I also have that same feeling at our local Krogers, which used to be an upscale store - but now I hear about these types approaching people in the parking lot and asking for money.
Our local Super Walmart is a very nice store, but the city bus lets off these dregs of society that constantly shoplift the store all day long. You always see a couple of police cruisers out front.
I get the same feeling at our local mall - a nice mall - but these ghetto types roam the mall and congregate at the food court - although lately I've noticed a police presence that seems to be keeping them from roosting where the food court is. Now, they just roam.
It seems to come from a drastic change in the demographic make-up of our downtown area. People walking blocks and blocks all day long - some are lugging suitcases on wheels - rehab housing is popping up everywhere. Others are walking long distances to the tobacco shop or dollar store. You can tell from looking at them - they don't have jobs and they are either fresh out of prison or rehab.
My beautiful middle-class town is starting to go ghetto, like the larger cities around us already have. Civilization is crumbling - it's not just Walmart.
I see it too. Some here may know I live in Iowa. A very rural part of Iowa, very literally a cul-de-sac that the rest of the world has passed by. Yet, in smaller and smaller towns, I see the same low class trash running around. These are imports, sometimes but not necessarily immigrants, and not your local trailer park dregs.
Where the HELL are they coming from and why are they here? There are not a ton of jobs here, little opportunity, not much to do, isolated and relativesly insular, yet it seems like I see the imported riff-raff in places that are the exact opposite where you'd expect them to congregate. Unemployed riff-raff often times at that.
It is as if someone is deliberately sprinkling these people everywhere in a subtle but coordinated manner. I know of one local small city where it was deliberately done because a buddy I graduated with was in charge of it, bringing Chicago ghetto trash down here to 'give them a new chance at life'. Now areas I used to run all over in as a kid are now too dangerous in broad day light.
But he's long gone from that position, and yet it continues and it's spread. It seems like a very methodical attempt to sow as many potential riot and looting zombie thugs as they possibly can for some later event while eroding the quality of life in these places now with destabilizing crime. Sorry if that seems tinfoil but it's too obvious to ignore.
