Alright. So WBT is moving the Uptown Sky Show out of Uptown. To Fort Mill. I see.

Everyone is busy spinning this decision, but the bottom-line is that last July 4th a gang-related riot erupted at the show complete with gunfire and mass arrests. To recap:

Twenty people were arrested on charges of fighting, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. One person faces felony charges of inciting a riot.

“We don’t know for sure what started the original fight,” said Keith Bridges, a spokesman for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. “But following that, there were more fights. Some of the youths were stopping cars and jumping on them.”

Bridges said more than 70 officers were on scene after the fireworks show ended at about 10:20 p.m. They helped get people safely out of uptown.

Capt. Tim Jayne hesitated to call the situation a riot, but officers on the street used that term as they radioed to each other. Jayne said the teenagers blocked traffic and refused to respond to police. Some pushed a Dumpster into the street, some fired guns into the air, and some intimidated people who were trying to leave parking garages.

One innocent bystander was shot in the hand while walking on Tryon Street. But as far as police know, he was the only person injured.

“We were not even aware that someone had been shot until several hours afterward,” Capt. Chuck Adkins said.

At its height, Jayne estimated that the fighting crowd was about 2,000 people. The situation didn’t die down until about 3 a.m.

“The thing that concerns me the most is that we had a number of people that were here — families, children — that were here to enjoy the fireworks,” Adkins said.

Police said the fighting incident might prompt some changes in the planning of next year’s event.

By New Year’s Eve the Uptown policy was changed to include more police and no street-sales of alcohol. You could see what was coming next.

Mayor Pat McCrory and the Center City folks are essentially saying, well, too bad, but Uptown has grown beyond the need for such big, free promotions to get people Uptown. Yes, this is true. There is certainly more to do than ever before Uptown — all over town for that matter. All true and all totally beside the point.

There exists a violent street-crime culture in Charlotte that has now chased a large event out of the public square. Some of it is gang related, most just ad hoc criminality. It has, as criminals always do, begun to follow the money into some of the rah-rah crowds prized nightlife and “attractions,” as last week’s brazen hit on a Park Road bar full of patrons attests. This is the real issue, not fireworks.

And, let us be clear, hiring more cops has nothing to do with fixing this problem; an underfunded “catch-and-release” court system does. The Down East kleptocracy would rather hike the minimum wage and throw people out of work than fund the state court system — there’s just no votes there.

As for WBT’s decision, a little too coy. Yes, cost and time may have been a factor in moving the event to Knights Stadium. However, I guarantee some Lincoln Financial lawyer noted that, given last year’s violence, the standard for adequate security for the event went through the roof. Accordingly, were someone to take a bullet in a melee this year — or skin a knee, for that matter — they could wind up owning a fat chunk of Lincoln Financial.

This is also why another corporate sponsor is unlikely to step up to fund any Uptown fireworks event for the 4th.

Update: It occurs to me that Mayor Pat and the Center City folks are actually thrilled that this event is leaving Uptown considering the bad press Uptown received as a result of the riot. We certainly know that bad press is absolutely the worst thing that can happen to the Uptown rah-rah crowd.