About the Durham Police Department

The Durham Police Department serves a city of approximately 204,000 with 500 sworn police officers and 113 civilian employees.  The Durham Police Department is organized into five bureaus: Office of the Chief of Police; Investigative Services Bureau; Community Services Bureau; Administrative Services Bureau; and, the Uniform Patrol Bureau.

The State of North Carolina requires 16 weeks of training, but the Durham Police Academy is 23 weeks long and teaches more than what the state mandates. The academy is held at Durham Technical Community College's North Durham Campus on Snowhill Road. The classes include pursuit driving, defensive tactics, firearms, and North Carolina law. The recruits learn intensive survival Spanish, undergo diversity training, and learn about hazardous materials, domestic violence, sexual assault, community policing, sexual harassment, and many other topics.

One of the premier programs conducted by the Durham Police Department is Project Safe Neighborhoods.  According to the Durham Police Department, “Project Safe Neighborhoods is Durham’s comprehensive, strategic response to the gun violence in our community. PSN focuses on partnering federal, state, and local law enforcement with local community and faith-based organizations to develop research-supported strategies to reduce violent crime. Law enforcement targets violent repeat offenders to remove them from our neighborhoods, while community partners develop viable resources for those offenders who are committed to changing their past involvement in crime and gun violence. Together, law enforcement and the community work to change the norms that make gun violence acceptable through targeted outreach efforts and public awareness campaigns.”

Source

durhampolice.com

Richard A. Smith spent nearly 18 years in law enforcement as a deputy sheriff, jailer, patrol deputy, vice investigator, Public Safety Officer (police and fireman combined)  Airport Police Officer, uniform patrol police officer, and an investigator in Criminal Investigations Division.

Richard Smith has an Advanced Law Enforcement Certification, the highest level to achieve in this field in North Carolina.  He has over a thousand hours of training from various law enforcement schools.  He attended Durham Technical Community College and North Carolina Central University where he majored in Criminal Justice.

Richard Smith  belongs to Durham Masonic Lodge #352,Raleigh Scottish Rite Bodies, Amran Shrine Temple, American Legion, The 40 & 8th La Socie’te, and The Fraternal Order of Police.  He served with the U.S. Army (Reserve) in the field artillery. He is currently medically retired from the Durham Police Department (North Carolina).

According to the description of his book, One Stands Alone, “This book is for those important people in our lives that we take for granted, and everyone that ever thought about joining the ranks and becoming one–the law enforcement officers! Take a trip through the experiences of going to murders those happened just moments earlier.  Find out the tenseness of car chases over 100mph along with the moments of making a drug deal.

This book will take you through many episodes of what the “inside life” is of a law enforcement officer from the streets to the divorce courts, to dignitary protection.  He writes of the strain of the equipment the officers wear to coming to work with long hair and a beard.”