Letter to Durham Community from outgoing Police Chief (Raleigh: crime rate, felony)

[Indigoblue]

This was sent out to me on my Partners Against Crime email list. It's definitely worth a read, particularly for the ways in which they've been able to dramatically decrease crime in recent years. It's amazing how many things the Durham police dept has going on.

I was just reading an article in the N&O about how many large cities are having issues with rising crime, and one technique they mentioned (which Durham does) that is lacking in such cities is tracking crime data and allocating police officers based on concentrations and times of crimes.

As an aside, an interesting theory they stated was that immigration (both legal and illegal) may be helping many large cities with their crime. Large cities with higher rates of immigrants have lower crime rates than large cities with low rates of immigrants.

Message to the Durham Community from Police Chief Steven W. Chalmers



As Durham prepares for a new police chief, I feel it is important to reflect on the positive accomplishments of the Durham Police Department. The men and women of my department have worked hard and I am proud of them.



We have longstanding successful partnerships with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. Participation in our community policing programs is at an all-time high. We have made significant marijuana, cocaine, heroin and Ecstasy busts in the past three months and our violent crime is down compared to last year.



The SBI 10-year crime statistics for Durham tell the story. The violent crime rate per 100,000 dropped 30% from 1997 to 2006 and the property crime rate per 100,000 fell by 45%. At the same time, violent crime clearance rates improved from 26% in 1998 to 45% in 2006, and property crime clearance rates more than doubled from 8% to 18% during the same period. Our clearance rates are now at or above the national average for cities our size in all crime categories.



One of the keys to the Police Department’s success has been our participation on task forces with other law enforcement officers. At this time, we have 11 officers on seven federal task forces which focus on drug trafficking, firearms, cyber crimes and violent fugitives. Just this week our task force officers helped capture our most wanted fugitive – Shaun Tapp who had been charged with felony child abuse – in New York.



These task forces, along with our ICE (Interstate Criminal Enforcement) Team, have also been an instrumental part of our recent large drug seizures. ICE officers have confiscated more than $1.1 million in drugs and $1.1 million in cash since the team started in 2005.



The Durham Police Department was one of the first law enforcement agencies in the state to stand up a gang unit – not because we believed Durham had a worse gang problem than other cities, but because we wanted to take a proactive stance against gang activity. Today, we have 30 officers on our gang unit and they are frequently asked to share their expertise with other law enforcement agencies throughout the state. We also recently received a federal Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) $2.5 million gang prevention grant, which we will be sharing with Raleigh. Funds from this grant will allow us to focus on prevention, enforcement and re-entry programs.



As an officer and as chief, I have always been very active in community policing and the Durham community has embraced this concept. We now have 565 active Neighborhood Watches and an all-time high membership in our five Partners Against Crime (PAC) groups. Our Citizen Observer Patrol continues to grow. This week 30 youths are attending the Police Department’s summer camp and last weekend 10 children from public housing communities spent the weekend camping with Durham police officers.



Last year our National Night Out program was nationally ranked due to strong community involvement. This year our Victim Services Unit held its first weeklong Crime Victims’ Rights Week in April.



I and other members of the Police Department have held a series of meetings this year with Latino community leaders to expand our outreach to Durham’s Latino residents. One of the first major events resulting from this partnership will be held on July 21 on Juniper Street. The Department held its first Spanish-language Citizens Police Academy three years ago, which was the first one in North Carolina.



Another community partnership - the N.C. Child Response Initiative between the Durham Police Department and the Center for Child and Family Health - has been quite successful in helping young children deal with the effects of crime and violence.



In the past year, we have used crime analysis to track crime trends, make arrests and help us determine the best use of our resources. We used this technology to focus on specific areas in each district for 90-day initiatives. This project was so successful that we repeated it for another three-month period. We also did a special warrant service project in these areas during June, which resulted in 265 warrants being served.



Now our department is getting ready to start a yearlong project targeting a two-square-mile area with the highest density of both violent crimes and “shots fired” calls in the city. It will be a major initiative involving all the bureaus in the Police Department as well as other City and local agencies. We used crime analysis to choose the area where we believed we could make the most difference by using intervention, prevention and enforcement strategies. We want to be proactive in our policing approach, rather than reactive.



The Durham Police Department’s concentration on a comprehensive approach to crime has been recognized nationally. I have been invited to speak about Durham’s programs to the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the League of Municipalities, NOBLE (National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives) and to a group of sheriffs and police chiefs in Richmond, Va. Durham’s community involvement is second to none and I want to thank members of our community for their support and assistance.