RALEIGH — The local chapter of the NAACP will announce plans today to call on the city to form a task force to probe the slayings of six Raleigh women over the past year.

The group also wants to have a fund-raising drive to increase the $6,000 reward that has been posted for information in the killings, the Rev. H.B. Pickett Jr., president of the Raleigh-Apex branch, toldThe News & Observerof Raleigh.

Raleigh's police chief, Mitch Brown, has said his department already has a major crimes task force and doesn't need a special task force. Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby has said that police and prosecutors have spents months looking into possible connections between the slayings of poor, black women in Raleigh. But so far investigators have found no evidence that slayings are related.

The most recent body was found Dec. 26 in a warehouse at North and West streets on the western edge of downtown. Police have said four of the six women were prostitutes and all six had been involved in street-level drug trade.

Police in Charlotte set up a task force last year to look for connections in its homicides and missing persons cases. That force is composed of police detectives and SBI agents.