HOLLY SPRINGS — The town of Holly Springs in southern Wake County has seen explosive population growth over the past decade.
The town has blown past its projected population to hit just shy of 47,400 in 2023 to rolling past 50,000 as of August 2023. A decade ago, the town’s population was hovering around 20,000.
As a result, the town has faced hurdles both in terms of infrastructure, amenities, roadway, and expanding its police force.
North Carolina towns of a similar size to Holly Springs include Wake Forest with 51,113, Mooresville with 50,452, and Wilson with 47,606, per recent U.S. Census figures.
In an interview with North State Journal, Holly Springs Mayor Sean Mayefskie described working with the N.C. Department of Transportation to upgrade roads to handle increased traffic and the need for a Parks & Recreation bond to expand amenities as more sprawling neighborhoods continue to be developed.
“One of the big things that we’re seeing now is a growth in our active adult population and the only thing that we have is the Hunt Center,” said Mayefskie. “So we’re definitely in need of growing our facilities to accommodate or active adults.”
The mayor also described increased activity in the town’s business park which has attracted a number of large businesses in recent years, such as Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, and the employees of those businesses who have added to the rapidly expanding population.
Mayefskie said that with the growth comes increases in crime and the need for the town council to “look forward, to be proactive in their approach, and discussion of the police.”
“I think every one of the council members is pro-police,” said Mayefskie. “They want to make sure that they’re equipped with the latest and greatest not only just as far as equipment, but also as far as their training. So, we’re behind them.”
In 2016, under the late Mayor Dick Sears, to accommodate the increase in police staff, Holly Springs shed the small police department office in the heart of downtown and opened a new 28,000-square-foot law enforcement complex. Both police and 9-1-1 operations are housed in the building.
The mayor also highlighted the town’s continued self-staffing of School Resource Officers (SROs) with town police officers.
“We’re one of the top SRO programs in Wake County. Not every municipality has an SRO program and we take it seriously,” Mayefksie said.
Holly Springs Police Chief Paul Liquorie, who was hired in 2019, has been present for some of the more rapid growth years for the town.
Liquorie laid out some of the challenges for his department as the town expands which includes higher traffic rates and expanded areas needing patrol coverage to North State Journal.
“I think the number one thing that we see as a department, and probably a town-wide, is our ability to help enforce traffic with growth,” said Liqourie. “More particularly, with single-family homes you tend to see more cars than not in this part of Wake County.”
A native of New York, Liquorie is also a 27-year veteran of the police department in Montgomery County, Maryland, and served in the Marine Corps.
“We’re seeing more cars on the road that leads often to more traffic violations, to include crashes that we’re seeing,” Liquorie said. “We’re also seeing spikes and things like driving while under the influence to include people who are impaired by substances other than alcohol. So, that’s both illicit and prescription drugs that may be leading them to drive impaired.”
Liquorie said the Holly Springs Police Department (HSPD) currently has 76 sworn officers including K-9 units. He also said recruiting has not been as much of an issue for the town as it reportedly has been for some urban areas like Raleigh, which announced it was hiring private security to aid police in handling increases in property and violent crimes.
Liquorie also noted increases in aggravated assaults, however, said they stemmed mainly from domestic violence calls. On the assaults, Liqourie described additional training that has been instrumental in better handling and identifying issues related to domestic violence calls.
Similarly, the police chief said mental health issue calls have increased along with the population and the town currently doesn’t have an appropriate mental health facility to take individuals the HSPD encounters. Due to the lack of facilities, one of his officers then has to transport that individual to a facility in Wake County or, if the transport is outside the county then a sheriff’s deputy is called in.
He also talked about combating Organized Retail Crime (ORC), which are crimes rings engaging in repeated, mass retail theft, and can include violence, such as assault on retail workers.
OCR has become a national issue, impacting the retail industry at “unprecedented levels,” according to the National Retail Federation’s annual Retail Security Survey.
In terms of ORC, the police chief said that, like the rest of the region, they are seeing more crime of that nature.
“We are seeing it not necessarily to the scale that you see in some of the big urban areas where you have dozens of people coming in to do what we call a ‘push out,’ which is just taking things and putting them in a cart or just grabbing things off a shelf,” said Liqourie.
He added HSPD has taken proactive steps to fight it such as a more visible presence as the holiday shopping season approaches and by leaving police cars parked outside of major outlets like Wal-Mart, Target, and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
“As we get ready for the holiday season – and I think when we’ve been very proactive and very visible – we saw a drop in our previous numbers,” Liquorie said about ORC in the town. “And we did a comparison to some of our other neighboring jurisdictions and we saw a marked difference in where we were as a town with others.”
The vast addition of homes in has led to the need for HSPD to expand their patrolling with an eye on overlapping their coverage with that of fire and rescue services, according to Liqourie.
As a town, Holly Springs stands out for providing officers to serve as SROs, particularly at the elementary school level.
“I think we’re unique in the aspect of we have more officers at the elementary school level than any other municipality that I’m aware of,” said Liqourie.
Unlike some schools in districts across the state, Holly Springs schools have not seen an uptick in violent altercations, according to Liquorie. That could change, however, with more schools being built to meet population demands.
When asked what makes HSPD stand out as the best in the county, Liqourie pointed to community engagement and training.
I think we have one of the best community engagement efforts when you look at all the activities that we do,” said Liqourie. He gave recent examples of HSPD involvement at the town’s annual “Holly Fest,” and with a church’s “trunk-or-treat” events.
So, you know, that’s another thing about training. We are becoming culturally aware about how our community is changing and the way we work with our community is wonderful,” the police chief said. He added that the town also has a police Community Advisory Group with ten residents on it that helps to keep communication flowing between citizens and his department.
A town seeing similar growth to that of Holly Springs is Mooresville, located in southwest Iredell County.
Like Holly Springs in Wake County, Mooresville is considered one of the fastest-growing and most populous towns near the Charlotte metropolitan area with a population of 50,193 as of the 2020 census and a projected population of 53,956 for 2023.
Per the Mooresville Police Department (MPD), there are currently 106 full-time sworn officers and 4 part-time sworn officers. The department also has 27 full-time civilian employees. That’s up from 62 sworn officers in 2010 and 80 in 2016.
Like HSPD, recruiting has also not been an issue for MPD.
“While a nationwide staffing shortage has impacted departments across the county, MPD is not significantly understaffed,” MPD Communications and Marketing Director Megan Suber wrote in an email to North State Journal. She also said MPD credits attractive compensation packages and advancement opportunities for its recruiting success.
MPD reported a 2022 violent crime total of 135 incidents, down 40% from 2021. Non-violent crimes for the same year came in at 1,598, down over 22% from the previous year.
Also similar to HSPD, there are 10 SROs provided by MPD; eight in Mooresville Graded School District schools and two in local charter schools.
