I never use Twitter. I don’t get why I should care what a bunch of random people think about anything. I’m also not into celebrity culture. I do keep up with mainstream news like CNN or WRAL to know about some of the things happening in the world around me. I definitely see the saturation and other issues with them, but I can usually filter that out/ignore them and still get some useful information. But it definitely gets fatiguing and even addictive at some point. That’s why I like this forum as a nice balance with good news and good discussion
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After reading this N&O article about the crime numbers for glenwood south, I went down a big rabbit hole. They have the following graphic up which shows some year-to-date stats from 2019 to 2022.
Something is bugging me about this. Maybe I just want to see more for myself. I feel like 2019 to 2022 is to small a timeframe to look at due to the fact that you have over a year of pent up demand for going back out. Therefore, why wouldn’t we have more incidents?
Also, the council seems to be under attack due to this (election year politics at play) so it’s best to really look at more data here. Also, this seemed like a nice, short-term data analysis project for myself.
I am working on creating graphs and charts at this page and I have my first table up now for you to look at.
https://rpd.dtraleigh.com/glenwood/
If anyone is interested, please take a look and discuss, ask questions. Even suggest questions to answer with the available data in front of us. This is still a work in progress and I intend to add year-to-date numbers from 2015 to 2022. That way we can track how the number shake out as we progress through the year and into next.
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Weapon violations seem quite a bit of an increase and would be the only thing I’d probably raise my eyebrow on.
Comparing 2019 - 2022 for assaults I’m not so sure about. I’d take into considering the growing population.
I’d consider larceny increases to potentially be due to stolen packages. I’m actually surprised how late people would leave their packages in the middle of the night, but not surprised because maybe they weren’t expecting it that day.
Looking at rpd.dtraleigh, assaults increased a lot compared to 2015, but that appeared to also be the case in 2018. Interesting to see that traffic offenses went down. People must be driving better 
Surprisingly the DWI is lower than I would expect. Good to see.
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The fact they even bother including 2020 and 21 in this analysis is proof enough there is an agenda at play, in my opinion.
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Except for Larceny and weapons violations, it’s really no different then 2019. Not saying it’s a good thing, just the the numbers don’t really tell you much statistically.
In the absence of a time machine, using Q4 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 would provide a decent benchmark for showing year-over-year variability. (You probably don’t want to compare quarters directly; for example, package larceny likely goes up in Q4.)
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The table is now sorted by incidents in the most recent year. (2021) Makes it easier to read. By number of incidents in descending order, the categories go:
- Assault
- Larceny
- Drugs
- Weapons
- Vandalism
- Other offenses
I’d have to look at the descriptions of the “other offenses” to get a sense of what those are but that may be the “bottom” of the core issues here. Not to discount the other incident types but these six cover 69% of incidents in Glenwood South in 2021.
Let me get a new chart up there for just these types. Going to be tinkering with this today. Also, will probably combine “Drugs” and “Drug violation”.
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I feel like they just don’t setup DUI traps in downtown. Cause there’s plenty of drunks driving on Glenwood.
This is absolutely true .
Also it’s pretty well documented that gun sales went through the roof throughout the pandemic and riots of 2020
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As someone who used to drive for Uber and Lyft on the weekends, Glenwood and Wade were the scariest roads to be on after midnight for this exact reason.
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Man, Wade already sucks to drive on during the day with minimal traffic. I can’t imagine it full of drunks.
I look out onto West St./Glenwood. I watch drunks fly through West St. all the time on weekend nights. It’s pretty scary. Couple weeks ago saw a guy ride up a curb, just nearly missing a couple pedestrians on the sidewalk.
Agreed. Used to be split mainly between Hillsborough St., Glenwood South and warehouse district. Now that Hillsborough St. no longer has the dive bars, etc, Warehouse has been developed and Glenwood South has grown in bars, more crowds have gravitated all to that area. I’m curious to see what it will be like in the next few years once more development comes in. I hope we are headed in a better direction in that area with that is going in. But where the crowds that enjoy the “cornerstones” and are involved in bad behavior will go… not sure. Don’t see them gravitating towards person st… nothing really on Hillsborough… not warehouse district… not north hills. Warehouse district used to be more of a club scene years back. But with the development going in there, I don’t see that happening again . Maybe North West Street depending on what they do there? Pockets of downtown?
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I’m honestly shocked that there is not a much more significant police presence downtown in general, but especially on weekend nights in Glenwood South. I get that having police around is somehow a political problem nowadays, and certainly people don’t like to feel like they live in a police state anyways. But most cities have cops around on foot and in vehicles in their prime locations that get a lot of people. It’s also similar to how there’s virtually no speed limit enforcement on the highways around here.
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Honestly, I haven’t had specific safety issues with Cornerstone, but it is unbearably loud late night on weekends when residents nearby are trying to sleep. When the bars close, you sometimes hear drunk people on the sidewalks screaming at each other or loudly calling out to their friends who are not right next to them.
Several years ago, my car got hit and run by a drunk driver when it was parked overnight in front of my building, but that’s been it for my experience with crime.
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Agreed. I have been thinking that for a long time. I really feel there is a lack of police presence around Raleigh. I feel like I hardly ever pass one on the road or see them pulling people over for speeding. Maybe they do, but there should really be more police on foot in those areas at those times. In a world where everyone has cameras anyway, I’m all for more video surveillance around Glenwood South as well… with signs letting people know they are under surveillance. This may already be in place, I’m just unaware… but if not, could potentially be a deterrent.
*But we also live in a country where some push against police (not getting into that topic, just bringing that up as it relates to this conversation)… So bringing in a strong police presence may cause more harm than good? I would like to think though… that if there was a stronger show of law enforcement around, people would think twice before doing something that could harm themselves and/or others.
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Even at normal dinner hours before the ‘night life’ starts, people are not driving carefully. A walk sign means nothing - we had one and started to cross a side street along Glenwood. Meanwhile, the woman at the stop light decides it’s ok to turn right on red onto Glenwood (seriously, just be patient and wait for it to turn green), while someone from Glenwood is turning left onto the side street, nearly running everyone in the intersection over. At that early hour, I think it’s more about people not being good at or comfortable with ‘city driving’ - meaning driving when there are thousands of pedestrians walking around.
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Yup, plus the pedestrians are generally distracted and treat it like a mixed car/pedestrian zone because of the density of foot traffic and narrow sidewalks. It just shouldn’t be the car-first zone it’s currently laid out to be.
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So long story, short, looks like incidents in glenwood south have been rising each year since 2015 (except 2020 and 2021) across all 3 metrics. That’s Year-to-date incidents for the most common crime types, total yearly incidents for common crime types, and total yearly incidents for all crime types.
https://rpd.dtraleigh.com/glenwood/
The cause is anybody’s guess but it does look like we were on the path to where we are today, pandemic or not.
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