LAURINBURG — While Laurinburg spent the past year on one of “most dangerous places to live in North Carolina” lists, but this year the city loses that title because many of the crime statistics have dropped.
The 2017 summary report by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation was released in December 2018 and the total crime index dropped by around 12 percent from 2016.
Out of the 10 offense categories, the city went down in seven of them. But the three categories that rose included two of the most violent — murder, by one additional murder; aggravated assault by nine instances; and motor vehicle crime by five instances. The city actually went down in rape cases, robbery, burglary, and larceny. In all the total crime index number went from 1,102 in 2016 to 931 in 2017.
While the 2018 numbers will not be released until the fall of 2019, local statistics officers anticipate that the number will go down even more.
“We are proud of this fact,” said Police Chief Darwin “Duke” Williams. “And we want to improve next year also.”
These numbers come after more than a year of Laurinburg residents— as well as a few city council members — asking to bring on a crime consultant to determine how to lower crime in the city.
The council has debated over this topic at many city council meetings and ended up having a risk management assessment for the department, despite complaints from members James Garby and Mary Evans that the assessment was not what the people were asking for.
At January’s city council meeting, Williams spoke to the council on the rates and his idea of a way to dispose of them.
Williams gave the examples of some of the operations that have been done throughout 2018 with the help of the SBI and other agencies. One was Operation Wakeup on July 14, 2018 — 139 charges in just that night with the charges ranging from gun charges to reckless driving charges, with many in between.
He also talked about operations where officers would just go door to door and talk to residents to get to know them and see if they would just like to talk.
“Sometimes technology has a place, but there’s good ol’ policing that you have to knock on doors and beat bushes to get crimes solved,” Williams said. “That’s how we were able to solve the Bridger case so quickly.”
Williams asked the council to look at a crime analyst rather than a crime consultant to bring into the department to help fight crime. He explained that there was one during Operation Wake-up who worked with them, allowing for extra help for the investigations.
“What we can do with them is have them here every day,” Williams said. “Where they can take our data, analyze it and predict … we can benefit from as a department.”
Williams gave examples of how they might be able to predict crimes, look at people who are suspected of a crime and see if they are gang members — as well as create a mapping system to allow residents to see where crimes are happening.
Evans, who has been pushing for the crime consultant since her election to the council in late 2017, says the council needs to come together and just make sure that what the crime analyst will be doing falls into the category of what they’re looking for, rather than have another issue like the risk assessment.
“We need someone to go out and look at our crime and tell us ways we can prevent it,” Evans said. “Crime is an issue in this city, if an analyst will tell us how we can prevent crime and report back to us in a timely manner then that’s what we want. We need answers and a solution to the problem.”
According to the report, the county’s numbers are down in nine of the 10 categories as well, with only robberies going up. The total crime index in the county totaled 444 reported cases.
The Laurinburg 2017 summary report can be found on the SBI’s website by going to statistics and then clicking on crime statistics. The index will give the list of every county and city that submit their results to the state.