Last week, over a 36-hour period, Charlotte experienced six homicides, including a shooting spree targeting random pedestrians, which killed one and injured two others. This comes after a report by AH Datalytics showed homicides in Charlotte jumping 40% in 2024 so far, topping cities like Los Angeles, and St. Louis. The homicide count in 2024 has already surpassed that of 2023, 67 to 49.
Why is Charlotte, a historically safe city compared to other cities of its size, like St. Louis and Jacksonville, seeing such a dramatic increase in violent crime?
The answer lies in the same hard-left, soft-on-crime policies that have infected cities like New York and San Francisco. The Mecklenburg County district attorney, Spencer B. Merriweather III, who was appointed by Gov. Roy Cooper in 2017, has prioritized second chances, and “justice reform,” all while Charlotte has been engulfed by violent crime. This is no coincidence.
Merriweather’s approach of not harshly punishing young, nonviolent offenders has backfired, by setting up a soft-on-crime atmosphere in the Queen City. Merriweather’s DA office is turning Charlotte into a violent crime epicenter. About one in five non-violent offenders were arrested for violent offenses within three years of discharge. Now factor in the Mecklenburg DA’s attempts to curb jailing for nonviolent offenders, and you have a recipe for disaster.
An excerpt from Merriweather’s campaign website reads:
“Once a young person enters the criminal justice system, he/she is likely to return to that system in short time unless actively diverted away from a pattern of criminal behavior. Thoughtful prosecutors like Spencer [Merriweather] know a criminal record itself can prevent young people from making positive contributions to a community that needs them. Many non-violent offenders find themselves in the criminal justice system because of youthful mistakes or questionable associations with others.”
That was in 2022. In 2024, teens are the driving force behind Charlotte’s rise in violent crime. The two perpetrators of the recent shooting spree were 16 and 18 years old. But surely it’s just youthful mistakes. They couldn’t possibly be responsible for their actions.
This teen violence is also on the rise across the state, especially in public schools. Just this year, a teacher was slapped in Greensboro, and a high schooler was stabbed in Raleigh. In Durham and Winston-Salem, there is serious worry about out of control violence among teens.
In Charlotte, in the face of this violent-crime trend over recent years, the City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County launched the Youth Advocate Programs’ Alternatives to Violence program in 2022. The program employs “violence interrupters” who go out into the community in an attempt to stop crime before it happens.
When asked about their impact on the community, these violence interrupters say they’re responsible for “Less shootings, less violence.” But two years out from the introduction of the violence interrupters, homicides are at the highest rate in almost a decade.
Here’s another idea. Want to deter crime? Prosecute it — something Mecklenburg County has not done, leading directly to police shootings.
Instead of increasing the police budget, giving them more resources, or promoting the family unit in the city, many are deflecting blame, placing it on the city’s growth, on gentrification.
A leader of a nonprofit that helps mentor at-risk youth in Charlotte, quoted by Axios, explained the homicides, saying, “A kid’s never seen a BMW and now that’s all he sees, and no one wants to give him anything, what do you think is gonna happen?”
But if these teens are sick and tired of “gentrification,” why are they largely killing people who are in the same situation as they are?
The ineffective policies towards violence are not just at the local level. Both Gov. Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein, who is running to replace Cooper as governor, have made clear their priorities in this area lie in more racial equity and softer penalties, not law and order. And for this reason, North Carolina cities are becoming known for violent crime. Even in the idyllic mountain city of Asheville, which had been a popular tourist destination, there is more than enough chaos and bad headlines to scare off visitors.
As Gov. Cooper boasts about his economic accomplishments, which are thanks to the work of the conservative General Assembly, many North Carolina cities are becoming more and more dangerous, and therefore less and less appealing for business. If we want North Carolina to remain a top state for business, and Charlotte to retain the title of “Wall Street of the South,” taking care of our crime problem is the top priority.