Fayetteville, a truly awful part of North Carolina

I normally write about how much I love my state of North Carolina and for the most part I believe that it is a wonderful place. We have a wide range of natural beauty, we have all 4 seasons - none of which are too harsh, and we are on the coast with some pretty amazing beach areas that are fun for everyone. We have culinary traditions including one of the most famous BBQ pork recipes in the world, and we also have tons of seafood if that floats your boat.

For the most part this state is a really safe place too. Much of this has to do with rather loose gun laws and how if you go anywhere, you are all-but-guaranteed that there are lawful people that are legally carrying guns and are legally allowed to use them should they need to. That's an opine of mine though and I am sure there are some people out there that could cook up some statistics about how this makes is more dangerous but I live in it, I'm not just looking at a website.

But on the flip side that doesn't mean that all of North Carolina is this wonderful place of gumdrops and rainbows where the kids can play next to the chocolate river and laugh the day away. There are some outliers in this state where the crime rate skews the entire state's statistics in a bad way and Fayatteville, is one of the worst.

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Neighborhoods that look like this are unfortunately quite common in certain parts of this state and this is cheap housing that is normally built en masse and is rented out as cheap or free housing under Section 8. Another unfortunate aspect of neighborhoods is that for one reason or another, they always tend to be the part of town that you probably shouldn't linger in because it is the high crime part of town almost always.

Unfortunately for Fayetteville, this aspect of criminality is nearly the entire city and those of us that live here simply avoid the city altogether. There is a bypass road on the highway and guess what? Everyone bypasses it.

I have been asked to bid on contracts for large municipal builds in Fayetteville and turned them down because I already know that there are going to be problems with tool theft and many of my permanent crew refuse to work there because of the danger. It's a sad state of affairs when it is so well-known that a place is that dangerous, yet there doesn't really seem to be a great deal that can or will be done about it.

Recently, something that you almost never hear about and normally associate with movies, happened in Fayetteville, or as it is know to people that live in NC, Fayette-nam.

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J'Quan Fitzgerald was driving a car that was reported stolen by the owner (presumably) and when police tried to pull the vehicle over J'Quan shot at the police and then tried to outrun them.

I wonder, outside of movies, has this tactic ever worked? We always say that "you can outrun a car, but you can't outrun a helicopter and a radio." Not to mention the fact that I think a lot of cops actually relish this sort of situation because when the gloves come off they are basically allowed to do whatever they want.

I am not anti-police and I am not pro-police. It would be wonderful if all societies could be like New Bern, which is where I live. Here, you notice almost zero police presence and I honestly don't think there is a need for them. We are basically self-policing and while I don't know exactly why that is, that is the case. There is so little crime here and almost zero violent crime but in Fayatteville, it is quite the opposite.

The crime rate in Fayetteville is over 60% higher than the rest of the state and sadly violent crime is actually rising.

This is made even more strange because this city is also home to an absolute gigantic military base and with that comes MP's which is a version of the police that is extremely "no nonsense" law enforcement. The area around the actual military base is extremely secure as you would expect, but the military presence here seems to have zero effect on the city's overall crime rate.

The few times I have been there we were also subjected to the sounds of military exercises and this just makes you feel like you are in a war zone when you combine this with the constant apparent threat of violent crime.

To make matters even worse Fayetteville is ranked as the number one WORST city in America when it comes to finding a job.

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This map kind of made me chuckle but it is also very tragic for the people that live here. This is a crime overlay for the city and as you might expect, red and orange are areas considered to be very high crime areas.

There really isn't any reason to ever go to Fayetteville but if you are traveling sound on the interstate you will pass though the outlying areas of it. I wouldn't even stop at the gas stations or restaurants that they have near the interstate if I were you even though these areas are heavily patrolled by local police as well as State Troopers.

Some places I think just cannot be fixed and it is best to just avoid them. It is unfortunate for the people that cannot afford to get out of there though. I have never talked to anyone that would ever intentionally go there unless they were in the military