Reviews & Comments
Wilmington, NC
Traffic, No/Low Paying Jobs, High Cost of Living, -
9/1/2012Although I was born in PA, I grew up right here in Wilmington after my family moved to town when I was only 6 years old. Needless to say, Wilmington has changed a LOT! The town was not designed or laid out well for the extreme growth that it has seen over the past 25 years. There is not a whole lot to do here, besides visit the beach or go to a bar downtown. No real live music without being required to make the two hour drive to Raleigh to see a show. Traffic is terrible at most times during the day. The job market here is absolutely terrible. I spent over two years without steady, full-time employment, until about two years ago. Due to this now being a tourist and college town, most jobs are service-oriented, such as hotels, restaurants, etc. The pay scale is terrible, with employers not typically wanting to pay anything above $25-30,000 per year, since we have such a huge, constant influx of college kids that they can hire for minimum wage, even with a college degree or many years of experience in your field. The cost of living has skyrocketed in the past 10 years or so. If you rent a home or condo/apartment, expect to pay upwards of $1000 per month for anything decent. I was surprised to notice, while reading through the previous reviews of Wilmington on SperlingViews, that no one had yet mentioned the terribly corrupt police force and court system in this area! I have traveled extensively throughout the US and have yet to encounter another place where the police so openly harass the citizens and abuse their entrusted authority. What makes it worse is that the court system is just as corrupt, seemingly working together with the police officers to funnel as much money as possible out of the pockets of the hard working citizens, without any sort of recourse available. For example, they often set-up what they claim to be "DWI Check Points" at all times of the day/night/year that stop every single vehicle and check the licence/registration/insurance of the driver, as well as running the record of everyone in the vehicle. Don't be fooled, these so-called "DWI Check Points" are yet another guise to generate revenue for the corrupt system; charging an extremely small number of drivers with DWI, while issuing citations for anything and everything else that they possibly can. Seat belt tickets, lapse of insurance, a burnt-out light, possession of a firearm or drugs, an old warrant, perhaps just because they "suspect" you of whatever crime they can conjure up between one another...anything at all to generate revenue. A routine check point will issue somewhere around 400-500 citations in any given afternoon or evening, out of which perhaps 5 will be DWI citations. It has become commonplace to read about these same officers beating citizens or otherwise using excessive force. Not too long ago, a young teen boy was shot and killed when officers busted into his home and hastily mistook the video game remote control he had in his hand at the time as a gun. This all occurred after they found pictures online of him holding what appeared to be a gun. No crime had been committed. The officers that shot the boy were never tried or convicted of any crime at all, but were rather simply transferred to another department and the incident was quietly swept away. These sorts of things happen on a regular basis here in Wilmington. There are a lot of great people in the area, but making a life here is difficult. Not only are good jobs seldom to find and the cost of living high, the "good ole' boy" system is still very much in play. Honestly, I am MUCH more concerned and terrified of being harassed/beaten/robbed/killed by the police as I make my daily commute to work and back home each day than I have ever been of having those kinds of things committed by some lurking criminal. In all of the years that I've spent in this town, there has never been anywhere near the amount of any type of crime (violent or otherwise) necessary to ever come near justifying any need for the insanely large and powerful police force that is run in Wilmington. Think twice before deciding to move here, unless you have a good job lined up already and housing within a very short driving distance of that job. It would be very wise to set back $500-1000 in savings that you can readily access when the time comes to pay off fines and court costs (AKA "Bribe Money").