The safest city in North Carolina is in the Piedmont Triad, but it isn’t Greensboro.

According to WalletHub, Winston-Salem is the safest city in North Carolina and ranks 21 in the country, with Raleigh close behind at 22.

Greensboro ranks 60 behind Durham, at 46, which is interesting when you consider that the Greensboro City Council decided to copy Durham’s effort to reduce violent crime and murders by spending $500,000 a year on a Cure Violence program run by City Councilmember Yvonne Johnson. Durham is the only city in North Carolina that currently has a Cure Violence program.

The Greensboro City Council chose not to investigate how Winston-Salem or Raleigh were making their cities safer, even though, according to WalletHub, both of those cities are considerably safer than Durham.

A community group suggested to the City Council that it implement a Cure Violence program in 2018. The City Council asked for help funding the program from the Guilford County Board of Commissioners. Then city councilmembers and county commissioners spent months meeting in secret, behind closed doors, in an attempt to come up with a plan to mutually fund Cure Violence.

Last summer, the Guilford County commissioners declined to fund Cure Violence in part because of the scanty information about the program provided to commissioners who were not party to the secret meetings.

In October, the Greensboro City Council voted to allocate $500,000 for the Cure Violence program and contract with One Step Further, the nonprofit run by Councilmember Johnson, to run the program. The contracts have reportedly now been signed.

But why did Greensboro decide to copy Durham when it could have copied Winston-Salem or Raleigh, which have a far better ratings as safe cities according to WalletHub, which considered a multitude of factors.

Councilmember Justin Outling repeatedly asked his fellow councilmembers to investigate other methods of reducing violent crime to ascertain if Cure Violence was the best and most cost effective program for Greensboro, but no such in-depth study was ever done.

Chicago, the home of Cure Violence, ranked 130 according to the WalletHub survey.

If you’d like to read more about the safest cities survey, the information can be found at: https://wallethub.com/edu/safest-cities-in-america/41926/