Durham mayor to talk crime with Chris Cuomo in TV special. Here’s what we know.

Mary Helen Moore

Durham’s mayor is scheduled to appear on a national news special to talk about crime Monday night.

Mayor Elaine O’Neal has been reticent to speak with local media about gun violence, saying she prefers to work behind the scenes.

Crime went down in Durham last year, but the numbers are mixed so far this year.

Violent crime is slightly down, though homicides, shootings and property crime are markedly up when compared to year-to-date statistics from recent years, according to the Durham Police Department.

O’Neal, a Durham native and former district court judge, is not running for reelection this fall.

In April, during her state of the city speech, she noted that gun violence had recently struck her own family, and not for the first time.

“I got a call. I’m in church. And it was one of my sister-in-laws,” O’Neal said in the speech. “She said the young lady’s name, and she’s a family member. The father of her two kids had been killed in the apartment in front of the kids.”

“Each person taken away from our community continues to tear holes in the very fabric of who we are,” she said.

O’Neal will appear alongside officials from around the country, including officials in Baltimore, San Francisco and Little Rock.

The town hall will air at 8 p.m. Monday on NewsNation.

The News & Observer spoke with host Chris Cuomo to learn more.

Why do you want to talk about crime right now?

We’re talking about it because NewsNation’s mandate is to get back to what matters most for the most people.

Is crime a problem? The answer is, of course, always. Always has been, always will be. It’s the relative assessments that get you in trouble.

Was crime worse (in the 1990s)? Yes. But was it perceived as being allowed the way it is right now? No. What’s the difference? That is something that is worth taking on.

Let’s unpack that and show what we’ve got to worry about and what is hype.

Who’s included in this discussion?

Audience in Chicago; Fort Worth, Texas; and New York, of course.

It’s going to be a big cross-section of people who’ve experienced crime, or have questions about crime, or have problems with crime, or think the problems are overblown.

In terms of mayors, we went with ones that we thought were good examples of people who are doing things that are out of the mainstream, who have problems, and who have seemed to have found a way through their problems.

The show provided a final list of guests on Friday:

Political officials

  • Frank Scott Jr., mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas

  • Wade Kapszukiewicz, mayor of Toledo, Ohio

  • Luke Bronin, mayor of Hartford, Connecticut

  • Elaine O’Neal, mayor of Durham, North Carolina

  • Matt Dorsey, a district supervisor in San Francisco, California

Law enforcement officials

  • RaShall Brackney, former police chief of Charlottesville, Virginia

  • Paul Humphrey, police officer in Louisville, Kentucky

  • Mark Lamb, sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona

  • Ivan Bates, state’s attorney for Baltimore, Maryland

Are you looking to explore who is to blame for crime or what the solutions are?

The problem with blame is that it gets you nowhere.

That is the zero-sum nature of our politics, I want to get away from that, because it discounts solutions. You don’t have to solve anything, if you win by showing that I’m worse than you are.

This conversation was edited for brevity and clarity.

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