The total number of reported crimes in Durham decreased by 10 percent over the period from January to July 2004, but homicide and rape are on the rise, said Steven Chalmers, chief of the Durham Police Department, at a Durham City Council meeting Monday night.
The total number of reported crimes in Durham decreased by 10 percent over the period from January to July 2004, but homicide and rape are on the rise, said Steven Chalmers, chief of the Durham Police Department, at a Durham City Council meeting Monday night.
In addition, the total number of reported property crimes—burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft—fell 10 percent over the six-month period to 6,013 reported cases, the lowest figure in the past five years. The total number of reported violent crimes—murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault—decreased 7 percent to 815, down from 879 in 2003. The violent crimes figure is the lowest since 2001, when 804 violent crimes were reported.
Chalmers cautioned, however, that homicides increased 25 percent from the comparable 2003 six-month period, up to 15 reported cases. Rapes increased 43 percent, from 35 to 50 reported cases, from 2003. This year’s six-month period saw the highest total number of reported rapes in five years.
Both Chalmers and Mayor Bill Bell pointed to gang activity as a cause for the increase in homicides.
“Probably 60 to 70 percent of our homicides up to this point are gang-related,” Chalmers said. “Certainly gang activity is impacting our homicide rate, but even aggravated assault and robberies as well. The majority of violence is perpetrated by gang members.”
Chalmers, however, also stressed that Durham is not the only North Carolina city beset by gang problems.
“All metropolitan cities the size and makeup of Durham have gang problems, and if you look at the last four to five years, gang situations are becoming more and more evident,” Chalmers said. “One reason we’ve received the focus and attention we have is that the first thing we did was step up and admit that we have a gang problem.... We’ve contributed more of our resources to deal with the city of Durham’s gang problem.”
Throughout his tenure as mayor, Bell has repeatedly stressed the severity of Durham’s gang situation, and he said after the meeting that he wished Chalmers had addressed it in more detail during his presentation. Bell said the majority of the reported homicides involved inter-gang violence rather than the murder of uninvolved citizens.
“The only comfort that people might see [in the homicide figure], is if they look at each of the homicide cases, the vast majority are not random,” Bell said. “If you’re not dealing in drugs and you’re not involved with gangs, there is less of a likelihood of getting killed.”
Chalmers said increased police visibility had helped to lower the overall crime rate. The DPD’s use of its mobile substation, an imposing bus-sized vehicle filled with communications equipment and space for interrogation, increased drastically over the six-month period and was deployed 157 times for a total of 647 hours, Chalmers said.
When Bell asked Chalmers why the substation could not have been used more during daytime hours, Chalmers said the DPD was deploying the substation as much as it could under its financial constraints.
“Anything we do... requires staffing. Even to staff one police car around the clock requires about six officers.... Officers are going to be off, they’re going to be sick or go on vacation. We’d have to train additional drivers, if we’re going to do more,” Chalmers said. “And 157 substation deployments out of 180 days—I think that’s significant. The total deployments for all of last year was 232. We’re already at 157 just for six months. We’re using the mobile substation a lot more this year.”
City Council members also asked Chalmers how Durham’s crime statistics compared with other cities of similar size and demographics. Chalmers said that in comparison with Greensboro, Raleigh, Winston-Salem and Richmond, Va., Durham was “better than average” with regard to violent crime, but worse than average in property crime.
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