I am fed up with Asheville’s attitude on crime, homelessness and drugs. I work downtown on weekend nights and have been doing so for the past eight years. Tonight I witnessed a purse snatching and an assault (completely unrelated), and my car was broken into for the second time in two years. On a weekly basis, I observe some of the worst brawls I have ever seen spilling out onto Patton Avenue across from Pritchard Park. I am regularly confronted by hostile homeless people and have seen our visitors harassed and followed by street kids and other unsavory characters, [who] even approach cars at stoplights. I have also had to clean blood off of our establishment several times in the past two years.
Meanwhile, the police are busy with their Click-It-or-Ticket checkpoints and busting tourists for smoking pot at concerts. City Council, in its infinite wisdom, is busy debating the merits of funding for the Civic Center, drum-circle noise or zoning. While those things have their place, it is not, in my opinion, going to matter one bit if no one wants to come here due to the hostile conditions downtown. I voted for those people, and I share a left-leaning orientation with them, but we have got to have priorities. Downtown, along with the Parkway and the Biltmore Estate, are the jewels in our crown. We need to protect them—not take them for granted. I lived and worked downtown for four years in Jacksonville, Fla., and I never saw the chaos in that city and complacency from the city that one sees in Asheville.
Beat cops have been proven time and time again to be a good solution to troubled areas. I have seen beat cops downtown on very rare occasions, mainly when it is warm and early—when their presence is noticed the most and needed the least. And I have been asked more times than I can count why it takes three to five officers to investigate a drunk sleeping on a park bench.
We need to get tougher on businesses that tolerate and perpetuate problems downtown. We need to not be afraid to draw a distinction between the homeless that are truly down on their luck and needing assistance, and those that are intoxicated beyond hope and threatening beyond reason. This is a new problem. Asheville didn’t used to be this way. We need to address this now before it gets worse and downtown falls back into the hole that it used to occupy about 15 years ago.
— C. Battles
Asheville
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