Fayetteville police, fire departments highlight successes, struggles before City Council
Upcoming community programs and successful recruiting efforts were some of the silver linings to setbacks like increased crime and traffic fatality rates presented in the police and fire departments' second quarter annual review reports at Fayetteville's City Council meeting Monday.
Assistant Chief Kevin Dove from the Fayetteville Fire Department and Chief of Police Gina Hawkins, Major Christopher "Todd" Joyce, Assistant Chief Kimberle Braden, and Assistant Chief James Nolette all presented at the first meeting since the new council was inaugurated on Aug. 11.
Fire department reports overall success
Dove appeared in place of Chief Michael Hill, who he said was "away on a professional development opportunity." While the presentation was intended to solely encompass the second quarter of the year, Dove explained he was presenting data from the first six months of 2022 because "it's a little better data."
Much of Dove's report featured high points for the fire department, including one historic achievement.
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"We are on track to start an academy of 20 to 24 in October," he said. "One thing about that is this is the first time in our history since 1791 we've run two academies at the same time."
The first academy will graduate 18 firefighters in November. Dove did not say when the second academy's class was expected to graduate.
The new class of firefighters will come in the face of historically low application numbers, according to Dove.
"In 2022, we had a third less total applications than we've ever had," he said. "That's not us; that's the fire service in total."
Most other categories for the department were on track with statistics from 2021, including incidents reported, response times, and alarm handling times. With an increase of 90 calls year-to-year, a total of 278 structure fires for the first six months of the year would appear concerning, Dove explained, but should not be cause for alarm.
"That's because in the early part of 2022, we implemented a new record management system and reporting system," he said. "That allowed us to drill down deeper into the data where we were having fire alarm responses for cooking fires; they're now considered a structure fire. And what this does is it allows us to drill down deeper into the data, identify high-risk areas and get our community risk reduction folks out there working with those folks."
Dove also highlighted the three most expensive fire losses for the city in 2022, with the June 22 fire at 109 Green Street and 100 Hay Street topping the list an estimated $350,000 in damage. Dove said the fire is believed to have been caused by problems with the HVAC and electrical system.
According to Dove, another potential area of concern for the year was a decreased number of opioid overdoses with Narcan administered. Thus far in 2022, he said, members of the department had administered Narcan in 1,020 overdoses, a decrease of 543 from 2021.
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"We really can't explain why other than we hope that the community taskforce, the police having Narcan, and a lot of other citizens having Narcan are allowing that administration to happen faster prior to our arrival so when we get there it's already on board with them, and we can move forward towards further life-saving measures," Dove said.
Dove also featured some of the department's points of pride for the first six months of the year, including the installation of 808 smoke detectors and 52 carbon monoxide detectors in single-family homes in the city and successful citizen outreach initiatives.
"This summer we graduated 40 students from our Cape Fear C.E.R.T. Teen Camp, which was a great success," he said. "Nothing but positives from that."
Dove added that 20,000 residents had been reached by members of the department during "fire prevention activities."
What the fire department was most excited about, Dove said, was a new hands-only CPR program launching in September.
"Chief Hill promised you a hands-only CPR program, and we're announcing tonight that we're starting it September 1," he said. "Ourselves, Cape Fear Valley Health, and Duke Clinical Research Institute have formed a partnership.
Duke did a pilot program that indicated 59% increase in survivability due to rapid bystander CPR. Our goal is to reach at least 10% of the population in the next five years."
Interested residents can contact 910-433-1413 to schedule a session, according to Dove. The program's goal, he said, is to reduce the rate of cardiac arrest deaths, the leading cause of death in North Carolina.
"It's nothing more than 10 to 20 minutes, and you can save somebody's life," Dove said. "Fayetteville is above the national average; we are at 12-13% cardiac arrest save rates."
The national average, he explained, was 8%.
"Everyone one of our 355 are going to be trained to deliver this," he added.
Dove also reported on the department's diversity initiatives. According to his presentation, 21.05% of current employees and 31.8% of recruits belonged to a minority group. The number of recruits belonging to a minority group, he said, had decreased from 55.5% in 2021 due to intense recruitment efforts prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We look for that to rebound quickly now that we're out and about," Dove said.
As the council moved to accept the fire department's report, Mayor Mitch Colvin congratulated Dove on improved diversity within the department.
"Several years ago, when we started, that diversity number was at less than 5%," he said. "You guys are up in the 20s and striving. So thank you, and good job."
Police department focuses on crime trends
Police Chief Gina Hawkins began the Fayetteville Police Department's second quarter review by introducing a landscape analysis report conducted by the Community Based Public Safety Coalition. Hawkins acknowledged council members likely had not been able to review the entire report, which had been given to them just before the meeting, but provided an opportunity for Aqeela Sherrills, the executive director of the coalition, to give an overview and answer questions from the council.
"The evidence confirmed that less than 1% of the population is actually producing 80 to 90% of the harm," Sherrills said. "That 1% of the population has serious mental, emotional, psychological health issues that go unaddressed."
Community-based solutions would be critical in addressing the issue, he explained.
"We have to invest in community-based solutions," he said. "Partnering with residents as constituents, as real partners in safety and community, and investing in training those individuals as public safety professionals in conflict resolution, mediation, de-escalation strategies."
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According to Sherrills, the report was based on two days of interviews with over 21 community advocates in local organizations. When questioned by District 3 councilman Mario Benavente, Sherills said these community-based solutions would require funding.
"You can't ask people to risk their lives, to leverage their relationship capital in communities, for free," he said. "This work is extremely dangerous, it's very hard, and people lose their lives."
After Sherrills answered council members' questions, Hawkins introduced Joyce, Braden, and Nolette for the police department's presentation. Joyce began with an overview of crime trends in the city, particularly within the six-year period of 2016 to 2021.
"If you look from 2016 to 2021, that was over 4,600 incidents decreasing each and every year," he said, adding that the city saw a relative percentage decrease in crime of 27.29% during that period.
"You can also liken it to a professional sports team," Joyce continued, citing growth in the city's population and business opportunities. "When a professional sports team wins a championship, the odds are always against them to go back and repeat as a champion.
"That's something that we have been able to do during that six years. And as you continue to look at that, even a championship team has to make an adjustment."
Braden then stepped in to introduce the city's crime trends for the second quarter of 2022 — numbers that weren't as promising, with a 7.04% increase in crimes against people from 2021, a 19.59% increase in property crime from 2021 and a 16.18% total increase in crimes from 2021.
On the flip side, Braden said, officers made 23.1% more arrests for felonies and 17.73% more arrests for misdemeanors than in 2021. The number of rapes in the city also notably decreased, with residents facing 32.56% fewer rapes than in 2021. Homicides, too, saw a decrease of 4%, according to Braden.
Near the close of his portion of the presentation, Braden praised the department's license plate reader technology, which he said had been installed in October 2021. According to him, the technology has been successful thus far.
"They've seized 13 motor vehicles in accordance with the activity observed, they've helped locate at least seven missing persons, and they're attributed to 269 felony arrests and 126 misdemeanor arrests," Braden said, adding that the readers were not used to enforce traffic violations.
Nolette closed out the department's presentation, giving council members overviews of trends in motor vehicle-related crimes, 911 call data and departmental investigations. The department tallied 16 traffic fatalities for 2022, an increase of six from 2021, he said, noting that the largest increase had been in motorcycle deaths.
"We see seven for the year," he said. "But the greatest contributing factor to many of these accidents is speed."
With this concern in mind, Nolette explained, officers focused on increasing traffic stops, particularly in the area of Pamalee Drive, where three of the 16 fatalities occurred. The City Council had previously lowered the speed limit in that area, as well as on Cliffdale Road and Stoney Point Road, two other areas of concern, he said.
"Our traffic unit, which consists of approximately eight officers, has spent over 80 hours and has completed almost 200 traffic stops, both in the education phase as well as the enforcement phase of this process," Nolette said. "We have to educate the community as it relates to the lowering of the speed."
Another cause for concern, according to Nolette, was an 8.36% increase in 911 calls from 2021.
"That's alarming, considering last year, they were up 16%," he said. "So we're on pace to be, in a two-year window, up over 30% in calls for service for police and police only."
Nolette also covered data on use of force and departmental investigations, pointing out an increase in use of force incidents.
"In the past, we would not count in use of force data if an officer removed his firearm and pointed it at somebody, but for transparency and for obvious reasons, we have now consolidated that into our use of force data," he said.
The department saw 19 use of force incidents in 2021 and was at 28 use of force incidents in 2022, according to Nolette.
"Are we perfect? Absolutely not, but we're the first ones to call ourselves out on it," he said.
Nolette told council members shootings by police were not included in the presentation because there were no shootings involving Fayetteville police officers in 2021. Jada Johnson's shooting, he said, would go into the third quarter report.
Nolette finished his portion of the presentation by emphasizing the department's improved recruiting efforts.
"We've made great strides in our recruiting," he said. "On June 30, 2022, we were 70 employees down. That is 32 sworn employees, full-time and part-time employees, and an additional 38 full-time and part-time non-sworn employees."
The department currently has 40 people going through two different police academies, he added, including nine recruits from Puerto Rico.
"We thought outside the box and went to Puerto Rico to recruit some personnel from down there," Nolette said. "We brought in nine individuals who have some experience in law enforcement. We actually recruited one telecommunicator, so we have somebody working in communications as well."
The 911 call center, which had struggled with understaffing in the past, had 17 vacancies but was in the process of training 13 people, Nolette said.
During the question and answer portion of the presentation, District 4 councilman DJ Haire asked what the police department's full capacity should be. When Hawkins told him the full capacity was 431, he nodded approvingly and said the department wasn't "far off."
"But we don't slow down, either," Hawkins added.
"I pray we don't," Haire replied.
District 6 councilman Derrick Thompson later inquired about what residents could do to cut back on crime in their neighborhoods. Braden and Hawkins said calling 911 when things appeared "out of the ordinary" was crucial.
"Be as detailed as possible," Braden said. "Give updates when possible with the information you know that you've asked officers to respond to."
Hawkins closed out the presentation by announcing an upcoming gun buyback program in September. Further details would come later, she said.
Public safety reporter Lexi Solomon can be reached at ABSolomon@gannett.com.
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This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Fayetteville City Council hears reviews from police, fire departments
