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What’s in store for 2026? Only a fool would tell you with absolute certainty. But we do know some of the key stories that will impact us this year, from economic pressures to the upcoming elections, from The Endowment and its $1.6 billion (and growing) in assets to a high-profile criminal case, and the story of the Northside Food Co-op, where it goes next, it what it means for the future of government intervention in food insecurity and other issues that impact our region’s most vulnerable residents.
Here are some of the big stories we'll be watching this year. Starting, in alphabetical order, with a concise new buzzword for an old and complicated problem.
Affordability
Those costs hit people harder than foreign policy debates or culture wars. You can turn off the news and delete Facebook, but if a dollar buys a nickel’s worth, you’re still gonna be mad as hell. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that what James Carville said almost 35 years ago is still true: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
But what to do about it, especially at the level of local or state government?
A regulatory approach is tough, although at the state level, the attorney general’s office has some tools it can use against price gouging, like Democratic AG Jeff Jackson’s recent successful suit against corporate landlords.
A key conservative argument, traditionally, has been to lower taxes and ‘let people keep more of their money’ (a phrasing which still rankles my libertarian friends, who say in mock supplication, ‘Oh, thank you, my liege.’)
But, unless you’re going full anarchist, you need some tax revenue, because most people expect functioning law enforcement, infrastructure like roads and utilities, and public education. The question for fiscal conservatism is, “Can you find enough fat to cut so that it’ll make a difference?”
Last year, New Hanover County’s Republican commissioners, led by Dane Scalise, did their best to shave down the tax rate. Not surprisingly, the cuts got mixed reactions. But on the right, where folks seemed to appreciate the effort, a lot of people told me “it would have been worse” if not for Republicans – which is not quite the same as making things better. This is still a very expensive place to live, and I’m not sure the levers of local property tax can move the needle all that much. Last year’s austerity measures saved someone with a $500,000 home about $220. That’s not nothing, but is it enough to make life affordable?
Moving to the state level (which Scalise is hoping to do in his District 20 race against Democrat Tim Merrick, currently on the county school board), the General Assembly has already set a series of decreases for income tax (and plans to phase out the corporate tax). There are arguments for and against that, but the question remains: is there much more to cut? If not, what other levers might the GA lean on?
If I'm skeptical about tax cuts as an approach to affordability, I have to admit more liberal approaches — like directly subsidizing workforce housing — have also been underwhelming. Hundreds of new units have come online, and that’s great, but we need thousands. And, it’s worth noting, that while reducing taxes might have a modest impact, it’s spread around more evenly than the small group of cost-burdened residents who actually get a new affordable unit. There’s an undeniable sense of ‘have and have-nots,’ when I talk to some folks about affordable housing, in particular.
When it comes to renters, whose housing costs are impacted indirectly by property taxes but don’t feel immediate relief when those taxes are lowered, things are grim. Local government lacks the statutory authority to impose rent control, and the spiraling costs of financing and construction mean leasing rates aren’t likely to come down much. As my colleague Kelly Kenoyer recently reported, rental rates are flattening out, but renters are still struggling.
One place I’ve heard some fairly bipartisan agreement is the flipside of affordability — which is wages. From liberal progressives to the deeply conservative, I’ve heard a renewed emphasis on bringing good jobs to Wilmington. (Even The Endowment creatively claimed its nursing pipeline grant was also an affordable housing grant, arguing that with better careers, people could tackle the rental and homeowner markets more easily.)
Creating better jobs makes sense – but, at the same time, Wilmington is competing against, well, almost every other metro area in the nation. Our region is also heavily dependent on the tourist and service industry. Those bring in a lot of revenue, but they’re also built on notoriously low-paying jobs. I occasionally hear arguments that those jobs are ‘for young people,’ but it seems those folks have never spent much time in a commercial kitchen. Not only is it difficult to ‘jump’ from the service industry to a better-paying job with benefits, but there are lots of people who genuinely care about cooking good food and providing good service. If you want your steak cooked right when you go out to eat, you can’t leave it up to a bunch of high school students.
Lastly, there’s been bipartisan crowing about North Carolina’s consistent ranking as one of the best states – or even the best state – for business, an honor bestowed by CNBC several times. This year, Democratic Governor Josh Stein celebrated live from the deck of the U.S.S. North Carolina. But when I buttonholed him during a dog and pony presser at the Cotton Exchange later, and pushed him on North Carolina’s abysmal rankings for protections and quality of life for workers, Stein served up a bunch of arglebargle before staffers tried to pivot to the obligatory photo-ops with local small business owners.
Right now, we’re in a particularly populist moment, and it might be enough for politicians to ‘feel people’s pain,’ and to blame past administrations, or make grand promises. Trump, after all, was very successful in diagnosing what ailed average Americans – although he’s been less adept at prescribing a cure. Whether it remains enough for people to feel heard, well, we’ll see. But, especially among younger voters, polling shows there’s increasing hostility towards both parties, and I suspect that’s in large part because they’re tired of talk.
Elections
Before we get to the general elections in November, we’re looking at a host of primary elections in the Cape Fear region. Brunswick and Pender counties, which both lean heavily conservative, have districts for school board and county commissioners, and there are a number of one-on-one Republican primaries. Brunswick County will also see Republican primaries for both the Sheriff’s and District Attorney’s offices. These races are, at least for me, interesting because they’re not shaped by the typical midterm election forces (Blue or Red Waves, frustration with the sitting President and Congressional leaders, etc.), but by different interpretations of conservatism, often institutionalist versus grass-roots Republicans.
In New Hanover County, where all seats are county-wide, there’s a primary for Democratic county commissioner candidates, with four candidates running for two seats, and primaries for school board candidates from both parties, with six Republicans and five Democrats running for a four-seat slate for each party (meaning two Republicans and one Democrat will get bumped going into the general).
Over the last few elections, the New Hanover County school board race has been its own rarefied thing, the locus of heated culture war battles, much more so than other local races. I think that’s both because New Hanover is such a purple county, and because there was a deliberate effort by conservatives four years ago to campaign on those issues, which has helped set the tone. Notably, three Republican incumbents who ran, in large part, on criticisms of the school district will now have to defend it, which will make for an interesting contrast.
All that said, I do wonder if we’ll see a bit of a shift towards more foundational issues: classroom size, student success, facilities management, and recruiting and retaining staff. I’ll be blunt, the dysfunction of the school board over the last decade has made it the black sheep of local government – bring it up, and Republicans and Democrats in other offices will reliably laugh, sigh, or roll their eyes (or all three). Based on my conversations over the last few years, I suspect there’s a significant portion of the electorate that would like to see less heated rhetoric and more practical management.
In other local races, I think we’ll continue to see a philosophical debate play out over the role of local government, especially when it comes to tackling issues like poverty, homelessness, food deserts, public transportation, and other problems impacting less affluent and economically marginalized residents. After years flush with Covid funding , propelled by progressive tailwinds, New Hanover County backed away from some of those efforts – I expect most of the Democratic candidates will advocate for re-engaging, and rejoining collaborative efforts with the City of Wilmington, which has traditionally been more liberal and has shouldered a lot of the weight on many of these fronts. Republicans, meanwhile, will have to gauge the lingering reaction to last year’s austerity measures, especially among unaffiliated voters who essentially decide most elections. Was the juice worth the squeeze (by which I mean a rushed, even chaotic, budget process that left a bad taste in some people’s mouths)?
And, I think there’s a very good chance that Republicans will find themselves on the defense against the same sort of Blue Wave that helped shape last year’s municipal elections (especially Wilmington’s). How strongly the traditional midterm pendulum swing impacts the race will also depend on where the Trump administration puts its efforts. Another year of high-profile foreign policy work, trade wars, peace negotiations, and so on, won’t appease domestic frustrations. I certainly know people from the liberal progressive left to the populist right who would rather Trump focus on healthcare and economic stability than stunning nighttime raids on foreign leaders, even dangerous authoritarians like Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
While affordability, especially for housing, will play a role in our local commissioners and state representative elections, another key issue will be development.
During last year’s City of Wilmington election, in particular, the issue of development had a slightly different feel, since the city is almost completely built out – meaning that most new projects will be re-development, infill, adaptive reuse, etc. New Hanover County has thousands of acres in the northern region stretching from the city limits to the Pender County border, which has been essentially primed for development by the extension of water and sewer to the area. It contains some of the county’s last remaining forest land (which, though it’s private property and you can’t legally stroll through it, still has a serious emotional hold on residents).
In Brunswick and Pender counties, development has also exploded, straining infrastructure and schools, and whipping up populist anti-development sentiment. In Pender County, in particular, the pace of development threatens to literally run the tap dry if there aren’t significant investments in water utilities, or some kind of dramatic halt to growth.
How candidates position themselves between the need for more affordable housing and the visceral anti-development sentiment that’s been simmering (and boiling over, here and there) is going to be interesting. Supply and demand theories have a wonkish practicality – but clearly there’s an appetite for someone who will throw around words like ‘moratorium’ (even if it's legally unsustainable). We’ll be doing a lot of fact-checking around this, I suspect.
Another big issue will be school funding: not just the $320 million New Hanover County Schools bond, although that could be a fight in and of itself, but both the amount and ratio of funding that comes to public schools from the state and county. Some state officials, including Republican State Senator Michael Lee, have suggested the counties step up their support; at the same time, the current county administration is looking to trim its budget everywhere it can. The Republican-controlled school board has been put in the awkward position of struggling with budget cuts from Republican-controlled county, state, and federal governments, a “triple whammy.” It seems like something needs to give, but what?
Speaking of Lee, I expect another tough, expensive fight for Senate District 7, as the incumbent takes on Democrat Jessica Bichler, a self-avowed non-politician and working mother (she's co-owner of the Wilmington Yoga Center). The last few elections have seen millions of dollars pouring out of both parties' Senate war chests into New Hanover County, funding some pretty rough and tough campaign ads. Fact-checkers are standing by, fear not.
There's no primary for District 7, but there is an unaffiliated candidate, Rebecca Trammel, hoping to get on the ballot. Trammel needs roughly 7,000 petition signatures, or 4% of the registered voters in the district, based on January 1, 2026, figures released by the state.
I'm looking forward to talking to Trammel soon about her campaign, to see how she plans to position herself. To be honest, though, there are serious headwinds, going up against well-funded candidates with built-in party support. I'm also curious how she thinks about her potential role as a spoiler candidate. Trammel has been an outspoken advocate for increased education funding (specifically, the full funding of the Leandro plan, which would pump billions more dollars into schools); running on the issue seems very likely to pull voters from left-leaning unaffiliated voters and even some Democrats, to the detriment of Bichler and benefit of Lee.
Lastly, in primary news we’ve got our eyes on: six-term Republican Congressman David Rouzer is facing a challenge from David Buzzard, an Army veteran running on a populist platform (his campaign site touts economic nationalism, labor protection, and pro-family policies). Rouzer will likely prevail, given his entrenched support, but I always think it’s healthy to see incumbents – especially long-term incumbents primaried. Also, candidly, Rouzer does not often pick up the phone when journalists call, but, in the past, he’s been game for interviews when he’s been primaried. So, I look forward to speaking with him and Buzzard. (The winner in March’s primary will go on to face Democrat Kimberly Hardy and Libertarian Maad Abu-Ghazalah.)
Of course, you can never predict what Rumsfeldian “unknown unknowns” will crop up and shape the elections – and, yes, there’s always going to be some October surprises.
The Endowment
I won’t rehash everything I wrote about The Endowment a few weeks ago, but I do think The Endowment will remain a major story this year.
First and foremost, there’s The Endowment’s search for a new CEO. Board member Woody White has vocally advocated for a local hire. I can say that while White’s political positions can be polarizing, I’ve heard plenty of support for the idea across the political spectrum. After all, one of the main criticisms of The Endowment has been that it’s out of touch, disconnected from the problems that define our region and the people who have been working on those issues, in some cases for decades.
Still, others continue to advocate for a professional with philanthropic experience – someone more like William Buster and less like Dan Winslow – and would like to see The Endowment again do a nationwide search.
I’ve heard White has probably whipped the votes he needs on The Endowment’s 13-member board, but I’ll admit most are keeping their cards pretty tight to their vests. Still, if I were a betting man, I’d gamble we’ll see a local hire.
Ok, but who? Obviously, that’s where the rubber meets the road. County Manager Chris Coudriet is a perennial guess, but he continues to deny any interest in the gig. (Personally, I think you could do far worse than Coudriet, but that decision is obviously far above my pay grade.) Other names that get floated consistently are Wilmington Chamber of Commerce CEO Natalie English and former District Attorney Ben David, who is currently running the Endowment-funded Community Justice Center. And, of course, some are lobbying for interim Endowment President and CEO Sophie Dagenais to keep her job.
In a sense, the decision about what kind of CEO The Endowment hires next – a competent manager or a visionary leader, elevating a local or poaching an out-of-towner – will probably tell us a lot about what The Endowment’s board wants, and how ready (or unwilling) they are to step back from day-to-day operations.
There are plenty of other important issues, including whether The Endowment develops a more comprehensive strategy to intervene where local, state, and federal governments have made cuts. There are also questions about how The Endowment will start to evaluate the efficacy of its grants from the first few years, especially some of its bigger swings (like the $22 million nursing pipeline grant announced in late 2023). Longer term, there’s the ticking clock on The Endowment’s IRS-mandated conversion to a private foundation, which will have to put 5% of its asset value into the community every year – a considerable uptick from its current spending. There are still a couple of years left before that happens, but one hopes there’s some significant strategizing behind the scenes.
The Northside Food Co-op
Last year, the Northside Food Co-op went from a well-funded venture on the cusp of breaking ground to essentially losing all of its funding from both The Endowment and New Hanover County. Last month, Cierra Washington, who had been the project manager and executive director of the Co-op, posted a video to Instagram, saying that while the efforts were still moving ahead in spirit, it was necessary to “mourn” the significant setbacks of 2025. It was an honest, moving message, with the kind of candor you don’t often get in these situations, where typically everyone is desperate to either pivot away from an issue or put some impossibly positive spin on it.
But what do you say to community members who saw an artist’s rendering of the Co-op, who have attended dozens of community dinners, building buzz and anticipation about opening day that seemed very real and on the visible horizon?
As we reported a few weeks ago, there’s some support on Wilmington city council for considering the Northside Food Co-op as part of the city-owned property on North Third, adjacent to Thalian Hall and Project Grace. This was where a grocery store project, reportedly Publix, was proposed over a year ago – kicking off a chain reaction that led directly to the Co-op getting defunded – before the deal fell through last month.
But, as Mayor Bill Saffo told me, a lot of pieces will have to fall into place for that to work, and several other officials have suggested that the stars of mixed-income and mixed-use development would have to align to get that kind of project over the finish line. Also, as Co-op board member Frankie Roberts told me, Co-op leaders want to hear from the largely Black community of the Northside – do they think a grocery store on North Third fulfills the original mission and vision of the Co-op, which was to address the food desert where they live, or is it too far afield, literally and geographically?
The quiet part, which few politicians have said out loud, is that the location of the city-donated land made things tough for the Co-op, and made government subsidy an almost certain prerequisite to success (and, in fact, the county had budgeted years of funding for exactly that kind of operational support). The alternative, while not impossible, would have been difficult: engineering a lasting change in shopping behavior, where residents from around the city – not just the local neighborhood – would drive across town and shop at the Co-op. In a market shaped by convenience and routine, that’s a tall order.
Due to deregulation during the Reagan administration, smaller grocery stores cannot compete with larger box-store chains without a significantly higher level of pedestrian and vehicle traffic, and that has dramatically expanded the footprint of foot deserts over the last four decades. Barring a serious policy change in DC – which doesn’t appear imminent, to put it mildly – the market just won’t support a store near 10th and Fanning streets. Had it been placed in, say, the so-called Soda Pop district, surrounded by other shops, bars, and restaurants, things might have been different. But that’s not what happened. Thus, subsidies were crucial to the Co-op plan.
It’s my sense that Republican leaders had long been uncomfortable with this, and even some Democrats were likely worried about the long-term need for government support – at least in part because it invited the obvious question about what the city and county would do for other food deserts. But so many different organizations had broken their promises of delivering a grocery store to the Northside, the optics were terrible, especially at a time when there was increased pressure to address racial injustice and inequalities, and most went along with it. The Publix proposal changed the market landscape, and maybe that was enough to legitimately change the calculus, but it also – in my opinion – gave some people whose hearts were never in it the plausible out they needed.
Now that the Publix proposal is dead, what's next? The Endowment has, so far, essentially shrugged at the issue, but Wilmington city council members have definitely been discussing it. Even if the North Third Street location doesn’t end up being a good fit, I suspect that won’t be the end of the discussion. New Hanover County, however, seems like it’s out of the grocery game, at least for the next year.
I note all of this because, in and of itself, the Northside Food Co-op is an important story that I’ve been following since I worked at Port City Daily. But it’s also a metaphor for a progressive approach to government intervention, one that’s applicable to a range of issues from healthcare and childcare to housing and transportation. The lines of demarcation between government service, the nonprofit world, and the private sector are blurry, and they move all the time, but the current trends – on a host of issues – have seen government pulling back. With an all-Democrat city council, which leans more progressive than past iterations, we might see something different, and get a real test of whether that kind of governance can still be broadly popular.
Novant Health NHRMC
In a month, it’ll be five years since Novant Health finalized its acquisition of New Hanover Regional Medical Center. I won’t relitigate the whole sale process here, or recap the low points NHRMC has seen since the sale, but suffice to say: it’s been a rocky road.
In the spring, we’ll get the latest round of safety data from Leapfrog, a national nonprofit that acts as a watchdog for hospital quality. And, this summer, we should see updated data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which also provides a one-to-five-star rating system for hospital safety and patient experience. NHRMC currently ranks a C with Leapfrog, and has two stars for quality and three stars for patient experience from CMS.
Those are, obviously, depressing scores for any hospital, and it’s worth remembering that they aren’t just Yelp reviews: they translate into adverse patient outcomes. We’re talking about recoveries that are more painful and debilitating than they should be – infections, complications, delayed returns to home and work – and yes, patients who die from serious but treatable issues. Poor ratings are deadly serious, literally.
Novant has routinely pointed to significant lags in the data, some of which can be four years old – dating back to the depths of the pandemic, when overrun emergency rooms and staffing shortages pushed hospitals around the country (and the world) to the breaking point. And NHRMC has made improvements, especially on infections linked to hygiene procedures. But many safety indicators that remain troubling came from more recent data, covering 2024, when Novant had put new leadership in charge of NHRMC and said things had drastically improved. Other hospital systems that were also waylaid but Covid have recovered their grades and ratings, where NHRMC has not, which has been hard for Novant leadership to explain.
We’re still waiting for NHRMC’s grade to improve, and still hearing horror stories from patients and staff. What twists the knife for a lot of residents is that NHRMC isn’t just any hospital. It was a proud and successful community-owned facility and, when it was put on the market, leaders told the public it was being sold from a position of strength. This wasn’t a fire sale, it was a chance to bring in best-in-class investment for the healthcare of southeastern North Carolina. The public was told Novant was the best option, not because they put the most cash on the barrelhead (although they did), but because they could deliver the best service to our community. Those intentions are written into the sale contract itself, in fact. But five years later, it’s hard to see how a two-star, C-rated hospital lives up to that promise.
One of the things we’ll be looking at this year is a different side of Novant, not the health safety issues that have, understandably, captured the public’s attention, but the business side of the healthcare system. Novant is a nonprofit, which more people more comfortable with it compared to for-profit healthcare companies (during the sale process, the county Democratic Party actually polled on the issue). But experts told me back in 2019, and continue to say today, that nonprofit or for-profit statuses are not actually good indicators of hospital quality; both can have issues, and non-profits can engage in behavior that privileges growth and expansion over hospital quality in much the same way a for-profit company can. ‘For-profit’ healthcare sounds bad, but when it comes to issues like executive compensation vs. staff pay, responsible quality control, and aggressive expansion, it's more of a boogeyman than a predictor of good management.
We’ll be looking at Novant’s financials and growth plans to get a better understanding of how they’re operating – and how that might be impacting quality around the system.
The Tru Colors Killings
Four and a half years ago, I got a tip that there had been a shooting at the house of George Taylor III, son of George William Taylor, Jr., owner of Tru Colors Brewing, and his father's chief operating officer. The son, known by some as GT3, had reportedly been partying consistently with some of the company’s gang-affiliated employees.
Two people were killed, Kodresse Tyson and Bri’yanna Williams, and another woman was badly injured. Not long after, authorities arrested Raquel Adams, Omonte Bell, and Dyrell Green. Officials called it a gang-related hit.
The story is bizarre, starting with the neo-Shakespearean tragedy of Tru Colors itself. George Taylor Jr.’s dream was a brewery staffed by active gang members who spent part of their time cooking hops and grains and learning the ropes of marketing and development, but also intervening in potentially lethal disputes, interrupting the escalating cycles of violence that often went from Facebook beef to fatal shootings in a matter of hours, or less. The actual operation was a bit of a black box, but it seemed like some combination of well-connected ears to the ground and social media surveillance. It was strange enough, with just enough sketchiness, to draw the attention of the New Yorker, whose reporting came right before the brewery’s implosion. (Later, an overlapping but different set of issues doomed Port City United, the county’s attempt to recreate parts of the Tru Colors ‘violence interrupters’ model)
The criminal case itself is also strange: from what I can gather, there are no direct eyewitnesses, no murder weapon, and no concrete DNA evidence. The three men charged have all refused to cooperate, take plea deals, or testify against each other, despite prosecutors' reported attempts to leverage some kind of ‘prisoners’ dilemma’ situation (where defendants are forced to guess whether someone else will risk a tougher sentence to stay silent, or sell them out for a deal). The evidence that I’ve read about from court filings has to do mostly with cellphone tracking and text message records – although there could be, and probably is, much more that I haven’t seen.
Another twist: when the case was presented to the grand jury, there were apparently significant inaccuracies in the presentation made by law enforcement, including untrue or misleading claims about defendants' criminal history, statements to police, and – in one case – rap songs that were presented as a confession released after the murders, even though they were recorded and posted online months prior to the shooting. (The use of rap lyrics as evidence is a whole other can of worms.)
I've spoken with legal scholars, prosecutors in other districts, and public defenders, and the consensus was a deep concern about the situation. If these were errors, they were glaring. If they were intentional, they were a shocking, but also unnecessary, act of dishonesty, since grand juries almost always indict, largely because they hear only law enforcement’s side of the story, with defense attorneys and defendants rarely, if ever, aware that the jury has even convened.
All of this is even more odd because, ordinarily, there’s no way we would know what happened in the grand jury at all; they’re notoriously opaque in North Carolina. But law enforcement appears to have accidentally turned over a PowerPoint presentation used during the hearing to the defense during discovery. Defense attorneys suggested these errors and inaccuracies could amount to perjury, something then-District Attorney Ben David and his fellow prosecutors rigorously rejected.
Defense attorneys moved to dismiss, but a Superior Court judge denied the motion, in large part because the accidental piercing of the grand jury veil is almost completely unprecedented, leaving very little case law on which to rely. That means the issue will likely be dealt with at trial – which is set for May of this year for Bell and Green (Adams was convicted this past May).
By the time he finally goes to trial, Green will have been locked up in the county detention center for almost five years under a $1.3 million bond. His father, Ronald Canty, tells me he’s been in solitary confinement for much of that time (after being accused of assaulting a detention officer, along with other violations), with only one hour out of his cell each day. Canty is also his son’s alibi, and has vigorously and consistently defended his son’s innocence – and castigated the system, and David's office, as corrupt and even racist. He’s also argued that David never should have been involved with the case, since he had an existing relationship with George Taylor, Jr., and had played some role in the early days of building Tru Colors (as detailed by The New Yorker). The latter issue, at least, has resolved itself, as David’s been out of office for over a year. But the fundamental unfairness, as Canty sees it, remains: his son has been locked up for half a decade on charges that, to him, seem flimsy at best and unconstitutionally fraudulent at worst.
The latest twists in the case have involved two potential witnesses, including a confidential informant who claimed to have information about the ‘real’ killer in the case – one who allegedly not only killed Tyson and Williams but had also planned, unsuccessfully, to murder Dyrell Green. After some legal back and forth, the court ultimately ruled that the CI would not testify, a blow to the defense’s case.
Another would-be witness, George Taylor III (GT3), has filed a motion to quash a subpoena to testify. While Taylor did not appear to have been a suspect in the case at any point, there were serious questions about his behavior during the shooting: he ended up in a bathroom, armed, but admitted he did not call 911, and after initially allowing law enforcement to look at his cell phone, he later revoked consent. George Taylor III reportedly ignored a subpoena to testify during Adams’ trial last year (prosecutors say he couldn’t be located). A legal motion filed by Taylor in mid-November claims that, “due to diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to the event, Mr. Taylor has no independent recollection of the details surrounding the incident.”
Like the Northside Food Co-op, this is an important story in and of itself. But there are obviously some implications for the criminal justice system running as throughlines of this story. The allegations of misrepresenting evidence – Canty prefers to say “lying” – to the grand jury, for one. The five-year process to get a day in court, for another. But also the persistence of gun violence in the Black community, which in this case gained so much attention, and likely generated so much pressure to make arrests and get convictions, because it erupted into an affluent White neighborhood, and splashed across the glossy pages of a national magazine.
Got a story you'd like us to look into in 2026? Let us know at staffnews@whqr.org.
