With the trial of Michael Smith coming to a resolution on Aug. 17 and the start of another school year comes the revival of the age-old argument for USC students and Columbia residents alike: How safe am I when spending time in Five Points?
We all have a general understanding of the risks we face during nights spent out on the town. Whether it is the fear of being robbed or of gang violence, nearly everyone can name illicit activity either they or a friend have witnessed.
This is not to say that Columbia is not a generally safe place to live or to go to school. The city offers multiple resources to keep us safe, from police patrols to emergency stations around the campus. Recently, police set up DUI checkpoints around the city and stopped every car that passed through. If the driver was sober they received coupons to Chick-fil-A; if not, their night took a turn for the worse.
But regardless of police efforts, crime will persist. Over the past few weeks, several crimes were committed in the Five Points area alone. The crimes committed varied from larceny and robbery to aggravated assault.
This begs the question of police efforts to keep us, as residents of this city, safe while we take advantage of the local community nightlife. We have the right to explore our city without the fear of violence interfering with our plans, or the threat of robbery preventing us from moving about freely.
We’re all aware of the perceptions that some students have about police — that they are all out to get us rather than prevent real crime. There is little truth to that statement. Police are sometimes stretched too thin when having to respond to multiple crimes. Rather than targeting us, they are trying to respond to these other crimes while still fulfilling their duty of upholding the law.
But from where does that perception of our police officers come?Is it the police raids on Five Points during the opening weekend of school? Is it the undercover SLED agents in the bars looking for underage drinkers, who are in fact breaking a law even if it is nonviolent? Or is it from something completely different, causing an entirely different opinion of our officers?
Regardless of your view of the police officers in Columbia, they are tasked with keeping us safe and have been largely successful. However, violent crime poses a much graver risk to us as students, and a larger focus should be shifted to that area. Harm has already come to fellow Gamecocks because of this. Now is the time to prevent that.