Raleigh property crimes down 17 percent; Durham reports 26 percent drop

New police figures and local reporting suggest parts of the Triangle are seeing meaningful declines in crime this year, with Raleigh police statistics showing a roughly 17% drop in property crime in 2025 compared with the year before, and Durham County sheriff’s data reporting a 26% fall in multiple types of crime so far in 2025.

Raleigh’s improvements include a steep decline in vehicle thefts during the most recent reporting period: local coverage reports a 43% decrease in car thefts “during the last quarter,” and officials say more than 300 stolen vehicles have been recovered. Raleigh Police Department leaders have pointed to a dedicated Auto Theft Task Force and new technology used by investigators as key contributors to those recoveries.

Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell highlighted both enforcement and community tools in discussing the trend. “I think the property crimes going down, we had a motor vehicle task force that was very effective,” she said. “We have had this connect camera program where every day residents who have all these ring cameras, you know, other things that they're using, they can register those and if there is something that happens near your house or, you know, in your neighborhood, they could call up and try to get that footage that is helping us solve almost 100% of homicides in the city.”

Raleigh police chief Rico Boyce has shared the department’s latest crime statistics with city council and said crime in Raleigh is “trending downward so far this year,” according to local reports. The department has also released second-quarter snapshots showing decreases in some offenses from 2024, underscoring an uneven but improving picture across categories.

Durham officials report similar momentum. The Durham County sheriff’s office provided data showing a 26% drop in multiple types of crime in the first half of 2025. City leadership has paired enforcement with prevention investments: Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams launched the Bull City Future Fund months ago, working with the United Way and the Triangle Community Foundation. About $305,000 will be split among 15 organizations, including Sidekicks Academy, the POOF Teen Center, and El Futuro, to support community programs aimed at young people.

Contextual snapshots from a local real-estate site note a crime rate of 32 per 1,000 residents in Raleigh and 45 per 1,000 in Durham, and highlight neighborhoods such as North Hills and southwest Raleigh, and downtown Durham’s American Tobacco District and Trinity Heights as places buyers watch when weighing safety.

Some details remain inconsistent across local reports: one item described a 19% uptick in robberies and conflicting descriptions of homicide trends, one headline said homicides rose slightly while another called them stable. Those discrepancies underscore the need for offense-level counts and clarified timeframes from law-enforcement dashboards before drawing firm conclusions.

For Wake County residents, the takeaway is cautiously optimistic: property- and vehicle-theft reductions suggest concrete gains, and community investments in Durham could reinforce that progress. Officials and neighborhood groups will likely release further quarterly and annual data that will clarify whether these drops represent sustained trends or short-term shifts.