With Raleigh’s March municipal primary just days away, a local public-safety advocacy group is jumping into the fray with paid ads and planned endorsements, arguing the city’s recent police pay bump is nowhere near enough for a city growing this fast.
Citizens for a Safe & Secure Raleigh, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, is pushing hard for more officers and higher pay. According to the North State Journal, the group has hired former city council candidate John Cerqueira as executive director. He is serving as the organization’s point person with the city council, the city manager and the Raleigh Police Department.
The reporting notes the group is funded by contributions from local residents and businesses and that the city council approved an 11% pay increase for Raleigh police officers in the latest budget. Cerqueira told the paper that raise is a helpful start toward stabilizing the force, but that it is only one piece of a bigger puzzle.
What the group wants
Citizens for a Safe & Secure Raleigh centers its platform on six pillars: appropriate police staffing, adequate funding, superior training and standards, modern equipment, homelessness action and honor for those who serve. On its homepage the organization singles out staffing and pay shortfalls and argues that those gaps warrant a multi-year hiring push of roughly 300 to 400 additional officers, laid out on its website, Citizens for a Safe & Secure Raleigh.
Election timing
The group’s outreach is landing just as Raleigh voters head into a compressed election window. The municipal primary is scheduled for March 3, 2026, and the North Carolina State Board of Elections shows in-person early voting ran from Feb. 12 through Feb. 28. That tight calendar gives outside organizations only a short runway to sway municipal and downtown-focused races that will heavily influence next year’s budget talks.
Numbers behind the ask
The staffing pitch leans hard on a simple before-and-after comparison. The North State Journal reported that when Chief Rico Boyce joined the Raleigh Police Department in 2001, the city employed about 777 sworn officers. Today, despite Raleigh’s population roughly doubling over that period, the department has fewer than 725 sworn officers.
The group contends that rapid growth, a busier and denser downtown and increasingly complex public-safety calls mean Raleigh will ultimately need 300 to 400 more officers. A follow-up poll cited by the paper found roughly 78% of respondents backing the group’s priorities, a number CSSR is likely to highlight in its pitch to candidates and voters. The North State Journal also reports that the organization is launching billboard advertising and intends to formally endorse three candidates in competitive March primaries.
Organization and funding
Public records show Citizens for a Safe & Secure Raleigh formed in 2024 as a 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit; its basic organizational profile appears on CauseIQ. Grant-tracking databases indicate the group has local financial backing, including a 2024 gift connected to the Kane Realty network, as reported on Grantmakers.io.
Group leaders have previewed this push before. They outlined a similar public-safety pledge and set of priorities in an opinion piece published on WRAL last year, tying staffing, training and homelessness response to their broader vision of a “safe and secure” city.
What to watch
Over the next few days, Raleigh politicos will be tracking which city council hopefuls land CSSR’s endorsements and how often the group’s talking points about pay, recruitment and downtown safety show up in campaign mailers and debates.
If the organization’s messaging resonates at the ballot box, police pay and staffing levels could quickly turn into central bargaining chips when City Hall gets down to budget negotiations this spring.
