Our long national nightmare might not be anywhere close to over, however, one good sign that things are improving is that, on Monday, June 8, High Point Mayor Jay Wagner terminated the city’s State of Emergency and lifted the city’s curfew.
Now city residents can stay out past 8 p.m. and they can do so in a state of non-emergency. Since North Carolina is opening up once again after more than two months of shutdown due to the coronavirus, High Point residents may actually have some things to do and some places to visit when they go out at night.
With massive protests and rioting following the killing of George Floyd, High Point, like many cities across the county last week, implemented a curfew that ran from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m.
However, at exactly 11:04 a.m. on June 8, Wagner lifted that curfew.
The curfew had been keeping a lot of people indoors, but, in High Point, as in other areas, many people and businesses only followed the rules loosely. For instance, some stores stayed open until 8 p.m. – or even a little later – which didn’t give the workers time to get home after closing.
However, the main purpose of the curfew was to reduce violence in the streets and property damage, and, by June 8, Wagner felt that things in his city were now calm enough that people could go out at night again.
The protests of Floyd’s death came in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic – which, earlier this year, had caused the state to declare a state of emergency and instruct everyone to stay home. Recently the City of High Point shut down the High Point Transit System and closed the High Point Municipal Building due to confirmed positive COVID-19 cases.
