Published 12:10 am Tuesday, March 10, 2026
By Janet Briggs
SALISBURY — The Salisbury City Council heard the annual police report for 2025 from Police Chief Patrick “PJ” Smith, and most crimes are trending down compared to 2024 and three-year averages.
Presenting at the Feb. 3 City Council meeting, Smith started by explaining the policing strategy for the Salisbury department, which he defines as “stratified policing.” This primarily focuses on long-term problem solving rather than quick fixes for policing problems.
This led to the overarching comparison slide which showed a comparison of violent crime, property crime and overall crime between 2024 and 2025. Violent crime is down 32.8 percent, property crime is down 11.2 percent and overall crime is down 14.4 percent.
“My goal every year is to reduce crime by 15 percent and to continue to reduce crime,” Smith said.
He then split each type of crime up further, starting with property crime. Beyond just comparisons to 2024, he also included comparisons to the three-year average of 2021 to 2023. In 2025, there were 28 commercial burglaries compared to 43 in 2024 and 52 on average from 2021 to 2023. There were 68 residential burglaries in 2025 compared to 79 in 2024 and 123 on average from 2021 to 2023.
He then also included a zoned map with each police beat divided around the city. The most burglaries, 31, happened west of Main Street in the West End, West Square and Fulton Heights neighborhoods. That was followed by the area east of Main Street in the Park Avenue area with 27, and the third was the Catawba College neighborhoods and north with 25.
Smith then covered motor vehicle crimes which is one of the leading crimes in the department. For motor vehicle larceny, where vehicles are broken into, there were 177 cases in 2025 compared to 216 in 2024 and 276 for the three-year average.
He then addressed motor vehicle theft which had a large spike in 2024. In 2025 there were 135 cases, and in 2024 there were 296 compared to the three-year average before at 134. Midway through 2024, there was a large arrest of juveniles who were breaking in and stealing cars, so the numbers started going down after that.
Once again, Smith showed the map of where motor vehicle crimes primarily happened around the city in 2025. East of Main Street in the Park Avenue neighborhood took the top spot with 71 cases, and the commercial area east of that straddling I-85 took the second with 54 cases.
He then moved to violent crime data starting with homicide which saw a drop off from 2024 with four cases compared to 11 in 2024 and seven in the three-year average before then. There was a similar drop off with rape in 2025 at 14 cases compared to 2024’s 23 cases and the 12 in the three-year average.
Robbery also had a drop off with 37 cases in 2025 compared to 54 in 2024 and 38 over the three-year average. However, the sharpest drop off was in aggravated assaults which fell from 169 in 2024 to 117 cases in 2025, compared also to the 175 in the three-year average before that.
“In the year 2020, when things got shut down because of the pandemic, and things were still shut down in 2021, that’s when we saw aggravated assault go through the roof. Domestic violence picked up, so we did see a large spike in aggravated assaults at that time. Now, we’re starting to make some headway in that,” Smith said.
He also did a breakdown of the times of day that violent crimes occurred with the majority between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. primarily on the weekends. The majority of violent crimes happened in the Park Avenue area east of Main Street with 51 cases, and the second highest was west of Main Street near downtown at 32 cases.
The final crime data that Smith shared were gun crimes. For robbery with a firearm, there was a decrease from 2024 with 35 cases compared to 2025’s 19 cases, which was less than the three-year average with 24 cases. Assault cases with a gun were also down with 30 cases in 2025 compared to 50 cases in 2024 and 47 cases for the three-year average.
Shooting into occupied dwellings has been a concern for the police department in recent years, so Smith was proud of a reduction in those cases for 2025. Compared to the 37 cases in 2024 and 46 for the three-year average, there were 19 cases in 2025. Similarly, discharge of a firearm was down from 44 cases in 2024 and 35 cases in the three-year average to 29 cases in 2025.
He also reported the breakdown of shots fired. The majority of cases are shots that are heard only at roughly 78 percent, and the next largest percentage are shots fired where the suspect was seen at 11 percent. Shots that are fired into a vehicle or occupied dwellings make up eight percent of the cases, and the final three percent are evidence of past shots fired like bullet holes or markings.
The majority of calls about shots fired occurred after 9 p.m. and before 3 a.m. on Wednesday through Saturday. Of these calls for shots fired, 115 cases were east of Main Street, and 84 were in the zone west of Main Street.
He then moved to the final section which is patrol numbers. The Salisbury Police Department received roughly 28,000 public calls to service in 2025, but with their self-initiated calls they had over 47,000 calls to service. The Rowan County Sheriff Office ran over 49,000, and Kannapolis Police ran over 48,000 calls to service. Of these calls to service, there were roughly 3,700 reports written with over 2,300 on day shifts and over 1,400 on night shifts.
Smith acknowledged that they currently do not have a dedicated traffic division with traffic officers reallocated to patrols. There are still some that are doing both with trespassing being the top citation given by these officers and then more traffic related citations like speeding. There were over 1,700 crash reports with Jake Alexander and Mooresville Road being the top accident intersection followed by South Avalon Drive and Faith Road.
Overall, there were just under 1,200 arrests with almost 1,900 charges associated with those arrests.
Smith introduced the arrest and investigations report by acknowledging that with some vacancies in the department, he had to reallocate members of the Neighborhood Crime Abatement Team. This team was more proactive in the community but have been primarily reallocated to patrol.
“I have not had one complaint. I’ve got loyal and dedicated employees that are happy to come in and help,” Smith said.
Of the investigative cases in 2025, 61 percent were cleared in some capacity with 21 percent cleared by arrest. There are still 24 percent of the cases open, and the final 15 percent were made inactive.
There were five homicide arrests, with two from 2024 and an outstanding arrest for the fourth homicide in 2025. He also shared a list of names and crimes that were arrested for violent crimes in 2025. He also went through the different crime scene investigation tactics the department used for the year.
He finished out the presentation by highlighting the good work of the cold case unit which meets periodically to discuss cold case progress.
He also gave kudos to the vice and narcotics teams that operated a sting operation in the Park Avenue neighborhood. The operation resulted in eight arrests for various drug dealing charges with an outstanding warrant for a ninth.
This led to a brief conversation of drug overdose statistics with a reduction to 144 overdoses in 2025 compared 160 in 2024 and 247 in 2023. Fatal overdoses fell to 18 in 2025 compared to 21 in 2024 and 26 in 2023.
The presentation ended with a momentary conversation of staffing issues. There are currently 14 vacant positions and eight on a leave making 22 unrealized positions. The entire department staffing is down 25 percent. Smith estimates that hiring a new officer costs roughly $168,000 for training and salary. With backfilling, Salisbury officers accrued over 11,500 hours of overtime or roughly $528,000 in overtime pay in 2025.
The state average for law enforcement employees per 1,000 people is 3.1, and Salisbury is running at roughly 2.1 per 1,000 people. To reach the recommended average, there would have to be 115 to 120 allocated officers.
Smith ended the presentation with thanks to the City Council for support and the Salisbury Police Department for their work.
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