It’s even on Fox News home page now… We are becoming a big city with so much crime now 
(Joking here 
, I personally think Raleigh is a safe place to live)
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Agreed on two factors here.
Curfew for kids under the age of 18. Find out what apps or messaging boards people are using to coordinate these things, infiltrate them, and snuff them out before they can start.
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Interesting interview with the owner of Flour and Barrel in Smoky Hollow about what he believes is contributing to the problem, he’s calling out bars for allowing underage patrons and serving past 2am.
"“These police officers – it’s not their job to check IDs. It’s not their job to let underage people in. It’s not their job to continue serving alcohol at 2:01 … 2:10 in the morning,” said Rapillo. “I know for a fact that that is what happens up the block, and when that happens in multiple establishments, it’s just going to draw a certain crowd.”
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There appears to be some discussion/decision making happening today by the Council regarding the Teen Takeover events (Curfew, parental accountability, etc.). Will be interesting to see how the City reacts. Im hopeful for a proactive approach based on the massive [negative] publicity that the city received from this event. I’d also expect to hear more from RPD, specifically the Chief of Police, on how they will respond to these criminal acts and parents - RPD has been especially quiet other than a short statement after the incident(s).
The foundation for something like this has been being built for years now. What happened last weekend was inevitable due to the permissiveness of the city’s management of the entire district over time. Glenwood South was a very easy target.
Right now I’m sitting listening to the “music” on the city’s YouTube channel waiting for the afternoon meeting to start.
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There is a lot of discussion during the Council meeting about the programs and activities available for teens. While those opportunities are valuable, the conversation seemed to overlook a critical reality.
The issue isn’t a lack of activities. Many of the teens involved in these incidents aren’t looking for organized programs…they’re choosing to act like adults without accepting adult responsibilities. In many cases, they’re also lacking consistent parental involvement or accountability.
Traditional youth engagement efforts simply don’t reach the 13–17-year-olds who are seeking attention through disruptive behavior or social media clout. We have to acknowledge that this is a different challenge requiring a different response. Community programs should continue to exist, but they cannot be the only solution. Accountability, for both juveniles and parents, must be part of the conversation if we want to see meaningful change.
The root of the issue, IMO. I’m sure there are outliers, but if these kids had parents that instilled basic humanity lessons like right and wrong, we’d be so much better off.
I don’t think this is too terribly hard to “fix”. Grocery stores self-check themselves all the time with “secret shoppers” trying to buy alcohol so that the cashiers are on their toes and the store doesn’t get their alcohol license revoked. Send some undercover young cops in a few of the bars and you get one that’s either serving to underage and/or serving past 2a and you shut them down. The rest of Glenwood Ave will fall into place QUICKLY.
And to be clear, I have friends that own/operate bars on Glenwood Ave and I don’t want a bar shut down, but I also don’t want what happened this past weekend to happen and if it takes one of them being an example because of where we are now, then I think it needs to happen.
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The Raleigh police chief was just asked how he would go about enforcing the underage curfew.
He basically said he would only enforce the curfew in secondary to the first crime they were already involved in? Said he didn’t want to infringe on anyone’s 4th amendment by asking for their ID.
This will never get fixed, he is more concerned with the rights of disruptive kids than the business owners or residents of Glenwood south.
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I’m not understanding the disconnect here with the City talking about programs and assuming young teens running around with weapons on Glenwood S are going to be interested in hooping it up with the Police…
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I too am watching council on YouTube. It’s a bit more nuanced than that, and the city needs to engage its legal counsel to properly write the curfew so that it’s effective and legal. A written curfew is probably a month or two away.
All of council and the mayor are behind approving a curfew.
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This use to be called “home training” and it clear when kids didn’t have any. I remember many a mother commenting on a kid’s lack of it.
If you’re a teenager caught with a firearm illegally how about an automatic draft into the armed services so you can receive the structure you clearly aren’t getting at home…and then charge the parents.
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He kind of has to be. If he infringes on anyone’s rights, his department can get sued and cost the city a lot of money.
I 100% agree that the issue is not a lack of things to do for teenagers. They were clearly all able to transport themselves to Glenwood South, meaning that we still have plenty of public parks and recreational spaces for them to go to that they also have a means of getting to.
What we don’t have is an area for them to go to and do illegal and dangerous shit. And I would absolutely not be on board with the city making any kind of environment that suits that.
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It sounded like a lot of the enforcement issues stemmed from the juvenile reform that made putting teens in the system almost impossible. Over rotation on trying to rehabilitate teen criminal behavior.
I don’t think you can legally conscript child soldiers. I feel like I read that once.
City of Raleigh programs for youth won’t matter to the teens who came from out of town. The N&O wrote “But the majority were not from Raleigh, Boyce said, explaining police used tracking technology to confirm most people had traveled to Glenwood from neighboring towns.” That’s cellphone tracking, of course. And the estimate has been raised to 8000. Without bringing in the National Guard, there’s no way for RPD (even if augmented by nearby PDs) to arrest even one-tenth of that number of teens violating a curfew. Tear gas is the only option I can think of.
I flipped through some of the arrest records. One kid was from Dudley, south of Goldsboro.
As the parent of two teens and a preteen, the parents only have so much influence. You try your best to set a good example and raise decent humans, but at the end of the day a defiant teenager is going to do what they are going to do. Parents be damned. Thankfully my twins are good kids and would rather be at home hiding from society than out living the wild life.
I had VERY strict parents, but still managed to get into my fair share of mischief. We were just smart enough to NOT GET CAUGHT! HAHA Back in the carefree 90s none of us had cell phones. A few times I was “at my best friend’s house” and vice versa, we did a road trip to Charlotte (1.5 hours away). We also spent a lot of time in Boone (1+ hours away) “visiting friends”. We caused plenty of mischief in our hometown as well, but nothing involving weapons or drugs or any crimes. We may have mooned the mayor whilst driving down Main Street once. LOL My friends were jealous of me because I didn’t have a set curfew. My parents’ rule was I could stay out as long as I wanted, but I had to be in church on Sunday morning. haha
I even went to Paris solo when I was 17 to visit my cousin who was an au pair. She met me at the airport, helped me buy my train pass, then told me she was going to Tunisia for 4 days with her host family. So I was in Paris, FRANCE by myself for 4 days when I was 17 years old. I went all over the city (I was a Metro and RER Master by them time I left). I didn’t tell my parents about it until I was a junior or senior in college. haha
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Miami Beach struggled with take-over type events for 20 years starting with Memorial Day Weekend, and then Spring Break, and we aren’t talking 8000 people either. We’re talking hundreds of thousands.
The city struggled managing it for years while trying to avoid being unwelcoming to tourists. They tried all sorts of things to manage the enormous crowds, violence, and general chaos that often broke out. They provided programming (especially for Spring Break) to manage both the crowds and the behaviors. Nothing worked.
They finally landed on making being there so miserable that the take-overs weren’t worth the effort and money anymore. They made daily parking rates $100 for non-residents. They blocked off most of the city to traffic, resulting in funneling cars in and out of the city immediately if they chose not to park. They set up temporary, elevated (scissor) police look-outs. They flooded Ocean Drive with bright lights at night. They put in very strict and very early curfews. They literally did anything and everything to make the experience miserable, and then put out a video marketing campaign that said that the city was breaking up with spring break and that “it’s not us, it’s you”. It was brutal and blunt, but it worked.
From experience, I can tell you that the city of Raleigh needs to be strong and not placate these takeovers. The city needs to be the adults in the room.
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