Trouble is brewing in Charlotte in typical Charlotte, slo-mo build-up, sudden-eruption fashion. To trace what is going on, jump back to the July 4th riot in uptown that wasn’t.
At a minimum the disturbance, which required a full police department scramble to quell, suggested a lack of preparation by the city. At the time I wondered if we’d ever get a full accounting of all the property crime related to the disturbance as attention quickly shifted first, to downplaying the incident, and then to the canard of whether those involved in the melee were gang members or not. (More on property crime in a moment.)
Then it slowly began to dawn on the center city crowd that they had a full-fledged PR disaster in the making what with the new uptown arena set in open in the fall directly across from the transit center, site of the riot/melee. Couple that with continued raw feelings about the city getting stuck with the cost of providing a police presence for arena events, at a cost of something north of $1 million, and you had the pressure rising.
Police Chief Darrel Stephens was the first to pop, coming out defending his department’s actions and promising an after-action review of the riot/melee. Note that no actual investigation of any property or other crimes that occurred that night is implied by that position. Then we got a round of hide-the-money from city staff trying to explain how it is that security for arena events is in the city budget but money for police overtime for investigations is not. (Don’t ask, believe me.)
All of this occurred against a back-drop of steady petty crime, vehicle break-ins and such, in uptown. When asked what they planned to do to combat this, mostly by WBTV’s Steve Crump who has done yeoman’s work trying to nail-down police and city officials on this issue, Charlotte residents heard that the problem is “cruising.” And to stop cruising we need things like restrictions on turns and other traffic-based measures. Notice still nothing about aggressive enforcement to stop property crimes in center city. (And note the odd insistence that vehicle mobility is a problem.)
Then things really popped a few days ago. First, there was a strong-arm robbery of a woman in the parking deck of the Hampton Inn in uptown. This is a natural progressive from a theft from a parked vehicle, of course.
On the heels of that incident came the still unfolding near-abduction of a seven-year-old girl from the lobby of the Omni Hotel on Trade Street. Suffice it to say that had not some average Joes in that lobby moved to stop the would-be abductor, uptown would be at this hour festooned with satellite trucks beaming the latest missing girl drama to the world.
I’m live from uptown Charlotte, site of a terrifying stranger abduction that has the city on edge and…. You get the idea.
Cue Mohammad Jenatian, president of the Greater Charlotte Hospitality & Tourism Alliance, prime mover behind the idea to use a new hotel-motel tax to fund a NASCAR hall of fame, and an all-around card-carrying member of the uptown in-crowd. Jenatian blasted city government, the police department, and Mayor Pat McCrory for the handling of uptown security issues. Specifically, Jenatian cited CPD’s “stupid” policy of not responding to property crimes with officers and instead merely asking victims to fill out forms via phone or Net.
Here’s the crux of the problem, then. By signaling to all would-be criminals that property crime is not really crime, you are guaranteed to get more property crime. When you de facto allow property crime, criminals become emboldened and move onto strong-arm robbery and from there the possibility of an armed robbery involving a serious assault. And once it becomes clear that hotels are a police-free zone, it is open season on law-abiding citizens.
I’m still not certain we have all the background here. I would not be surprised to find out that the city and CPD think that the hotels should pay more for their own security, either in the former of private security services or by hiring off-duty officers. There also seems to be some political gamesmanship going on between the department and the city, and perhaps even within the department itself on uptown policing. Whatever.
The bottom-line is that residents of Charlotte deserve to have their persons and property protected by local police. If that means rolling a cruiser every time a purse is snatched by a car in an uptown parking deck, so be it.
Until that policy change is in effect, however, here is my recommendation to victims of property crime in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. When you call for help, say you think the bad guys made off with some Sudafed for their meth lab along with your TV, car, purse, or jewelry. That way you are sure to get a cruiser or two, probably the SBI and the DEA too, to respond.
