Workers in Democrat-run North Carolina tourist city bemoan downtown decline: 'Really disturbing'

[DC_Vol]

Parading down the street dressed in BDSM Drag?

Luth is a swinger.

 

[MercyPercy]

Yea slashing their budget for military gear will really take a bite out of their funding.

Yes, that would be nothing compared to the cuts on overzealous drug war policy.

 

[BigOrangeMojo]

Partisan? Did you even read the article?

Cuck

Asheville Police Department Chief David Zack told Fox News Digital last fall that his department is straining to operate at 42% down every day after losing more than 100 sworn officers since summer 2020, when tear gas-choked protests against police snarled downtown for days. Break-ins saw a 200% monthly surge in January, according to local ABC affiliate WLOS.

Fox News is a blatant partisan source. Asheville is no different than any other city when it comes to crime. Asheville is, statistically speaking, significantly safer than a "red city" like Knoxville....

 

[volinbham]

The pew research link doesn't say what you claim.

ummm

 

[TNVOLNAVY]

Growing up in the Tri-Cities we went Asheville pretty regularly, it was a nice mountain town. In the 90s started going for the couple of breweries located there and it was still a good place to visit. Around 2010 it started going down hill and it is still on the decline. We drive through now and never stop. It's just a much different town now and not for the better.

In the 70s Asheville started becoming a destination for potheads. In the 90s the alphabet people followed. By 2008 Buncombe County had gone full blown leftist commie and voted en masse for the Kenyan Commie. Thereafter, all my relatives took their retirement $ and moved the hell out to greener pastures.

 

[85SugarVol]

Yes, that would be nothing compared to the cuts on overzealous drug war policy.

I don’t think it works the way you think it does.

 

[85SugarVol]

That number was constantly changing as information and understanding increased (as should be the case).

Sure. People change their minds.

The % of Democrats supporting Defund the Police changed as information and data increased (as would be expected).

 

[2EastTnVols]

Worst interstate system ever, but they're working on it. Downtown not my scene, but love Grove Park. Wicked Weed and Green Man rock as well.

 

[Septic]

Props to Zen Tubing on the French Broad. A bucket of chicken and a cooler of beer floating down the river is good stuff.

 

[Pennheel]

As someone who was born in Western NC and lived in and around Asheville during my childhood, none of that surprises me. With the growth of Asheville over the past 25 years due to the transplants from all over, it's bound to happen. Growth can bring a lot of negative and positive things anywhere. I'm glad I just visit little San Francisco anymore. Outside of a few tourists games with my dad and dinner occasionally, I don't visit that often.

 

[EasternVol]

Worst interstate system ever, but they're working on it. Downtown not my scene, but love Grove Park. Wicked Weed and Green Man rock as well.

100% correct on the interstates there.

 

[UT_Dutchman]

Im trying to go to the Saloon tomorrow to watch Champions League. Being on King Street is one of my favorite places. Little something for everyone.

I used to go to Boone a lot in the early 90s for the Brewery Tumbleweeds, later became Cottonwood and I spent a lot of time in that establishment as well. I think it was Black Bear Stout I drank the most. Met a lot of good people back then.

 

[Go aeiou]

Worst interstate system ever, but they're working on it. Downtown not my scene, but love Grove Park. Wicked Weed and Green Man rock as well.

Ha, ha, my sister's family lives in Weaverville which is just north of Asheville. They warn us to avoid getting there at rush hour, but It seems like we always do. Rush hour means the interstates slow down to about 55 mph. If only we had that problem in Nashville.

 

[LouderVol]

They were loud, yes, but tiny and powerless.

I don't think you can call them powerless when multiple major cities implemented it. and by major I mean bigger than Lexington Kentucky.....

the other side of the defund the police bit from the parties is how they treat/react to various events involving cops. Dems have been pretty openly against the cops before all the facts come out. Obama's "If I had a son" comment comes to mind as a top end Dem backing this. Locally speaking Atlanta's ex-mayor, and Luthers favorite, Lancebottoms came out and attacked the cops on multiple occasions around "good shops/stops". Ironically when there was a bad shooting that ended being the one event she didn't speak out against. It caused many in the local police force to drop out/retire, and the reverberations are still being felt to this day. The push back on Cop City and Buckhead wanting to leave.

 

[85SugarVol]

I don't think you can call them powerless when multiple major cities implemented it. and by major I mean bigger than Lexington Kentucky.....

I got a good chuckle out of Lexington too.

Appears the current talking point is a variation of either -
We didn’t cut as much as was proposed
We put back everything back that we cut

So we’re not responsible, clearly. This is just GOP fearmongering and cheap political attack.

 

[85SugarVol]

Why are local police budgets demonstrably higher in 2022 compared to 2020? Ask anybody, they’ll show you.

 

[85SugarVol]

NYC - we proposed a $1B cut to Police, but we only took out $317M

We good.

 

[lawgator1]

I don't think you can call them powerless when multiple major cities implemented it. and by major I mean bigger than Lexington Kentucky.....

the other side of the defund the police bit from the parties is how they treat/react to various events involving cops. Dems have been pretty openly against the cops before all the facts come out. Obama's "If I had a son" comment comes to mind as a top end Dem backing this. Locally speaking Atlanta's ex-mayor, and Luthers favorite, Lancebottoms came out and attacked the cops on multiple occasions around "good shops/stops". Ironically when there was a bad shooting that ended being the one event she didn't speak out against. It caused many in the local police force to drop out/retire, and the reverberations are still being felt to this day. The push back on Cop City and Buckhead wanting to leave.

What major cities got rid of their police departments? I must have missed it.

 

[85SugarVol]

What major cities got rid of their police departments? I must have missed it.

NYC cut over $300M

 

[Grand Vol]

The assumption being made here is that its BECAUSE they have Dem leadership that Asheville has increased crime. This is a popular claim by GOPers, harkening back to the old meme that Republicnas are hard on crime, Dems soft on it, and that crime goes up most in Dem-controlled areas.

But is that claim true?

US elections 2020: Fact-checking Trump on crime in Democratic-run cities

No, it is not, particularly when we talk about violent crime.







There are other statistical analyses out there saying the same thing.

Now as to homelessness, that's a problem with many factors, as we have discussed before. It is a major issue, we all confront panhandling at the local WaWa, some areas worse than others. But for example where i am it seems particularly bad at a gas station located near an addiction center. I think the correlation is strong on that one, based on what I see. But I have yet to see anything that shows that the homeless are even aware of, much less deliberately choose, to go to a Dem-controlled City over and R one.

I always laugh at people who use Trump "fact checkers" to support their arguments.

 

[LouderVol]

What major cities got rid of their police departments? I must have missed it.

New York, Austin, San Fran, Baltimore, Portland, Minneapolis, LA, Seattle, Atlanta, Omaha, Phoenix. All saw their budgets decreased. As Sugar Vol pointed out, most of them stated they were going to cut X, cut less than X, and then claim they didn't decrease their budget because we didn't cut all of X. Or some cut all of X, and then added some back so that they could claim they actually increased their budgets.

 

[85SugarVol]

New York, Austin, San Fran, Baltimore, Portland, Minneapolis, LA, Seattle, Atlanta, Omaha, Phoenix. All saw their budgets decreased. As Sugar Vol pointed out, most of them stated they were going to cut X, cut less than X, and then claim they didn't decrease their budget because we didn't cut all of X. Or some cut all of X, and then added some back so that they could claim they actually increased their budgets.

2023 fiscal budget is ‘$X - so clearly funding was not an issue in 2021.

 

[lawgator1]

NYC cut over $300M

Defund and reduce funding are different things.

 

[85SugarVol]

Defund and reduce funding are different things.

Hahahahaha nice

 

[LouderVol]

Defund and reduce funding are different things.

defund: to remove funding from.
reduce: to remove at set amount of funding from.

stop playing word games. this is exactly what those cities did when they realized that defunding was bad, they just changed the rhetoric slightly to meet what they had already done.