Police say they need help to fight violent crime in Durham

Interim Police Chief Shari Montgomery presented the latest crime statistics to Durham City Council members on Thursday, showing homicides, rapes and aggravated assaults are up through the first six months of 2021 when compared with the three-year average. Only robberies through the first half of this year are down, department figures show.

But some residents said Durham is unfairly labeled as a crime-ridden city.

"I would say it has more of a crime-perception problem than a crime problem," Paul Langan said.

"In the same way that any mid-sized American city has a crime problem," James Anderson said, "stuff goes down in Durham."

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FBI crime statistics show that Fayetteville, Greensboro, Rocky Mount, Goldsboro, Asheville and Charlotte all had higher rates of violent crime, per 100,000 people, in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available.

Wib Gulley, who served as mayor in the late 1980s, said crime has always been a challenge for Durham.

"A lot of things that push crime and make it happen are beyond the control of any city [or] any county – unemployment, the pandemic, economic poverty," Gulley said.

He pointed to community policing and the city's new Community Safety Department, which sends social workers and other unarmed first responders to nonviolent 911 calls, as positive steps to address the issue.

Anderson said he would like to see more programs to address root causes of violence, like a lack of affordable housing and unemployment.

"There is nowhere in this country that is having that kind of conversation sufficiently," he said.

"I would say that I’ve never known city government in Durham to go more than a year without some loud criticism of them not doing enough about crime and safety," Gulley said.

Montgomery was candid talking to the City Council about her department needing more officers and needing higher pay to get them.

"We just need more officers on the streets. We need more officers to be available for the calls," she said.

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Montgomery agreed with a representative of the police union that inadequate staffing is the problem. She added that filling vacant positions is a struggle because Durham just doesn't pay its officers enough.

"The biggest issue we face is the competitive wages," she said. "We lose a lot to all other agencies because we are just not competitive."

Although Mayor Steve Schewel told WRAL News on Wednesday that police officers got large raises and bonuses this year as part of Durham's 2021-22 city budget, he supported Montgomery's call on Thursday for even higher salaries.

"We have to have competitive wages," Schewel told the council. "We need to make that happen, and I just want to say I will be totally supportive of that."