Report: Overall crime, murders rose in Rocky Mount in 2022; number of violent crimes fell

Police say the number of violent crimes committed in the city fell for the second year in a row, but a rise in murders in 2022 is causing concern among some Rocky Mount residents.

During a briefing to the Rocky Mount city council on February 27, police chief Robert Hassell said the number of crimes reported in the city rose by 6% from 2021 to 2022.

Hassell said last year, property crime jumped 11% from the year before, driven by a 48% surge in stolen cars.

He also told the council that violent crime in Rocky Mount fell 8% from 2021, dropping for the second straight year.

Hassell credited the department’s recent investments in high-tech policing for bringing that number down.

“Pushing more technology to help us combat crime,” the police chief said. “FUSUS, our license plate readers, getting more information out there, reevaluating how we do our patrol tactics.”

It wasn’t all good news though.

“We had 20 homicides last year,” Hassell said. “That is of course a concern for most citizens, to see that number of homicides in one year, which is probably our largest number in recent history in our city.”

Police said the number of murders committed in Rocky Mount rose from 13 in 2021 to 20 last year, a 54% jump.

Hassell said out of those 20 murders, 14 were considered domestic-related, which was in line with a 44% surge in domestic homicides across the state from 2018 to 2021.

Because of that connection between perpetrators and victims, some citizens felt the rise in murders didn’t show an increased community-wide threat.

“A lot of time we see individual things happen and they seem horrific, and it blows up the bigger picture and makes it seem as though crime is just rampant everywhere, but it’s not,” Mount Zion First Baptist Church pastor Nehemiah Smith Jr. said. “It’s just individual incidents that happen that make it seem bad, but I feel safe in Rocky Mount.”

Others disagreed, calling the rise in homicides their biggest red flag for the community.

“I think more than anything, that projects a level of fear throughout the community,” activist Tarrick Pittman said. “Statistics are great, but they don’t give you a clear shot of the 70-year-old grandmother who’s afraid to come outside because she sees individuals in her community that she’s afraid of.”

Pittman said more investment in schools and social welfare programs were needed to permanently reduce crime. The pastor agreed.

“Because we all know that when education and employment goes up, crime goes down,” Smith Jr. said.