Chief of Police Rico Boyce presented a comprehensive crime and operations update during the city council work session on June 10, 2025. The presentation covered year-to-date crime statistics through June 9, 2025, the department's first Summer Action Plan, and progress under the federal Public Safety Partnership (PSP) grant. Chief Boyce emphasized transparency, strategic resource allocation, and community engagement as key pillars of his leadership.
Oh the no one's a little bit more than a little bit. Go ahead and call the meeting to order. Counselor Silver will be right in. And thank you for joining us, and we have our work session. I'll turn it over to our city manager. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. In today's work session, we have our police chief, Rico Boyce, who celebrated his 100th day yesterday as the police chief. So happy anniversary, Chief. He said yes. And so he is going to provide a crime and operations update for Raleigh Police Department. Yeah. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, City Manager, Rico Boyce, RPD's chief. I'm excited to be here. Still want to say thank you for this opportunity to lead the men and women of the Raleigh Police Department. Today, like the manager said, I will be providing a crime and operations update more specifically for this fiscal this year from January 1 up until just yesterday, January 9th. Not much has changed overnight, so my information is very accurate. I say June 9th, sorry. So my very first day is March March 1, 2025. I thought it was important that I set the tone of my leadership as the Chief of Police. So on March 1st, I sent out the priorities that I am going to use to guide and lead this organization. I identified five strategic priorities that will help me make decisions in keeping this department moving forward as well as keeping this community safe. First strategic priority was employee development and wellness. It's important that the men and women of the Raleigh Police Department, that they are well not only mentally, but as well as physically. I will be identifying areas within the police department that we need to improve on. Most importantly, our community engagement and how we interact with certain communities within the City of Raleigh. Next is accountability and leadership. If I want to produce a high caliber, a very professional organization, I gotta make sure that they are properly trained. I gotta make sure they have the skills and the tools to do their job effectively. On the flip side of that, I got to make sure that they are held accountable when they fail to do their job. And that is going to be a priority for me as the chief of police. So these five strategic priorities is how I'm going to lead this department. This is how I'm going to make decisions that's going to keep this community safe. And this is the blueprint that all the men and women in the Raleigh Police Department will follow. Crime reduction strategy. The Raleigh Police Department, we have a lot of resources that we use to keep this community safe. It's important that I'm very strategic about where I place my resources to keep this community safe. When I assume the role of chief of police, one of my first priorities was to closely examine how we collect, analyze, and share crime stats with our both internal and external stakeholders. In April, well, we began to share our first quarter crime stats with our internal stakeholders. This quarterly report will be something that will be ongoing. We just about to come up on the end of the second quarter here at the end of June, and I will make sure that I publish and I show what our crime stats are for the second quarter. Those stats will be shared with our news media outlets as well as our community. It's important that they know exactly what is going on in this city. So I will make sure that we share that data. Our second quarter reporting period, like I say, will conclude later this month, and I'll be reporting out on year-to-date stats at that time. I am pleased to report that overall crime in Raleigh is currently trending down, downward compared to the same period in 2024. This is a promising sign that reflects the efforts of our department, our partners, and our community at large. From the beginning of my tenure, I emphasize a simple but critical goal to make Raleigh one of the safest cities to live and work. A key part of this achieving this goal is being open with the public, being very transparent about our crime stats and our challenges. Let's begin with our homicides. In 2025, the number of homicides remain unchanged from this time last year.