Durham County crime rate 6th highest in N.C.

15 Jul 2010, Posted by staff in Crime, Durham, News, 0 Comments

The overall North Carolina crime rate in 2009 was the lowest in 25 years, Attorney General Roy Cooper’s office announced Wednesday. Durham County’s crime rate was the 6th highest of the 92 North Carolina counties reported.

Reported crimes fell 8.8 percent  since last year across the state as violent crime fell 12.5 percent — the largest decline in a single year since the state started recording crime rates in 1973.

Durham County’s crime rate dropped almost 5.4 percent to 5,965 incidents per 100,000 residents in 2009. Ahead of Durham County were Cumberland County, where Fayetteville is located, Vance, Dare and Richmond Counties.

The violent crime rate in the county fell 14.7 percent and the property crime rate dropped more than 4 percent from a year ago.

The crime rate in the City of Durham fell 3 percent to 13,354. This figure includes murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, larcenies and motor vehicle thefts, but does not account for incidents of arson.

“There are also crimes that these numbers don’t reflect, such as some computer crimes and crimes connected with prescription drug abuse,” Cooper said in a statement Wednesday. “Law enforcement is constantly confronted with new crime trends and that’s why we must make sure that officers have access to the best in crime fighting technology, like DNA.”

Still, Durham’s high crime rate among other areas in North Carolina means that Durham Mayor Bill Bell needs “to have some conversations with the police chief,” Bell told The (Durham) Herald Sun Wednesday.

Figures for the City of Durham:

Durham’s neighbors saw declines in crime rates as well. Orange County’s overall crime rate fell more than 12.3 percent while Wake County’s dropped just 2.6 percent.

Durham County Crime map via the Durham Police Department Crime Mapper

UNC sees 15.5% tuition and fees increase

15 Jul 2010, Posted by staff in News, Peer Institutions, 0 Comments

Students attending public universities in North Carolina will see pricier tuition statements this Fall.

University of North Carolina President Erskine Bowles announced Wednesday an average $444 of supplemental tuition increases for UNC system schools. The price hike will be in effect for the 2010-2011 academic year and comes after a $200 or 8 percent — whichever is less — increase for in-state students and $1,127 increase for out-of-state undergraduates approved last fall by state lawmakers.

The price hike marks an average 15.5 percent increase in tuition and fees for in-state students. The supplemental tuition increases range from $82 at UNC-Asheville to $750 at UNC-Chapel Hill and the UNC School of the Arts. In total, in-state students will see a 24.5 percent increase and out-of-state students a 7.7 percent increase at UNC-CH. Five of the 16 UNC system schools also approved supplemental increases for the 2011-2012 academic year.

(See the full chart of UNC system tuition increases)

The UNC Board of Governors approved a measure that takes at least half of the revenue generated from initial tuition increases and 20 percent of revenue from supplemental increases go to need-based financial aid.

In February, Duke’s Board of Trustees approved a 3.9 percent increase in tuition, room and board for undergraduates for the 2010-2011 academic year.

N.C. passes stricter towing legislation, pending gov. approval

14 Jul 2010, Posted by staff in Durham News, Legal Matters, News, 2 Comments

The N.C. state Senate and House of Representatives has passed a bill that implements stricter towing regulations — and at least one Duke student should be pleased.

Duke Law student Carmen Jo Ponce last fall worked with Durham City Council to improve the city’s towing policies, namely those that do not prevent predatory towing — when towing companies remove vehicles from private lots and demand cash payments and rights waivers for their release. After a brief stint off a recently proposed bill, Durham was re-added last week to a piece of state legislation that would tighten regulations on towing companies.

Larsa Al-Omaishi/The Chronicle

The bill passed unanimously in both the House and the Senate, and now goes to Gov. Bev Perdue’s desk for final approval. Bill provisions include:

• Lot owners must have clear, minimum 24″ x 24″ “Private Parking” sign with the name and phone number of the towing company.
• Vehicles cannot be towed more than 15 miles in most cases, or at most 25 miles in special cases.
• Towing companies must provide written notices of rights to car owners who had their cars towed. These slips must also include notification of the right to appeal to a magistrate.
• Towing companies cannot require towed owners to waive rights such as compensation for damages to their vehicle through towing.
• Violators will be fined up to $100

State Sen. Bob Rucho, R-Mecklenburg, proposed the bill in May, but Durham was cut from the list of cities and counties under the proposed legislation before the Senate passed the bill June 10.

State Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham, requested that the city be removed from the bill while it was on the Senate floor so that he could receive feedback from City Council, McKissick told Bull City Rising last week. The (Durham) Herald-Sun reported that McKissick was “happy with Durham’s existing towing rules,” which limit towing fees. The new legislation allows cities and counties to self-determine whether to implement fee restrictions.

State Rep. Paul Luebke, D-Durham, re-added Durham to the bill July 1 after noting the city’s omission and following consultation with city officials.

Perdue is expected to sign the bill into law this week, which would place Durham on par with other North Carolina cities’ towing regulations. Last fall, Duke’s Jo Ponce compared Durham’s towing regulations with those of Asheville, Chapel Hill, Charlotte and Raleigh, and found seven aspects of legislation that made parking and towing more fair in those cities.

One area was clearer signage and towing company information, which is included in the current bill. Jo Ponce’s mission began when her car was towed outside a restaurant, where a sign was not visible in the dark — costing her $150.

“I think the industry is very solid,” Rucho told The (Raleigh) News & Observer last week. “But in reality the rogue guys are out there, and they ruin it for everybody. Hopefully we reined them in a little bit.”

Now, the question is how, where — and whether — Duke will adhere to the new guidelines once the legislation passes. Although Jo Ponce was towed off campus, many students have had their cars towed to the end of the Blue Zone or outside it without notice. Currently, the Blue, Red and Green Zones, among others, do not have large signage with tow company information placed at the front of the lots.

Duke lacrosse house destroyed, plans undecided

12 Jul 2010, Posted by staff in Duke Lacrosse, Durham News, Legal Matters, News, 0 Comments

The lone effigy of the largest scandal the University faced in at least the last decade is no more.

610 N. Buchanan Rd., the home that the 2006 Duke Lacrosse case emerged from, was leveled Monday morning.

The house stood just across the street from the stone walls of Duke’s East Campus and had been vacant since the March 2006 lacrosse party, where stripper Crystal Mangum alleged she was raped by three of the team’s athletes. The charges were dropped after extensive research and deliberations. The property, though off campus, was part of a larger University purchase of rental properties just one month before the scandal broke.

(Read Chronicle alumnus and 2010 graduate Nate Freeman’s narrative of the house and the case on The Awl)

The University kept the house uninhabited as lawsuits related to the case continued over the years – the building was considered a piece of evidence. Duke looked to sell the property in April.

Future plans for the property are undecided. The University’s 2006 purchase was aimed at developing more spacious and family-friendly living quarters. Now, the location might be put on the market. University administrators will make a decision “sooner rather than later,” Mike Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, told The (Raleigh) News & Observer Monday.

Global health institute to use iPads in course’s field research

12 Jul 2010, Posted by staff in News, 0 Comments

Apple’s institutional fanboy is bringing another one of the company’s sleek products to campus: the iPad.

This Fall, the Duke Global Health Institute will distribute iPads in “Research Methods in Global Health Sciences II,” a course in DGHI’s Master of Science in Global Health degree program. The initiative is funded by the Duke Center for Instructional Technology and comes six years after the University distributed iPods to all incoming freshmen in the Class of 2008.

“Our primary goal is to equip our students with a toolset that allows them to make the most of their time in the field,” DGHI member Jen’nan Read, who teaches the course, said in a statement Monday. “As calculation, graphing, and presentation-creation functions of the iPad are put to use in the field, so too is the ability for students to focus on mastering the more complex methods by which they are basing their research.”

The iPads will be used in fieldwork and will increase research efficiency, Read said. Students can collect more data in low-resource environments and the device’s research and survey applications will contribute to ease of data collection, analysis and presentation. The initiative aims to train students for a low-resource global health research project next summer.

The program is also part of the University’s greater initiative to incorporate new technology with education. The CIT announced in April that it would add iPads to the University’s collection of Flip cameras and camcorders, among others, that are available for loan in The Link in Perkins Library.