Story by Maya Waid
DURHAM, N.C. – On a quiet Thursday afternoon in the basement of Elizabeth Street United Methodist Church, the scent of warm casseroles and freshly brewed coffee drifts through the air. Community members gather for a monthly luncheon and roundtable hosted by the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham.
There are no uniforms here. No flashing blue lights. Just neighbors — parents, outreach workers, survivors, youth mentors — sharing stories and passing paper plates. Some speak of loved ones lost to violence. Others share the weight of their grief.
Everyone in the room is brought together by one belief: that the solution to Durham’s violence isn’t only found in patrol cars or courtrooms – it’s found in each other.
The Statistics
After a pandemic-era spike in homicides across the country, cities like Durham are now seeing a slow decline. According to an Axios report in February 2025, homicides in the Bull City peaked in 2021 at 49 but dropped by 20.4% to 39 in 2024.
However, the numbers are especially concerning for youth. According to WRAL, the number of children killed by gunfire in Durham more than doubled between 2018 and 2022. Data from April 5, 2025 shows 139 shootings so far this year with 33 being fatal.
With 149 vacancies in the Durham Police Department at the end of 2024, traditional law enforcement efforts are stretched thin. The Durham Police Department declined to comment for this story.
But the staffing gap has left room — and urgent need — for alternative solutions. Local organizations, faith leaders, trauma responders, and residents are reimagining safety in their community.
Ben Haas, director of the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham, building trust and accountability within neighborhoods is key to breaking cycles of violence.
“The more that community gets involved, the less distant we are from harm in our communities, and the way we respond to it, the less we’re going to rely on reactionary and external forces like uniformed law enforcement,” Haas said.
Reynolds Chapman, the executive director of DurhamCares, has been working to implement different forms of violence prevention for more than nine years. Through community partnerships and faith-based initiatives Chapman helps lead efforts to reimagine what public safety can look like outside of traditional policing.
“We want people to imagine public safety in a way that would allow them to see that our presence in the community, our relationships with each other, looking out for each other, are the types of things that can lead to a safe community,” Chapman said.
Youth at the Center
For Durham’s young people, the weight of violence still lingers. And many in the community say the structural issues run deeper than police vacancies or patrol coverage.
Phillip Cook, Terry Sanford Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Policy Studies at Duke University, has spent the majority of his professional career studying the economics of crime.
“One thing we can count on is that violence begets violence,” Cook said. “The kids that are growing up in violent neighborhoods are traumatized. It hurts their school performance (and) hurts their mental health in documented ways. If we can find any way to reduce violence today, it’s going to have a payoff down the road.”
For some, that means shifting focus from punishment to prevention. Several community groups have embraced early intervention strategies, hosting roundtable discussions and implementing programs that address the underlying factors contributing to violence before it escalates.
Cook, who has collaborated with the Durham Police Department in his work in the past, emphasized that solving gun crimes often hinges on trust between citizens and public officials — a resource in short supply after years of tension.
“For me as a policy scholar, my interest is saying, what’s the lever that we can pull on this to improve cooperation?” Cook said. “We can point in different directions including to community groups that might support police investigations by working with victims and somehow supporting or reassuring them.”
Creating a New System
At the core of restorative approaches is a commitment to rebuilding relationships and fostering community care, an alternative to punishment that emphasizes meaningful accountability.
Through restorative justice initiatives and support for homicide survivors, the coalition works to fill the gaps left when the criminal justice system falls short — or fails to act.
“We’re an organization that’s gotten really good at creating those complex, faithful spaces for people to be in a very different kind of relationship to our community’s violence and our criminal legal system than the one that you get when you call 911,” Haas said. “We’re trying to bring those two lived realities together in spaces that are shaped more by our values and less by our policies.”
Much of the coalition’s work happens outside traditional legal channels, relying instead on voluntary participation. That includes facilitated conversations between those who’ve caused harm and those impacted by it.
Haas believes these processes provide something the traditional policing and justice system can’t: an opportunity for making amends, rather than simply serving time and moving on.
“It’s an opportunity for us, in many cases, by providing that community process, to demonstrably decrease the punitive consequences of someone’s touchpoint with the system,” Haas said.
The Path Forward
Alternative approaches to public safety aren’t new in Durham, but they are growing. The city’s grassroots leaders believe their efforts are not about abandoning law enforcement altogether but instead building a broader ecosystem of care.
Chapman’s organization also organizes initiatives such as the Durham Pilgrimage of Pain and Hope and Locked in Solidarity — programs that center storytelling, historical awareness, and faith to spark reflection and action.
Chapman believes a safe community is about addressing the systemic issues that contribute to violence in the first place. This approach requires not only a change in policy but in mindsets. That shift, he emphasized, begins with listening — especially to those who are most affected by the system.
“We do think every voice matters, even the most powerful voices, but we lean in a little more closely and spend more time listening to people whose voices are often unheard or underheard,” Chapman said.
This emphasis on truly hearing and understanding others shapes the work happening across Durham, where efforts to foster safety and justice go beyond traditional systems and focus on community-driven change.
For some, such as Jubilee Home’s Director of Wellness Initiatives Anna Banke, it means honoring the memory of those who were lost too soon — and making sure their absence doesn’t go unnoticed.
“The residents themselves witness that by showing up and standing up for people,” Banke said. “We have the duty to build relationships across differences and to be changed by it.”
Elizabeth Simpson of the Carolina Justice Policy Center knows the significance of personal relationships in fostering safety and well-being, rather than relying solely on governmental or bureaucratic institutions.
“[Those affected by violence are] saved by relationships and community and having people who care about them authentically — and knowing they care back,” Simpson said. “You can’t substitute the warmth of human love through a bureaucratic initiative.”
