RFP Staff
♦ Vandalism is on the upswing in Downtown Salisbury, N.C.. In a downtown area pockmarked by vacancies, urban decay, and obsolete buildings, gang graffiti and broken windows dominate Main Street and back alleys. The South Main tenderloin appears like a street scene from the video game “Grand Theft Auto”. This week the fading 1980′s Salisbury mural “Crossroads: Past and Present”, on the corner lot at Church and Fisher, was vandalized by hit and run “artists”. 10 mural faces were given mustaches and beards.
Downtown Salisbury, especially South Main, is a huge draw for vandals, due to its desolate skid row appearance. Vandalism experts have communicated that parts of Salisbury’s Main Street are targeted by vandals owing to the following:
• Vacant and decaying buildings are universally high-risk targets for vandals and arson. Downtown Salisbury’s Main Street has many of those.
• Areas with many homeless, young people with time on their hands, and gangs passing through them are at-risk for vandalism.
• Streets with existing gang tags, graffiti, and shattered windows are an open invitation for vandalism. Once broken windows and graffiti appear–more of the same follows.
• Early closing businesses (5:30 p.m.) invites trouble because few people are on the street to notice vandals at work. Nobody around is an open invitation for a chunk of concrete hurtling end over end toward a plate glass window.
• Uncut grass and weeds tell vandals nobody cares and no one is likely to hassle them as they apply their craft.
Here are some previous articles on Salisbury vandalism:
http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/01/20/pictionary-of-gang-graffiti-downtown-salisbury-gang-turf-tags/
