‘This is not normal. This is not Raleigh.’ Businesses plead for help on downtown crime.
Kim Hammer, a Raleigh business owner, fought back tears Tuesday as she described working downtown in recent months.
She described teenagers beating up and robbing homeless people to audible gasps from audience members during a City Council committee meeting about downtown safety.
“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,” Hammer told city leaders. “This is a daily thing. It’s incredible stressful. We can’t take it any more.”
“This is not normal,” she said. “This is not Raleigh.”
Hammer, who owns Bittersweet and Johnson Street Yacht Club, was one of a handful of downtown business owners and residents asking the city for help with violence, drug deals, and needles and human feces on their property.
“The concerns from business owners are valid, and the Police Department is doing everything it can to come up with solutions to address their concerns,” Raleigh Police Chief Estella Patterson told reporters after the meeting.
“Our city is growing,” she said. “You’re seeing our population almost at half a million now. With that growth comes growing pains.”
‘Clean up human feces’
Matt Coleman, owner of The Davie, described a situation Monday where a “known criminal” was brandishing a knife in the air and screaming at pedestrians about 20 feet from his patio.
“It’s hard to believe now that 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,” he said.
He said he attended Tuesday’s meeting to get a better understanding of what city leaders are doing.
“What steps are leaders going to take to help secure the key element that keeps our city vibrant,” Coleman said. “And that is safety. Safety to walk the streets without fear of being harassed or attacked. Safety for business owners and staff that have made the investment and commitment to our downtown. Safety to the residents and guests who shop at our stores.”
This was the second meeting this month in which city leaders discussed downtown safety. Last week the city reported there were 98 “biohazard” waste reports (body fluids} since June 1.
“You read the emails, but when you hear the stories in person, people sharing their fear and emotion, it is really gut wrenching,” Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin told The News & Observer in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “That is why we are doing what we’re doing in terms of increasing our policing, talking about private security, getting those resources on the ground so we can make a difference.”
Glenwood South
Patterson highlighted Glenwood South and the “business core” bounded by Lenoir, Salisbury, Person and Morgan streets and including Moore Square.
In the Glenwood South night-life district, the chief wants to expand the unit that oversees the area, encourage business owners to use magnetometers to weed out people carrying guns, and improve lighting on Glenwood Avenue and its side streets. Police also plan to continue shutting down parts of Glenwood Avenue to traffic on weekends, which residents in nearby neighborhoods praised.
There’s been an increase in people carrying concealed weapons, illegal firearms seized, felony and misdemeanor drug violations, homicides, aggregated assaults and disorderly conduct incidents so far this year compared to the same time last year, according to the city’s presentation.
Phil Poe, who lives in the nearby Historic Glenwood-Brooklyn Neighborhood, said the city has a crisis.
“I encourage you to go back and look at the budget once again. Listen to the Police Department,” he said. “See what they need. We are in extraordinary times. We do have a crisis, and you have got to do better.”
Other residents said the city should tackle the root causes of crime and provide more social services.
“We have problems in Glenwood South, and there is a great police presence,” said Angela Floyd, who lives in The Paramount. “And I hear that is not sustainable long-term. And I agree. It shouldn’t be. I think it’s a short-term solution, and we really need to figure out why this is happening.”
“We’re attacking a problem,” she said, “when we should be tackling the solution.”
‘Zero tolerance’
Patterson said she was “quite disturbed” by what she saw during a recent visit to the GoRaleigh bus station.
In the last two weeks the Raleigh Police Department enacted a “zero tolerance approach” around the downtown transit center, resulting in 274 charges, including 22 felony charges, 75 physical arrests and 30 warrants served.
“My instructions to my team were that if there are quality of life concerns, and we have victimization going on in that area, we are going to take swift action concerning that,” she said.
The offenses included drug and drug paraphernalia possession, disorderly conduct, illegal firearm possession, trespassing and ABC violations, according to the chief’s presentation.
The Police Department plans to establish a full-time bicycle squad and expand the transit unit. The city also intends to take measures to prevent loitering after hours and continue to provide support for people who are unhoused.
Bill King, the CEO of the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, said people should avoid making sweeping generalizations about where the problems are coming from.
“Sometimes you hear people complain about the homeless or something like that,” he said. “This is not that. There are overlapping populations in downtown that I think sometimes get conflated with each other.”
There is a “serious challenge” with homeless populations downtown due to a lack of housing, lack of shelter space and services that are difficult to access, he said.
“There are plenty of them who are just downtown because they have nowhere else to be,” King said. “And they are struggling.”
More officers
Some business owners praised the police officers, especially recent enforcement actions in Glenwood South and around the transit center. But others described waiting a long time for police to arrive.
Response time can depend on the time of day, how many officers are on duty and what priority the call is, Patterson said.
“We can’t keep increasing the number of officers that we put downtown and in our core area,” Patterson said. “One, because we don’t have an infinite amount of resources but also, two, because we are diverting resources from other parts of the city, which then means we have crime in other places that are occurring that goes unchecked.”
After the meeting, she clarified that officers are rerouted from specialty units or where they have extra resources.
“We’re going to make sure that every part of our city is as safe as we can make it,” she said.
The police department has 91 vacancies.
Private security
The city’s transportation department reached out to three security companies that recommended armed security officers covering 16 hours a day. The city could consider “company police” who have similar powers as police officers or security officers, who don’t have police powers.
Private security would be a force multiplier, and company police and security officers are already being used by private businesses and in other parts of the city, Patterson said.
The four-members of the council’s Safe, Vibrant and Health Community Committee will discuss the issue of downtown safety again at their next meeting. The four members of the committee are Baldwin and Council members Stormie Forte, Christina Jones and Megan Patton.
This story was originally published September 26, 2023 at 2:41 PM with the headline "‘This is not normal. This is not Raleigh.’ Businesses plead for help on downtown crime.."
