Durham’s new police chief, high-ranking officers and detectives will join patrols next month to cope with a vacancy rate nearly twice what it was a year ago.

The “very temporary” program will require four days of patrols over a three-month period, Police Chief Patrice Andrews told the City Council on Thursday. It will not affect “the tasks that they have to do in their day-to-day work,” she said.

Andrews presented data that showed a 13% vacancy rate among sworn officers as of Sept. 30. That vacancy rate was only 7% a year earlier, she said.

There were 68 vacancies among the 537 allocated sworn officer positions in September 2021, according to the data.

As of Nov. 30, a total of 24 officers had retired and 36 officers had resigned from the department this year, Andrews said. Most of those who quit left for employment at other law enforcement agencies.

Maria Haberfeld, chair of the Law and Police Sciences Department at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The News & Observer that police departments are often even shorter staffed than vacancy numbers indicate.

“If you’re looking just at the numbers, you really do not have the actual numbers of officers who are policing,” she said. “You’re looking at the rosters, but at any given moment you have police officers who are on vacation, or sick leave, or testifying in court or in training.”

“Realistically speaking, you can deduct at least between 15% and 20% from the numbers you’re looking at,” Haberfeld said.

Mayor Pro Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton asked Andrews whether the department would use investigators and other specialized officers to supplement patrols, as CBS17 first reported this week.

Andrews told council members that she spoke with patrol officers when she began her tenure as chief.

“One of the things that they said to me was, ‘Listen, we just need some relief. We just need some help,’” she said.

The executive staff met and the department looked at peak hours for calls and violent crime to decide when to put more officers on the street. The program, which will begin Jan. 1, will run through March.

Andrews said she hopes the program helps “retain some of our officers that were on the cusp of leaving the department.”

She did not specify how many hours would be spent on patrol each day or whether participants would be paid overtime for the work.

New City Council member Leonardo Williams said the move will build a culture of internal support.

“The chief herself will be patrolling the streets, and that’s leading by example,” he said. “And when it comes to staffing shortages, the streets still have to be safe. And while that’s happening we are going to be working to support the department and what they need to reflect the needs of Durham.”

Meanwhile, the average response time for priority calls was 6.2 minutes as of September, Andrews said. That’s longer than the department’s target of 5.8 minutes. She blamed staffing issues and more calls and traffic on the roads as pandemic restrictions ease.

Haberfeld, who spoke generally about the practice of pulling investigators and special unit officers onto patrol shifts, said it is not unheard of. “[The] patrol function is the backbone of policing, historically,” she said.

Having sufficiently staffed patrols can boost community perceptions of police as people see more officers and response times quicken, she added. But it can take specialized officers away from more serious cases.

“It’s a mixed bag,” Haberfeld said. “The effectiveness of the patrol will increase; the effectiveness of the specialized unit will decrease.”

Andrews’ announcement came amid a quarterly crime briefing. Already 2021 has seen the most killings in the Bull City in at least 25 years.

Andrews told council members that 43 homicides have occurred this year, with 29 cases still unsolved.

The most homicides previously recorded was 42 in 2016, with readily available records dating back to 1995, Durham police previously told The N&O.

Figures in Thursday’s report tracked crime from January through September.

Homicides were up 58% compared to last year. Rapes rose 18%, while robberies, aggravated assaults and overall violent crime each dropped by more than 10%.

Shootings were down as well, with fewer people shot this year, but more dying from gunfire, according to police data.

“Many of our shooting incidents that we’re having involve multiple rounds being fired,” Andrews said. “There’s almost a more violent element to the shootings that we’re having.”

As of Nov. 13, a total of 243 people had been shot in the city and 38 had died.

In 2020, 276 had been shot as of that day, and 25 had died.

“I don’t know at this point how to curb the number of bullets being fired,” Andrews added. “But how do we really keep folks from feeling like they even have to pick that gun up in the first place?”

For all listed crime categories except rapes, police solved a larger percentage of crimes in the first nine months of 2021 than in 2020 as a whole.

As of September this year, they had solved just over 44.7% of killings. In 2020, Durham police solved just over 32.4% of homicides.

Clearance rates for rapes fell from 31.9% in 2020 to just under 25.3% in the first nine months of this year.

For overall violent crime, the department solved 35.4% of cases this year, up from just over 23.3% the year before.

In 2019, the FBI reported that cities Durham’s size solved on average 51.5% of homicides, 25.6% of rapes and 35.1% of overall violent crimes.

Andrews attributed the below-average clearance rates for homicides and sexual assaults in part to staffing concerns and the number of crimes occurring in Durham.

The N&O requested more recent clearance data on shootings and homicides from Durham police last month, but had not received it as of Thursday evening.