You might be shocked at how dangerous small towns in South Carolina are these days.

Len Sipes website here: https://crimeinamerica.net

I had never been to Darlington, South Carolina before, but I thought I’d kinda like the place. I mean it’s southern, redneck, a little rough around the edges, and filled with NASCAR fans. Sounded like my kind of place. I had heard about how poverty stricken and ghetto the place was, but I thought - it won’t be THAT bad.

Well I was wrong. Going into the trip to Darlington, I thought that maybe I’d give the place a C+ or something. AFTER visiting for an afternoon, I’d give the place a big ole fat D.

There’s nothing interesting about the place, really. Outside of the NASCAR track on the outskirts of town, there’s really not much to it. And it was just blocks and blocks of rundown homes and sorta still open businesses. The vibe here is nothing I would want to live in.

I went to Darlington on a Thursday in mid February of 2022. It was a fairly nice day - I mean 75 degrees in winter sure is enjoyable. Here’s what I saw.

The reason I picked Darlington is because of its reputation. If you look at metrics online, not only is this a place with a lot of poverty, but the crime is super high. When you measure cities in South Carolina based on crime numbers per capita, there’s no other place in the state with more robberies, assaults and murders per person. Look at the map: Green is good and red is bad. I don’t see any green on that map. Do you?

So, of course, I had to go there - I mean who doesn’t want to see the most dangerous place in a state? My goal was to drive through the dark areas where the crime is the worst.

As you drive around these bad areas, it’s pretty clear - these people are broke. 1 in 5 residents of this city of 6,000 people lives in poverty, and the average resident here makes only about $23,000. That doesn’t go very far in today’s America, even in the deep south.

And look at the home prices here. I filtered all the homes that had sold here within the last year by anything under $25,000. Many of the houses I drove past sold for $5,000. A couple of them sold for under $1,000. I’ll show you those.

But driving around, I understood why homes are so cheap here. It’s rough, beat up and FEELS dangerous. Nothing like some of the large inner city hoods I’ve seen, but man oh man, whatta place.

And then there’s the crime. An article came out recently which talked about the spike in gun violence here in Darlington. The article crunched the numbers and determined there are more shootings per capita here in Darlington than in Chicago. This chart shows Chicago, compared with other small cities in the Carolinas that have suffered from a spike in crime. And look at Darlington.

Another article went over how bad the crime is here now and how scared and how frustrated residents are. One woman said since no one else could stop the violence, she started a community activist group called Stop The Violence. “Maybe I can get a lot more parents to get involved and see what’s going on with their kids, who they’re hanging out with, why are they hanging out with these thugs or gangsters?”

IT is just scary. You can’t go places. You cant have your kids go places, because you don’t know what’s going to happen”

Darlington police think many of the shootings are drug related. And like many small towns, Darlington PD is stretched thin - it’s hard to keep good cops around. We’ll get into why that is soon when we talk to our crime expert, but it’s so bad here that the Darlington Police Department has had to turn to federal assistance for help.

And it’s not just shootings. Right now, there’s a 1 in 10 chance you’ll be robbed if you live here. A 1 in 10 chance you’ll have your car broken into or have your wallet stolen or something taken from your home.

#southcarolina #moving

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