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Police Presence in Downtown Greenville


DSMRE

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The green monster building in the West End at the corner of River and Main Streets is attached to one building on its left side. To the left of that is a vacant space between it and the next building. In that vacant lot, on the Green Monster side, is this "mural". If that makes sense...

It'll be covered, if it's not removed beforehand or demolished, by the new development that will redo or rebuild the green monster, its neighbor, and this lot.

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My wife works at 1 Liberty. (In fact from her office she could uh well see things after the fact). The rumour(s) she heard were that

1) She asked the front desk person to go to teh commerce club and got to the roof somehow or other that way

2) She told the front desk person that she was a photographer that needed to go to the roof to take some pictures.

I had posted the original article in a thread under coffee house shortly after it happened.

Like other people have said though, I doubt a police presence of any sort would have helped. I am curious to know how they decided so quickly it was a suicide and not a homicide and/or accident. I guess I watch too much Law & Order.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Tonight I was showing some family members around downtown Greenville. Minutes after we left the Liberty Bridge area near main a rucus broke off. A group of wanna be thugs got into a fight near the Peace Center and ended up near the park. These types of groups have been on the rise. Do you guys think our police department is doing a good job at keeping our downtown safe? The presence seems weak down there. When I go to Atlanta you see cops everywhere. I don't want this crowd to ruin it for everyone. Most of them are too young to go in the bars or what not so they just hang on the walls. Where in the heck are their parents?
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:wacko: This same sort of thing happened again earlier tonight. 100-200 wanna-be-thugs at the Falls Park entrance on Main Street, 5-6 cop cars, and at least 10 police officers. The only good news is I didn't see any sign of a fight about ready to break out. Everybody was getting along, which is good. Also, they had Main Street blocked off between Camperdown Way and Broad Street and between West Washington Street and Beattie Place. If they're going to start blocking Main Street off to cars just because of cruising then they might as well just close the whole road off to vehicles 24/7. <_<
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So you are saying you don't understand why cruising is a big deal and can cause lots of problems?

You realize blocking off streets is mostly there to hinder folks from going down a street and then turning about and cruising the street all over again. Greenville had some issues with cruising in the 80's, and since then it's pretty much been standard practice to hinder cruising, with ordinances and police regulations. It had gotten to be a big issue and it can be one in lots of towns where it occurs.

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I don't understand why either. I'm not even sure what sort of problems cruising promotes?

They should at least allow the trolley to still access these closed portions. Do they?

This is kind of extreme, but true-- Most people walk up and down Main and, as a result, most of the crosswalks that are used are the ones that cross the perpendicular streets. By forcing cars to turn off of Main, which occurs when the walk sign is on, it seems to me that you'd be putting pedestrians at a much higher risk of injury.

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IMO, it is the actions that come with cruising and the impact it has on business and restaurants. This is going to sound elitist, and I'll get slammed, but don't really care......

No one wants to sit at an outdoor table for a nice meal with an expensive bottle of wine and hear the loud thump of music coming from a car, while the occupants in the car scream at girls about "booty". Not attractive in the least. I'm all for people being themselves, but if you want booty, take it in a bar or get a hotel room. Most of these cruisers are contributing nothing to downtown....no money to buy the goods or services offered.....no intelligent level of action to make the place any better.

The police should keep the blocks open but hand out serious tickets for "disturbance".....loud music, jaywalking, public intoxication, etc. If parents aren't going to instill values in their children and teach them how to act in public, then police should smack these "children" with steep fines.

The crude actions that cruising brings is not the kind of downtown many Greenvillians want, not the attitude that made our downtown great and certainly not the downtown that Atlanta residents will be interested in taking a weekend trip to.

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No, but the last thing I would want for Greenville is for Main to be another Ocean Blvd. Cops spend an enormous amount of man hours citing drivers and pedestrians for violations on Ocean Blvd. I'd rather it not get to that point. You can't stop cruising on Ocean Blvd at this point because it is too ingrained into the culture, you can only manage it, but that takes a tremendous amount of manpower for all sorts of citations. I'd rather the police fight more serious crime on Saturday nights.

At one point in Greenville, they would cite you for circling and taking the same route along Main, say three times in ten to 15 minutes. To do that kind of citation, takes man power. It is just easier to shut a portion of the street down instead, than relying on the man power to always be there, especially when the resources can be used elsewhere.

And most cruisers aren't children. Quite a few of them are in their mid 20's or so. Cruising really takes away from the enjoyment of a family atmosphere, clogs traffic and doesn't really add anything to downtown. I'm glad the police take what action they can to constrict cruising.

Where do you draw the line? Ask the city police for their policies and how they came to the points of enforcement they have come to, it hasn't been easy and has involved a lot of communication with all sorts of folks. I'd sure they would be happy to answer questions.

******

And last Saturday night, the 12th, I did see what could have turned into a large disturbance among probably 40 to 50 or so folks, who were about to start a rumble in the midst of families and couples strolling around the entrance to Falls Park. You could see some families with children looking a bit threatened.

Fortunately, the police showed up quickly and calmed the situation down, but the popularity of the West End/downtown/ Falls Park is in many ways having the potential to have greater disturbances than was seen, say around the Haywood Mall Food Court area seven or eight years ago.

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Saturday night around midnight, there was a large group of kids hanging out at the entrance to falls park, probably well over 100. No disturbances as we walked by, but they were being a bit rowdy, and gaining in strength, and my wife was a bit nervous. there was a "strong" police presence there, about 4 cars, and maybe 6 officers.

It troubles me a little, because that is an obvious waste of manpower, I'd rather have those officers patrolling my neighborhood were there has been a few instances of actual crime. Also, if there was an actual disturbance, 6 officers would be putting themselves greatly at risk if they had to do anything.

Is there no where these kids can go to hang out? I know the parks a cool place, and of course its public, so we can't stop them, but isn't there anything better?

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Saturday night around midnight, there was a large group of kids hanging out at the entrance to falls park, probably well over 100. No disturbances as we walked by, but they were being a bit rowdy, and gaining in strength, and my wife was a bit nervous. there was a "strong" police presence there, about 4 cars, and maybe 6 officers.

It troubles me a little, because that is an obvious waste of manpower, I'd rather have those officers patrolling my neighborhood were there has been a few instances of actual crime. Also, if there was an actual disturbance, 6 officers would be putting themselves greatly at risk if they had to do anything.

Is there no where these kids can go to hang out? I know the parks a cool place, and of course its public, so we can't stop them, but isn't there anything better?

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Saturday night around midnight, there was a large group of kids hanging out at the entrance to falls park, probably well over 100. No disturbances as we walked by, but they were being a bit rowdy, and gaining in strength, and my wife was a bit nervous. there was a "strong" police presence there, about 4 cars, and maybe 6 officers.

It troubles me a little, because that is an obvious waste of manpower, I'd rather have those officers patrolling my neighborhood were there has been a few instances of actual crime. Also, if there was an actual disturbance, 6 officers would be putting themselves greatly at risk if they had to do anything.

Is there no where these kids can go to hang out? I know the parks a cool place, and of course its public, so we can't stop them, but isn't there anything better?

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As we were leaving Smiley's Saturday night (right around midnight) to head to Chicora, we were told that there was a fight in front of Falls Park; however, upon arrival to Chicora all I saw was a large police presence and lots of people standing around. Either his information was incorrect or the police broke it up by the time we got there.

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It troubles me a little, because that is an obvious waste of manpower, I'd rather have those officers patrolling my neighborhood were there has been a few instances of actual crime. Also, if there was an actual disturbance, 6 officers would be putting themselves greatly at risk if they had to do anything.
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There's been references to people either seeing first hand these situations, or hearing about them... How many of the mentioned cases are the same? They all sound exactly alike in manner. Is the problem getting overblown because people are telling us of what they know, which may or may not be the same we've heard about already?? I'm trying to figure out if this is a serious nightly problem, or a once or twice scenario?

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