This decision is forcing us to consider very serious questions that are at the root of who we are as a city, how we create safety together, and what safety means. Like every other community in America, this community is over-invested in policing and incarceration and under-invested in housing, jobs, education, health, and all the other interventions that makes those punitive interventions unnecessary.
The world I want to live in, and the world that I am here to build, is a world that creates safety for every human being without using policing or incarceration to do so. My work and my life is about building a community that is equitable, inclusive, and just for all people; that’s the community that I want to live in and that I want my children to grow up in. We create that community by investing in our people, by providing the things people need to thrive and with the opportunities they deserve. My commitment to these values didn’t change when I got elected to office and they won’t change when I’m out of office.
At the same time, we all live here in this world as it exists right now, and there are practical considerations that will sometimes require an increase in police capacity, pay and benefits, or other incentives in order to do the two pieces of work that I think our police department Really needs to do well. Those things are 1) responding to calls for help, and 2) investigating crime.
In FY 2017, I voted for a budget that added 36 additional police officers to the Durham Police Department, in spite of the objections of many of the same community members who are opposing the current increase. I supported this increase at that time because our response times were significantly above our targets, our clearance rates weren’t where we wanted them to be, our staffing levels were much lower, and I felt convinced that we needed additional officers to bring those numbers down. I encourage people to only call the police when they really need to, and we don’t want any of our residents waiting for long periods of time for help when they do feel the need to call. We want to ensure that when violent crimes do happen, we’re able to intervene effectively.
In FY 2018, I voted for a budget that included millions of dollars and multi-year commitments for take-home cars, raises, hiring bonuses, and relocation bonuses for officers. I voted for this because I believe that encouraging officers to live in Durham can help create a better department, with officers who care more about the community and would do a better job as a result.
Now we’re being asked to make an even bigger investment in policing, this time 18 officers this year and another 54 in the next two years.
I agree with the DPD that we should minimize the use of overtime for cost reasons, but it doesn’t make sense to me to fix a $1M overtime problem with a $5M+ investment in more officers. Even if we wanted to replace all 35,000 hours of overtime with regular staff, we would only need to add about 22 additional officers, and we could make a dent in that by filling the 19 existing vacancies in the department.
I also agree with the DPD that we should move to 10.5 hours shifts, but if we’re not trying to increase the number of officers on the street, why not just rearrange shifts so that officers are working approximately the same number of hours spread out over more shifts? The IACP recommendation for 10.5 hour shifts would result in officers working 169 hours less a year. If we took this recommendation and wanted to maintain the same total number of working hours, we would only need one new officer for every 9-10 moving to the new schedule. That means 4 new officers in District 4, not 18.
So this request is about more than solving overtime or shift scheduling problems to improve employee quality of life. These numbers suggest a desire for more officers on the street. Durham already has more officers per capita than other cities our size. Calls for service are down, response times are meeting our targets, or very close, and clearance rates are largely above national benchmarks. More officers are living in the city limits and we have fewer vacancies. In addition, there’s very little evidence out there that more police, or more policing, leads to less crime. In fact, in most cases, the communities with the most police also have the most crime. The communities with the least crime have the most resources.
Most of us on this council, including me, share the goal of reducing and eliminating the circumstances that lead to violence. We’re continuing to actively make the investments that we need to do that, while balancing the need for services with the desire to keep our property taxes as affordable as possible. Every year since I was elected we’ve increased the funding we spend on affordable housing, and are about to hopefully spend another $180M over the next 5 years. We’ve increased our investment in transit every year, keeping fares at $1 and increasing the number of people eligible for free passes. We’ve built more sidewalks, bike lanes, and bus shelters, to make it easier for people to get around. We’ve continued to provide economic development grants in target neighborhoods and are funding an initiative this year that will create a permanent fund to help minority businesses access capital, and we’re building economic development into our affordable housing work. We’re investing in stronger democracy with Participatory Budgeting and Community Conversations, and in 2nd chances with the DEAR & Welcome Home programs. I’m studying crisis response programs outside of law enforcement, community training programs, violence interruptor work, and diversion programs that exist in other cities. We’re investing in making sure our residents have the opportunities they deserve. We need to invest more, but we also have limited resources. We need to be sure that we’re using the resources that we have in the most effective ways.
On this issue, like most issues that come before us, our residents have widely differing views. Some think that any increase in policing will make our community safer. Others oppose increases in policing under any circumstances. We’ve heard from a number of people on both sides of this question over the last few weeks, and I very much appreciate all of them coming to speak with us. I’m glad that the DPD is in conversations with residents in the Cornwallis public housing community about their plans to increase their presence there, as well as ongoing conversations with residents in McDougald Terrace. The work in McDougald was initially very successful, but that success is starting to decline, and I think we need to look at the reasons for that as well.
I’m not willing to support an increase in police staffing for this fiscal year. I have a high threshold for supporting increases in policing and I think that’s clear to everyone, but I do want people to know that I will support increased funding for policing, and have, under specific circumstances, to support those two things I mentioned earlier that I see as critical functions: to ensure adequate responses to calls for service, and to ensure we have the resources we need to investigate violent crime. As our population goes up, we may have to increase staffing in many of our departments, including the DPD, to meet our goals. I hope that as we continue to build a safer community together, we’ll see calls for service continue to decline and we won’t need to, but of course we don’t know what will happen.
I also want to respond to the comprehensive and detailed proposal and report that we received from Durham Beyond Policing. I really appreciate the amount of research and thoughtfulness that went into this report. I am very supportive of pulling together a community task force on public safety to help us think about the best ways to keep our residents safe. The proposal also included a funding request, but unfortunately we’re not at a point in the budget process where it makes sense to fulfil that request. We also don’t have any kind of consistent funding structure for our boards and commissions, but it’s something we’re going to look into.