From Staff Reports

Violent crime jumped in Asheville in 2022, with a 17.4 percent increase from the year before that was propelled mainly by aggravated assaults, the Asheville Citizen Times reported on March 29, citing city police statistics.

Specifically, 525 aggravated assault incidents were reported in 2022, compared to 431 cases in 2021 — amounting to a 21.8 percent increase.

The latest Asheville crime statistics were unveiled by city Police Chief David Zack during the city’s March 28 Environment and Safety Committee meeting.

Contacted on April 8 by the Daily Planet for his interpretation and analysis of the violent crime spike in Asheville, local Fraternal Order of Police President Rondell Lance said the statistic was totally predictable, inasmuch as there is “an anti-police environment” that pervades Asheville, which fuels law-breaking. (A story on Lance’s analysis and critique of the latest Asheville crime data appears on Page A7.)  

Meanwhile, Zack also told the ESC that property crime in 2022 was down 4.9 percent from the prior year, according to the department’s data. Specifically, the Asheville Police Department reported 4,672 property crime cases in 2022 compared to 4,912 in 2021. 

Under his theme of “presence matters,” the police chief told of  targeted operations and patrols during the last several months. Some of the aforementioned operations focused on “nuisance crime,” but they coincided with a decrease in aggravated assaults, he said. 

“Our presence does matter,” Zack was quoted as saying by the Citizen Times. He added that the APD averaged being about 40 percent understaffed for at least 2022. “When we look back where we had the window break-ins downtown — again, the targeted operations that we had down there — we saw a dramatic reduction in aggravated assaults,” the police chief said, according to the Citizens Times.

“‘As of March 28, APD currently has 144 out of 238 sworn officers available on a daily basis, 40 perent of sworn staff is unavailable at this time,’ APD spokesperson Samantha Booth said in an email. The number was still current March 29, she said,” according to the Asheville Citizen Times.

 â€œDuring the ESC meeting, someone asked how many sworn officers had been hired since an ad campaign began with EPIC Recruiting — and how many were referred to the department by the ad campaign. 

“The company’s campaign has drawn thousands of sets of eyes, according to data presented by APD Capt. Brandon Moore at the meeting,” the Citizen Times reported.