Crime Rises in Asheville, NC, and Many Blame the Democrats Who Run the Town
“I think what you’re seeing in Asheville right now is a culmination of the last several years of pulling police back and not letting them do their jobs like they’re able to do.”
How much more evidence do we need to prove that when you hinder the police and have Democrats in charge, you will have problems?
Chicago. New York City. Los Angeles.
But now we’re seeing Democratic ideas affecting other cities that wouldn’t come to mind when we think about crime.
Asheville, North Carolina, is a city of only 90,000 residents. It’s in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s picturesque.
But officials in Asheville told Fox News Digital that the city had seen a 31% rise in crime. They blame the Democrats and activists:
Asheville, a city of approximately 90,000 people nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Buncombe County, North Carolina, has seen a 31% surge in violent crime per 100,000 people from 2016 to 2020, according to statistics released in the spring. Asheville’s growth in violent crime is nearly double that of the national average and ranks among the highest in North Carolina, where violent crime has increased 13% statewide.
Asheville has so far seen 11 homicides in 2022, setting it on pace to surpass the homicide rate of 2021 and 2020. Rates of homelessness have increased 21% since 2021, according to data released in May. There is also evidence of increased Mexican drug cartel activity in the area, according to multiple law enforcement sources who spoke to Fox News Digital.
Former Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan said: “I think what you’re seeing in Asheville right now is a culmination of the last several years of pulling police back and not letting them do their jobs like they’re able to do.”
It seems the problems between the police and the politicians started right after May 2020. Gee, what happened in May 2020?
2020 statistics put Asheville in the top 10% of the most violent cities in America.
It’s only gotten worse.
Duncan is no longer a Democrat due to the rise of anti-police attitudes in the Democratic party. He does not belong to any party.
Duncan also confirmed left-wing activists who did not live in Asheville would cause a ruckus at a local meeting:
He told Fox News Digital that police who do wrong must be held accountable, but also said officers both locally and around the country have become hesitant to do their jobs “because they can be right, but it can be the wrong set of facts, and they can still wind up in trouble.”
Duncan further noted that when he was serving as county sheriff, “left-wing activists” from outside the community would sweep in to disrupt community meetings. “They would really try to get into it with the police, and a lot of times, they would try to shout down things,” he said. “And the first people who quit coming to those meetings were the people within the community. They really didn’t get to speak, and they really didn’t get anything done.”
“Personally, I think that is the agenda of the Left: for law enforcement not to be able to do anything that’s effective and makes the community safer,” he added.
On July 3, the Asheville Police Department posted an email it supposedly received from ANTIFA, threatening the police on July 4.
Threats like the above email and constant attacks from the left have pushed people to leave the department.
The department had to bring in an outside firm to help with hiring. From The Asheville Citizen-Times in March 2022:
“We are still losing faster than we are hiring,” [Police Captain Brandon] Moore said. “You don’t have to be really great at math (to know) we can’t keep up if we’re losing them like that.”
For that reason Moore, captain of the Special Operations Division, which encompasses recruitment, said the department was also considering bringing on another firm to study retention issues, though nothing was finalized.
“We can definitely not sit around and hope that this gets better,” Moore said. “We are trying to attack it from every angle we have.”
The department is down about 41% of available officers on a daily basis, an increase in staff from the 44% of January — the highest vacancy rate since May 2020 — but back down from the 40% of mid-March.
Of 238 sworn officers, 179 spots are filled, but factoring in officers in training and on medical or military leave brings the number to 141.
“We are still losing folks now,” Moore said.
Chief David Zack echoed Moore’s sentiments:
APD Chief David Zack told Fox News Digital that the reasons behind the steady flood of resignations in his department are complicated and multi-faceted. Zack said the APD has lost more than 100 sworn officers since May 2020, which he noted is roughly equivalent to 600 years of experience walking out the door.
He pinpointed family pressures, a lack of community support and low pay in the expensive city as major factors pushing police to throw in the towel, but explained that APD has been working with the city to make salaries more competitive. He also said that “officers are very, very frustrated” with low bail.
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Comments
“Many Blame the Democrats Who Run the Town”
A hotbed of domestic terrorists!
Twang your magic twanger, Garland!
Putting stupid communists in charge of your town has consequences. Enjoy getting what you voted for.
Once the PD in a community are forced out of proactive policing the cascade of bad things is going to happen. It will not stop until those who created the conditions for the cascade are no longer in power. If you live in an area where this has occurred consider getting out before you become a statistic. Think the Purge but 24/7/365 and what that might mean for your family’s safety.
Last point, when the exodus begins you definitely want to be towards the front and not choosing to be left behind or worse yet, forced into a rear guard retreat. Fair warning.
We live in the next county over from the county where Asheville is located. Most avoid traveling to Asheville if they can help it. We just wish those liberals who reside in Asheville and Buncombe County would not move to our area because the cost of living is less.
Sounds like Haywood County.
Are things any better in Hickory?
Interesting to see how Western North Carolina has become gentrified and woke. There are “planned estates” in areas that were so backwater that the Revenuers didn’t go there. I went to school with moonshine runnners. Well, the same story is playing out across the country … and as Dennis Prager says,… everything the Left touches is destroyed.
Do you remember the old ‘shiner’ everybody called “Popcorn”?
That was meant for Alaska Bob
No I don’t know “PopCorn” but Junior Johnson could bootleg turn a truck filled with moonshine …on a bridge… and not spill a drop. I lived in Madison county north of Asheville. My folks were working at the polling station when Zeno Ponder’s cops tried to steal the ballot boxes but couldn’t because of a single courageous NC State Trooper. ….. yes sir…. clean Democrat elections in pre-1964 South. I have a few moonshine tales from those that ran the moonshine. That was the true start of NASCAR.
Legendary moonshiner from Western NC!
That’s him. He was even featured on NC public tv when he wasn’t in jail.
It’s sickening to see the utterly corrupt FBI and Dumb-o-crat prosecutors fail to treat “Anti-fa” as the subversive and brazen domestic terrorist group that it manifestly is, and, attack it with aggressive federal investigation and prosecutions.
Asheville has been weirdoville for a long time, the drug problem has been there for a long time. Opened the Home Depot there in the 90’s and lived in Black Mountain. It’s pretty there but Asheville is just not a nice town and has not been for 30 years.
Remember the old Monte Vista Hotel?
Duh, this has been in play ever since LBJ’s great society. Nothing like stating the obvious. Remember what happened to Lott’s wife. Do look at those cities or your name changes to Morton.
The War on Poverty, Great Society of the mid 1960s did introduce the worst kind of poverty–government poverty–to Appalachia. UNC-TV did a special on mountain life years ago and the natives all remembered Sargent Shriver with Billy Graham along with him to keep his government loving ass from coming up missing. Shriver informed the natives that they were all “poverty stricken” and he and the mighty Feds were going to fix all that. Well, they did, fixed ’em up real good for good.
I can just see the bitter, angry, scowling denizens of Whole Foods in the polling stations now.. Straight D right on down the list. If NC has ballot initiatives, they vote in favor of every measure to “help” the urban outdoorsmen.
Then, they go home to their cats.
With their ACW stickers on the back window of their Subarus…
Don’t forget Toyota Piouses.
Full disclosure: I ordered me a nice new Subaru Ascent last Saturday, but, no stickers will ever “grace” it. I keep my beliefs to myself.
I just moved out of Buncombe County in June after living there for 3 years. Asheville and Buncombe Co are absolutely dysfunctional. The homelessness, panhandling, and drug addiction problems are out of control. People tell me all the time how much they love Asheville. When you’re visiting Biltmore and/or staying at The Grove Park Inn on a weekend while drinking beer all over town, you won’t get to experience the total shit show. It’s a ghost town during the week downtown.
Visited Biltmore about 4 years ago and walked around Black Mountain. Beautiful town. We did the tourist walk thru Grove Park Inn since it’s way too expensive for us commoners to stay. Luckily a local told us about the events going on in downtown Asheville which would have traffic and parking locked up for hours, so we stayed on the outskirts and had a wonderful time. It’s a shame what’s happened.
Kinda related. After Chesa Boudin was recalled in SF, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist posted a twitter thread in which he said he was not at all surprised. He’d seen a “sharp” – his word – swing to the political right in his social circle.
It’s only an anecdote. But it’s one reason why I am not convinced the polls are tightening as much as the media claims.
Polls = propaganda.
I’d like to add some context here. Ashville is home to a branch of UNC, so you have the influence of a lefty college. There are a few other college in the county as well. The area recently has seen a big growth in breweries. It has long been noted as a place (in my terminology) as a “land which time forgot”. It was always a sort of hippie location. All that being said, it is no wonder that area would be infested with all sorts of leftist ideology and nostrums.
True, UNC-A, Warren Wilson, Western Carolina Univ and even little Brevard College near by
I lived there until 2018, when I fled with my family. I knew the mayor (who is still mayor). I knew city planners. I knew people on the boards of directors of the charitable associations; lawyers, doctors, teachers, even most of the church-goers…. The place is leftist from top to bottom. They are getting what they deserve.
It’s awful!
We are hopefully closing on property an hour away in Greeneville TN. The drug activity and homelessness is not isolated. I was amazed at how many cardboard carrying zombies were walking around Johnson City, and even Greeneville. The cartels have made big inroads to inner America.
I see two actions required to fix it: Arrest and incarcerate on drug offences. Take them out of circulation and remove the customers. Like in any business about 10% of the customers represent 50% of the revenue. It’s easier than you think to make that business difficult by messing with their economics. The other action is investing in foster care; getting kids out of those drug fueled hell hole homes is necessary.
One of the properties we were looking to buy is owned by a drug addict who is selling of the family tools and stuff and slowly declining towards homelessness. She lets a dealer live at the property as well. Sad- the land had been in her family for 100 years and it’s going to be lost to her. She’s lost her kids already to the foster system.
Couple things to note of interest: In the photo of Asheville at the top of this article — that obelisk is no longer there. It was the Vance Monumnet, and since Vance was a Confederate officer , it had to come down. It was irrelevant that he went on to serve NC as governor twice and in Congress as a US senator. He is credited with helping North Carolinians recover from the Civil War.
Another thing of note, perhaps, is the Asheville mayor and vice mayor and all 5 city council members are women. Not sure what that means, if anything, but it’s been like that a few years.
In the link to the email the APD got before July 4 I thought it was interesting that that reporter put ‘threatening’ and ‘ANITFA’ in quotation marks.
Just saying. Used to live in Buncombe County. Escaped years ago.
For the past 20 years I have a get-away house in Sylva NC which is 40 minutes from downtown Ashville. We would go to Ashville for lunch or dinner every second or third time we would go to Sylva but we stopped going to Ashville 5 years ago. In Ashville the occasional smell of somebody smoking pot when you were traveling through the seedier sections of town would happen and it transitioned downtown. Then the smell of burning Hashish and Opium downtown became common as the LGBTALPHABETSOUP crowd tripled in size five years ago. Ashville had become no longer family friendly as it had also become the city of the mass of unwashed.