near our neighborhood;

Western North Carolina is synonymous with the Blue Ridge Mountains, a rich Appalachian history, and world-renowned tourist destinations.

In fact, over the last 2 years, Asheville Regional Airport has pumped more than 2 million visitors in and out of the Asheville area. However, Asheville is also becoming synonymous with a few other things as of recent — violent crime, an exploding homeless crisis, and an affordability problem.

For the purposes of this op-ed, we will focus on the violent crime and homeless crisis.

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Asheville’s police department has been understaffed for several years. This directly followed the 2020 George Floyd riots, which brought hundreds of protesters into downtown Asheville, along with hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to local businesses. Ironically, many of those same downtown local businesses decided their best move was to sign a letter condemning the police department as racists and Nazis for what happened in Minnesota. Taking the hint, 39% of Asheville’s police officers realized that now was the time to throw in the towel.

The narrative of all cops being “racists” and “Nazis” was now fully engrained into the minds of most on the far left. And with no support from the community, and more specifically the city council, cops retired and quit at a rate never seen before. About 40% of the force was gone in an instant. Maybe one of the worst things we saw during the protests was when far-left activists delivered a casket filled with dirt and manure to the front door of the police department...........more........