Club, bar neighborhood effectively turned into demilitarized zone
In the past few weeks, students and alumni alike have been coming together in an attempt to take the Five Points district back from violent crime and give it to the community as the safe and fun environment that it once was. Social media groups like “Fight Back for 5points” have given people a forum to voice their opinion on the matter and come together in order to expedite change. Unfortunately, I am not so sure the Columbia Police Department is listening very well.
The problem with Five Points that everyone should be concerned about is not the underage drinking. We have gone far beyond that at this point. People do not feel safe there anymore, and with the police presence being kicked up to the level of a demilitarized zone, minus the rifles and riot gear, for this Saturday night, people sure are not going to feel welcome either.
The police are making a mess of the situation by giving patrons another extreme to deal with. I do not understand the reasoning process behind the plan for Saturday’s “aggressive policing.” You have to deal with the loitering by addressing people that are not there to go into bars, and measures need to be taken to reduce the amount of people who are there for the wrong reasons. This means a crackdown on suspicious and wandering groups, not on innocent and clearly not belligerently drunk students.
I agree that police should designate smoking areas outside of bars so they can distinguish patrons from loiterers, spread out the police from their central position at Exxon, and be on high alert at all times for violent crime; however, I am not sold that this whole watch towers, barricades, and speed bumps solution is going to go over well. Students will be driven away and the area will be dead on a night it should be thriving.
Local police, in conjunction with university officials, both of whom have maintained close contact throughout the planning process, need come to a reasonable conclusion and implement reasonable measures that stop short of turning Five Points into a war zone. It is clearly of great importance to protect our students and our community, but we shouldn’t kill a fly with a cannon, we shouldn’t station an army of officers when the threat posed clearly doesn’t mandate it.
People miss the days when happy mediums could be reached, and hopefully there is one in the making now that leaders from Student Government and the local community are coming together to discuss the situation. Something needs to happen, and soon, because it is becoming a drain on the community, especially our student body.
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