GREENSBORO, N.C. — The City of Greensboro is rounding out 2020 on a difficult note: 61 homicides this year, a record-high.
In a one-on-one interview with Greensboro Police Chief Brian James at the beginning of the year, he told WFMY News 2's Jess Winters he hoped to bring the homicide rate down in his first year as top cop.
"First of all, let me first say that one homicide is too many," he said at the time in January.
In 2019, there were 45 victims of homicide. Again, there were 61 total this year.
Jess Winters went on to ask James at a recent news conference if he would have done anything differently.
"I could say I would have directed more resources toward tactical units. It's really hard to say that because you just don't know what's coming," James explained. "We made the best decision we could with the information we had. Looking back, yeah, there are probably things we could've done differently but that's very difficult to determine."
In a year filled with so many challenges for the department, like the pandemic and summer protests surrounding social injustices, Chief James is looking ahead to 2021 solutions.
He said the department plans to put more resources in East Greensboro where he said the majority of violent crime happens.
"Although we are yielding results through enforcement efforts this is clearly not enough and we're continuing to review our efforts to determine what we need to do differently."