Durham getting more police officers, less than a year after the council rejected them
The Durham Police Department will be getting six more officers, less than a year after city leaders rejected adding more officers.
The six new patrol officers, costing around $420,000 annually, will replace positions transferred to the Gang Unit in December.
The department has been filling the gap left in patrol with officers signing up for extra shifts, usually at overtime pay, a practice that Police Chief C.J. Davis has said can increase the risk of use of force incidents and ethical violations.
The City Council approved the new officers 6-0, with council member Javiera Caballero not voting. The council then voted to approve the funding, passing the measure 7-0.
While only a handful of Durham residents spoke about the request at Monday’s council meeting, one community activist challenged the idea of “fighting” gangs, which he said means predominantly African-American men.
“Anything that’s going to make it safe for my wife, daughter, family to go to the store safely, I am not against that. However I am concerned about the context,” said minister Paul Scott. “When the verbiage is ‘we’re going to fight gangs’ ... You don’t hear anywhere in the country ‘they need six additional officers to fight the KKK.’”
Davis originally wanted 13 more officers to create a second gang unit, but the council only approved half of that request. Last year, she asked for 72 more officers over the next three years, but the request was scaled back to 18 officers before the council rejected it in a 4-3 vote.
Durham Gang Statistics
As of February, Durham had 2,060 people validated as gang members by the Police Department.
Of the 652 reported shooting incidents in 2019, Davis said a gang member was either a victim or a suspect in at least 12% of them, The News & Observer has reported.
Jason Schiess, the city’s analytic services manager, said 2019 arrests of gang members exceeded any of the three previous years.
▪ In 2019, 351 gang members were arrested 681 times and charged with 464 felonies and 835 misdemeanors.
▪ In 2018, 330 gang members were arrested 514 times and charged with 544 felonies and 659 misdemeanors.
Davis told city council last month she hopes the six new positions will lower arrest numbers.
“We know (in) many of the crimes that we saw last year, and probably the last two years, there was a group of individuals that were just repeatedly arrested over and over again,” she said.
