Five Points, long a favorite shopping and bar district among students, is not safe for them late at night, USC President Harris Pastides said Tuesday.
Pastides said in a Tuesday afternoon statement that the weekend shooting that paralyzed first-year international business student Martha Childress “must serve as a turning point” for the area.
“It is evident that Five Points after midnight is not currently a safe enough place for our students or for anyone,” Pastides said.
The statement outlines USC’s suggestions to make the area safer, including:
—Sending more city and county officers to patrol Five Points on weekend nights.
—Closing bars at 2 a.m. and enforcing regulations on drink specials more strictly.
—Making the area a pedestrian district by blocking roads on Friday and Saturday nights to ease crowding on sidewalks.
—Adding lights, call boxes and “other security infrastructure” in Five Points and bordering neighborhoods.
Pastides also said that USC will offer new “weekend night alternatives” to draw students from Five Points.
Alex Waelde, a USC student who owns a pair of Five Points bars and the popular Twitter account Drinking Ticket, said he largely agrees with Pastides. He supports blocking traffic, cracking down on cheap drinks and closing bars at 2 a.m., but he said he doesn’t think Five Points should be marked as unsafe.
“I don’t think the solution is to scare students,” Waelde said. “In my opinion, by saying Five Points is no longer safe, you’re saying, ‘They won. We lost it.’”
Mayor Steve Benjamin said on his campaign website that he would hold a community meeting to discuss crime at 5:30 p.m. today at the Columbia police PACE headquarters, 1001 Harden St.
Interim Columbia Police Chief Ruben Santiago could not immediately be reached Tuesday afternoon, but he has said this week that he doesn’t think police in Five Points could have done anything differently to prevent the Sunday morning shooting and that he would continue to send 10 to 20 officers on weekend nights.
Early Sunday morning, Childress and a friend were standing by the fountain waiting for a taxi when an argument broke out nearby and a man fired twice, a police report says. A stray bullet struck Childress, hitting vital organs and lodging in her spine.
Michael Juan Smith was arrested in connection with the shooting minutes later and faces five charges, including aggravated assault and battery, possession of a stolen pistol and possession of a firearm by a person convicted of a violent felony.
Smith allegedly told an officer, “I’m sorry I did not mean to shoot,” according to the police report.
The weekend shooting follows in a string of violent crimes in Five Points in recent years.
February saw a brawl break out, gunshots reported and a man charged with opening fire on a police officer. In the months since, a group of USC students was robbed at gunpoint, and bouncers have been stabbed in two separate incidents.
“We clearly have a problem down here of outside elements coming into Five Points — not as patrons and with obvious ill intentions,” Five Points Association head Amy Beth Franks said in an email. “Let there be no misunderstanding that we are not unaware of the problems facing our community and the dangers being imposed on our patrons.”