Durham gun violence up in 2022 as police struggle to solve homicides
More people were shot in Durham during the first three months of 2022 than during the same period in 2021, a year that saw a likely record number of people killed in the Bull City, a new police report shows.
And it’s a daunting task to arrest the suspects in the increased number of shootings, said Police Chief Patrice Andrews, who presented the first quarterly crime report of 2022 to the Durham City Council on Thursday.
The report shows 180 shooting incidents through March 31, up from 167 a year ago. A shooting incident is when a firearm is criminally discharged.
A total of 59 people were shot during the first three months of the year, eight of them fatally.
By comparison, 46 people were shot, seven of them fatally, during the first three months of 2019.
Andrews told the council that guns are “traveling” in Durham and being reused in different crimes.
The city also saw three shootings during the first quarter in which two people were killed in the same incident, she said.
“We are seeing multi-victim firearms incidents,” Andrews said. “We’re no longer seeing a lot of single-person victims. It’s multiple.”
A stark data point among the department’s crime clearance rates: just 9% of the 11 homicides in the city have been cleared by arrest, as of March 31, meaning the other 91% haven’t.
That means police solved or arrested someone in just one homicide during the first quarter of the year.
“But I will tell you [in] 70% of our cases this year, we either have a suspect or a person of interest,” Andrews told the council. “That doesn’t count for clearance. ... So, I will tell you that it’s not easy ... the work that our homicide investigators are doing.”
One obstacle in solving the homicides, she said, is that witnesses aren’t talking and cooperating with investigators.
“From search warrants to digital analysis to digital forensics analysis, fingerprinting,” Andrews said. “It requires that we oftentimes start from scratch and trace people’s steps and [are] making sure that if we are connecting anyone to any kind of case, particularly a homicide case, that we’ve gotten it right and we are communicating with (the) family members of our victims.”
The only clearance rate for violent crime higher in the first quarter than last year was aggravated assault: 43.4% of 274 assaults as of March 31 were solved. Last year 37.7% of 299 aggravated assaults were cleared in the first quarter.
Last year, 50 people were killed in Durham, the most homicides since at least 1995 when police began recording the data electronically.
Mayor Elaine O’Neal asked Andrews, who became chief in November, what she would do if she could “wave a magic wand” to improve policing in Durham. The chief responded: more community trust and partnerships with police to combat crime.
“Partnering with us, being accountable, holding each other accountable,” said Andrews. “When we see things that are happening in our community, and we know the person that might be doing it or we see our children are getting involved in (crimes) very young age... the call maybe shouldn’t be to us.”
The chief said the causes for gun violence, such as road rage, are about “impulse control.” In April, there were three road rage-related shootings in Durham.
“Being accountable for our actions, it goes a long, long way,” Andrews said.
Reported property crime down
While total violent crime was up 8% during the quarter, the 2,081 reported property crimes — vehicle thefts, larcenies and burglaries — were down 8% compared to a year prior, the report shows.
Burglaries saw the steepest drop: 30%.
Police struggled to respond quickly enough to high-priority 911 calls, too, with the average response taking 6.07 minutes, slower than the department’s 5.8 minutes goal.
The News & Observer asked to speak with Andrews and O’Neal before Thursday’s meeting, but neither responded Wednesday afternoon.
Policing alternatives, Shotspotter
Thursday’s report comes as the city is launching policing alternatives, such as sending unarmed responders to certain situations and considering ShotSpotter, a controversial gunshot detection program the City Council has previously rejected.
ShotSpotter places sensors across a city to pick up possible gunshots. The program analyzes the sound, compares it to other gunfire sounds, and sends the results to police, who decide what to do from there.
The company’s director of public safety, Ron Teachman, said the system can quicken response times, which can improve investigations, The N&O reported previously.
Other North Carolina cities use it, including Greensboro, Wilmington and Greenville. New York City, Chicago and Washington D.C. use it as well.
This story was originally published May 19, 2022 at 8:10 AM.
