CONWAY, SC (WBTW) – Horry County Police, council leaders, and community activists met to discuss ways they plan to combat violence Wednesday.
It’s a community violence subcommittee created by council leaders and Wednesday they released the crime statistics they’ve been researching for the last few weeks.
The committee says they found nearly half of the people arrested in the county are under the age of 25 and that a majority of the crimes are committed by locals.
Wednesday, they took a look at a crime map that showed a great deal of crime activity in Conway and Socastee.
Some leaders say they were surprised to see that most of the crime occurs in residential areas and not the coastline.
Jimmy Washington is the chairman of the committee, and he says all of Horry County is seeing an increase in crime as the area faces a severe drug problem.
“Right now, every place is being hit with crime. Crime is not, you know, it’s in every community. So, what we’re trying to do is gather all of this information together and invite all organizations and community leaders, and we’re going to work on some solutions. So, it’s going to take the whole county. Horry County can’t police itself, it’s going to take the whole county,” said Washington.
The subcommittee and its research came after community activist Bennie Swans requested a lan of action from the Horry County Public Safety Committee.
“i think that the next step, an essential step, has to be those that are involved, those that live in the biles of those neighborhoods, those that are affected by community gun crime, those that are affected by addiction, those that are being impacted by burglaries and robberies, let’s hear from those people,” said Swans.
Swans says he is trying to work with the organization to reach others in the public to give more information about the problems facing the county. He says right now the subcommittee is moving slowly in educating the public.
“The subcommittee right now needs a little push. We need to encourage them to continue the effort to work hard and be diligent so we can find answers to these very difficult situations both on the sales side and the addiction,” said Swans.
The group will now take the findings discussed Wednesday to the public safety committee next month and later to the full council.
Washington says they plan to then hold a series of meetings around Horry County to hear from people on what they’d like to see changed in their community and ways they can help.
