigh as well as surrounding areas in Wake County.
It took a lot of work, creative thinking and major risk-taking and investment on behalf of developers and small business owners to make Raleigh cool and a safe and fun place to work, shop and eat. Tens of thousands of people went to First Friday night celebrations every month. Great restaurants popped up everywhere. There was even a mini-boom in small boutique clothing shops and stores which had not been seen in downtown Raleigh since the 1960s.
Today, most of those once-hustling and bustling shops and restaurants downtown are gone. Everyone who supported the wanton damage to other people’s businesses and livelihoods from Gov. Roy Cooper on down had a hand in driving entrepreneurs and tenants out of downtown Raleigh and relocating as far away as Emerald Isle, North Carolina.
There is no amount of backfilling or retroactive actions that can be taken by the current council to undo what they allowed to happen in 2020. None of them had any personal property destroyed by the rioters — as far as they were concerned, violence was OK as long as someone else’s property and person were harmed.
The only way to correct the situation is to replace every local elected official with new representatives in the next election. Every candidate can campaign as a slate on one slogan under one banner: “We will keep you safe.”
It should be a landslide.
