BLACK MOUNTAIN – Both violent and property crimes decreased in Black Mountain in 2024, according to Police Chief Steve Parker.
Parker provided Black Mountain News with data from 2024 Feb. 6.
In 2023, there were five violent crimes. In 2024, that number reduced to four, a 20% reduction. Parker said that the violent crimes going down is “a big deal.”
Property crimes also decreased, going from 116 in 2023 to 95 in 2024.
Despite the decrease in violent and property crimes, the calls for service for the Black Mountain Police Department increased from 18,127 in 2023 to 20,385 in 2024.
“Even though we saw our calls for service rise … we saw a reduction in violent crime and property crime, and I feel that’s attributed to proactive law enforcement as well as being heavily engaged with community service, which is a big deal in crime reduction,” Parker said.
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The number of car accidents, warning and citations increased in 2024, which Parker attributed to a rise in population and tourism. There were 227 accidents in 2024, compared to 196 in 2023. The Black Mountain Police Department issued 1,560 warnings in 2024 and 815 in 2023. For citations, 1,089 were given in 2024 and 1,038 in 2024.
“What I think that shows is we’re not always wanting to write people tickets, we want to educate and teach them,” Parker said. “Our warnings did go up, but we were also making more traffic stops. We were very smart in educating the public. Some people need tickets and some people can be educated, and I think we do a good job of evaluating that.”
In the past year, Flock cameras around Black Mountain had 105 hits, leading to the recovery of 17 stolen vehicles. The town owns five Flock cameras, but there are three additional cameras owned by the ABC Store and Kearfott, bringing the total Flock cameras in Black Mountain to eight.
Parker said he has heard some things about the Flock cameras being an example of “government overreach.”
“It’s not just a tool that law enforcement can use,” Parker said. “Citizens are using it, neighborhood watches are using it.”
At 26 officers, the Black Mountain Police Department is fully staffed. Parker said while the department is fully staffed, only one person has applied in the last six months.
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“Which is very, very scary,” Parker said. “It’s a bad, bad trend in law enforcement. We’re fortunate now, but we’re worried about the future.”
In terms of diversity, of the 26 officers, seven are women and none are people of color.
Parker said Morgan McKinney was recently promoted as the first female corporal in the department. While there has been a female sergeant in the department in the past, the rank of corporal did not exist within the department at that time.
Parker said the department is “always trying to diversify.”
According to census data, nearly 92% of Black Mountain residents are white.
“Usually, most police departments want to represent their population,” Parker said. “We want to do better than that. We want to do better than that with our diversity. We just don’t get the applications and we strongly encourage that.”
He said in the past year, four officers have been hired from the cadet intern program.
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“That’s the only reason we’re not hurting,” Parker said. “We can’t get the applicants outside of that.”
In 2024, the Black Mountain Police Department was the first in the state outside of the pilot program to receive the State Accreditation Award for Excellence in Policing. The department also passed the League of Municipalities risk review and accreditation, resulting in a 20% reduction of insurance costs.
Looking toward the future, Parker said the building that houses the police department is “worse now than ever” and a solution will need to be found soon.
“Our building is just not sufficient to operate in current standards,” Parker said. “That’s just point blank.”
Parker said he has heard from community members that they wish Black Mountain had its own emergency services dispatch system, but it’s not something the town could always handle.
“We would not have been able to handle the storm, Helene, without Buncombe County,” Parker said. “Buncombe County was able to divert calls for service to seven or eight jurisdictions to assist.”
Parker said the town is in talks with the county to purchase new dispatch software, a purchase that will likely come 2026-2027.
He described Helene as one of “the most trying” experiences in his 33 years in law enforcement. Parker has worked in places ranging from Mecklenburg County to Rock Hill and smaller towns like Black Mountain.
“In no big, medium or small city have I ever experienced how difficult of a response it was,” Parker said.
He said it was like the town was on an “island” in the first few days after Tropical Storm Helene because of road closures and communications being down.
Starting the Wednesday before the storm hit, Parker said the fire department went out around Black Mountain handing out evacuation notices. The next day, the Black Mountain Police Department partnered with Buncombe County to go into Swannanoa and other low-lying areas to give more evacuation notices. Parker said he believes this saved lives.
He said he knows residents are ready to get back to the way things were before the storm.
“It’s going to be the long-term recovery,” Parker said. “People are going to get impatient and they have to understand and we beg them to be patient with us because we want the same thing, to get as much back to the way we were before as quick as we possibly can, but make sure we don’t break the town doing it.”
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Karrigan Monk is the Swannanoa Valley communities reporter for Black Mountain News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kmonk@blackmountainnews.com.
