One arrested in Thursday night shooting death

Gangs are a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself.

Most folks want a simple and quick answer to issues that are the result of choices made 30/40/50 years ago. 50 years ago the City and the County decided that to improve the economic base in Sanford, industry needed to be recruited to Sanford and to support the industry, the City’s water and sewer systems were greatly enlarged. It worked great until the demise of the Fordist manufacturing economy. (Fordist is a reference to assembly lines, supply chains, etc).

The extension of water and sewer made it feesbile to develop parts of the county that previously would have needed a well and a septic tank. Try that in West Sanford and see what happens. Anyway with the water and then the sewer, people began moving out of the older parts of the two Towns and this housing was purchased for use as rental housing.

In order to keep a flow of income, the rental housing became a race to the bottom. This attracted lower income, lower resource people from Chatham, Moore, and Harnett County that would otherwise not have moved here. Any urban center in the middle of rural counties will do this. These are people who can’t afford to live on the periphery of Raleigh.

This means neighborhoods like Oakwood and McIver Park and the area around the old Jonesboro Church moved out of the hands of locals and into the hands of folks new to the area or of moderate means, but they didn’t have the resources to fully combat the changes that go with a transition from owner occupation to rentals.

Transient and rental communities of lower income folks are plagued by crime, gangs, and violence. Folks with money and means are better at hiding their shenanigans and foibles.

Unique to Sanford is the problem of Jonesboro. Jonesboro is the older town but was run into the ground by a refusal to fix their sewer plant and the Town was forcibly incorporated into a greater Sanford in 1947. Going forward this meant two downtowns competing with each other for the next 55 years. There remains a cultural difference between Jonesboro and Sanford to this day if you know what you are looking for.

Finally there are the African American areas where black folk were “trapped” for the better part of 60-70 years. I say trapped because many were without transportation and either walked to work or were picked up each day. This made them a pool of labor but when the manufacturing and service sectors changed, they were left behind as well as old Fordist industrial workers.

Each sub group going forward has its original identity that shows up in the grand and great grand children. Like groups clump together. Those that grow up with the expectation of college and a good job are easily led astray and more likely to give up and join some sort of gang. Gangs, like any other criminal enterprise, only thrives near urban areas because money and property does not grow on a Tobacco Stake down at the end of dead end road in Deep River or Broadway. It does not grow on the brownstone rocks near Carbonton. Money, customers, and things to steal, are located where all the people are, hence crime comes to town to do business.

Economic opportunity, education, and social involvement are the only cures for the problem that Sanford opened itself to all those decades ago. There is not enough gentrification in the world to eliminate the bottom 20% of the socio-economic class and obtain what exists in a modern day Cary or Holly Springs. However, Raleigh and the Triangle keep creeping closer and closer. But new middle and upper middle class people aren’t the problem. The problem is with poor folks and those in broken families now and unless you are willing to tear down all their housing and price them out of Sanford, you have to deal with their specific problems.

As far as I am concerned this is a multi facected problem.

First being NO respect. No respect for the law/law enforcement and no respect for others.

Second, no fear of consequence. You can pass all the laws you want (see 1) however, if there is little to no fear of reprisal then they are at best ineffective.

Here you have a 18yr old, ruined the rest of his life, took a life, over what?

Nonsense