POLICE ARREST STUDENT ON METH CHARGE

Such incidents uncommon throughout Asheville's urban environment,
police say

Asheville police recently charged a UNC Asheville student with
possession and intent to sell and deliver a controlled substance, and
possession of drug paraphernalia.

"When we arrest college students, it is normally surrounding an
event," said Melissa Williams, community relations manager for the
Asheville Police Department. "Like an event at the Civic Center where
people are smoking a lot of weed or doing mushrooms."

This arrest was not made in an event, according to police. According
to police, freshman Dylan Ellison, 19, was charged with possession of
methamphetamine and psilocybin, the psychoactive in some forms of
hallucinogenic mushrooms, according to police.

While methamphetamine and psilocybin constitute a portion of drug
arrests in Asheville, marijuana and crack cocaine are generally the
two most common, Williams said. Asheville's urban environment is a
deterrent for potential methamphetamine production, she said.

"Meth is more of a rural crime," Williams said. "You need the space
and security to do it. You can't have a meth lab in an urban area:
there's too much smell, too many chemicals needed."

Many of the collegiate-age crimes the police department sees are
vandalism crimes like graffiti, Williams said. In the wider
population, the majority of charges the APD makes are for
misdemeanors.

"Most of the crime the majority of the time, is misdemeanors: drunk in
public, panhandling, misdemeanor larceny," Williams said. "Violent
crime is not the majority of the crime in Asheville."

Most drug charges in Asheville are possession charges, not trafficking
charges, Williams said.

"Generally, it is more of possession," Williams said. "We have more
people doing drugs than actually selling drugs."

While Asheville's urban environment provides a barrier to a major
methamphetamine problem, it also leads Asheville toward problems with
crack cocaine. "Making crack can be done anywhere," Williams said.
"Crack cocaine labs don't explode. People take cocaine, and they can
make crack in an apartment."

Demographics also play a role in crime, Williams said. Education,
income and socioeconomic status all matter in the context of drug
crimes. "Poverty obviously plays a big role in crime," Williams said.
"We see more people who are living in our public housing areas being
arrested for drug-related crimes, whether it be for trafficking drugs
or for using drugs." When the economy worsens certain patterns of
property crime and interpersonal violence increase, according to Keith
Bramlett, UNCA sociology professor. Along with property crime, he
said, sexual assault reports rise and domestic violence is inclined to
escalate within the family. "The crime rate is correlated with
economic downturns, but we are not always able to neatly separate out
all the different effects," Bramlett said. People are trying to get
money, he said, just trying to survive out there. The Pisgah View
neighborhood in Asheville, the largest of the Asheville Housing
Authority developments, contains 262 apartment units, according to the
Housing Authority of the City of Asheville.

In the last year, almost 3 percent of drug arrests in the entire city
occurred in Pisgah View, according to the mapAsheville Crime Mapper, a
publicly accessible crime database provided by the city. Around 5
percent of aggravated assaults and slightly over 6 percent of rape
arrests also occurred in Pisgah View, according to the database.

The statistics require careful interpretation, according to Bramlett.
"We need to be alert, keep our senses, but at the same time understand
that not everyone is equally impacted by the potential victimization,"
he said. "There are people who live in really unsafe neighborhoods in
Asheville, but most people in Asheville don't."

As a community, residents need to inform themselves on where crime is
occurring and what can be done in those areas to make it safer for
those who live there, Bramlett said.

"But it is not isolated just to people in poverty," Williams said.
"That is the majority of it, but people from all economic strata can
get involved with, or addicted to, drugs."

In an economic downturn, the crime rate goes up, so people think
everyone is less safe, Bramlett said.

When police arrest any student for drug possession, it is a matter of
concern to the university, said Cortland Mercer, 21, newly elected
UNCA student body president.

"It is concerning to me, frankly, any time a student feels like they
have to turn to drugs for whatever reason," Mercer said. "I would like
to see our university have better outlets for them."

Professionals in the counseling center at UNCA do an adequate job with
helping students cope, Mercer said.

But he wishes the university would look at student drug arrests from a
broader social perspective and analyze the social or economic
constructs that would lead to such arrests.

Responsibility comes with being a student though, Mercer said. "I
recognize that any type of college setting is an opportunity, when
students leave the more restrictive environment of their parents'
home, to have a lot of freedom," Mercer said. "With that comes more
responsibility." The college environment creates a climate of personal
freedom for young adults, and drug experimentation sometimes happens
as a result, Mercer said. But the UNCA student population does not
have a major drug problem, he said. "I don't think we have a drug
problem, but people do dabble in those realms," Mercer said. "And
there are lessons to be learned."