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The Daily Tar Heel

Durham Police Department quarterly report shows increase in robberies, decrease in homicides

The Durham Police Department released its third quarterly report of the year on Nov. 20. Although homicides and burglaries hit a three-year low, property and violent crime increased by 4 percent. 

As stated in the report, violent crime includes homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. The total number of violent crimes increased 4 percent from the first nine months of 2016. 

In the county, there were 16 homicides from January to September, compared to 30 during the same time period in 2016 and 25 in 2015.

There were 97 cases of rape, compared to 74 last year.

“Although rapes are up, there’s no indication based on the suspect and victimology data that we have any type of serial issue,” Durham Police Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis said in front of the city council. “Many of these instances were [committed] by acquaintances.” 

Robberies increased by 11 percent and aggravated assaults decreased slightly from 942 to 935. 

Davis said the police department formed a robbery task force a year ago to focus on the increase of robberies, especially commercial robberies and those committed with firearms.

Property crime, which includes burglaries, larcenies and vehicle thefts, had an overall increase of 6 percent. 

There was a 7 percent decrease in burglaries from last year, while larceny and vehicle theft each increased by 10 percent. 

“In the next couple of weeks, the department plans to implement a clean car campaign, especially during the holidays,” Davis said. 

She said encouraging people to hide valuable items like laptops, cell phones and even cell phone chargers is a crime prevention initiative. 

There were 455 domestic violence cases, a small decrease from last year’s 473. 

Durham police officers responded to 7,016 priority one calls for service, accounting for a 2 percent increase compared to the first nine months of 2016. 

"I'm glad that homicides are at a three-year low," Don Moffitt, Durham city council member, said. "It's due in part to the hard work by many people in the community." 

Overall, the department aimed to have an average response time for all priority one calls of 5.8 minutes, instead averaging 6.12 minutes. 

The police department didn’t meet the standard of responding to 57 percent of priority one calls in under five minutes — responding to only 52.41 percent under that time. 

“We continue to urge people to dial 911 to report suspicious activities in their communities,” Davis said. 

@vizcainomariae

city@dailytarheel.com

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