At the virtual meeting of mayors with the Guilford County Board of Commissioners on Monday, March 1, Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan led off her comments with a report on affordable housing.
Vaughan talked about economic incentives, megasites, parks and recreation, the 2040 strategic plan, becoming the greenest city in the Southeast, streetscapes, the Downtown Greenway, COVID-19 regulation enforcement and finally public safety issues.
The record homicide rate in 2020 and the increase in gun violence have been on the minds of just about everyone in Greensboro in recent years. Last year, there was a lunchtime shootout in broad daylight in the middle of downtown, and, last month, there was a drive-by shooting in Irving Park, an area of town that’s been free of that type of crime until now.
The mayor said Guilford County and the city had worked together well over the past year addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and providing relief to citizens, but, at the March 1 meeting, she asked for help with crime.
“We have a lot of really, really good things going on in Greensboro, but we also have some things that cause us some concern, and, obviously, the big one is we have a public safety issue when it comes to our homicide rate and aggressive assaults.”
Vaughan said the City Council was working closely with Greensboro Police Chief Brian James.
“He runs the Police Department and tells us what he needs and we have been giving him what he needs,” Vaughan said.
Vaughan said city leaders are also working with community groups to make Greensboro one of the safest places to live.
“Because we can have all these great things, but if people don’t feel good – if they don’t feel safe in their own neighborhoods, then it’s kind of all for naught,” Vaughan said. “We want people in East Greensboro to feel as safe as they do in West Greensboro.”
She said that, if the commissioners were asking the city where the county could help, that was it.
“If there’s funding available, we need funding for more public safety,” she said.
She said that police and other emergency responders had put in a lot of overtime in the past year.
Vaughan said she would like to see Guilford County and Greensboro partner together to address the city’s crime problem in the same manner they did in addressing the coronavirus pandemic.
What falsehoods our Mandate Mayor is spewing. She has nor fully recruited or grown the police department to adequate staffing levels requested by numerous police chiefs, refused to purchase vehicles to aid in recruitment and retention, refused to setake police pay at levels equal to our immediate neighbors, and recently turned down federal grant money until pressured into reversing that decision.
Also remember our Mandate Mayor regularly presents ordinances that criminalize things like what type of rooftop tent you have and noise violation or whether panhandlers and buskers have licences. She tried to unilaterally (unconstitutionally ) shut down legal gun sales to law abiding citizens and led spending priority of a 90 million dollar Performance Arts boondoggle. Fiddling while her city burns from out of control riots but then presenting herself as a law and order proponent.
What an inept fool:
1) Nancy Pelosi Vaughn has NOT been giving the Greensboro Police Department what they need. Every time the chief asks for something, or suggests something, he is ignored.
2) East Greensboro should be as safe as West Greensboro. Well, as seen by Irving Park (with no arrest), West Greensboro is NOT safe either. Good luck recruiting companies and/or a hard-working and law-abiding workforce from other places when you can’t fulfill the most basic function of government: public safety.
3) She wants the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office to augment the city’s police department? I bet they have less deputies than the city has officers, and they cover a wider area. She wants to take them off their assigned areas to make up for her own ineptitude and thereby punish those who need law enforcement in unincorporated areas of the county? What an arrogant fool.
I hope the people of Greensboro vote her out for someone like Justin Outling, but I’m not holding my breath. The city seems to get dumber with each election cycle.
The Mayor wants the sheriff’s department to help? GOOD LUCK! My last dealing with a person who threatened to kill my wife and I because he just didn’t like us. Resulted in a visit from 3 deputies who shrugged their shoulders and said “Sorry, not much we can do.”
“Vaughan said she would like to see Guilford County and Greensboro partner together to address the city’s crime problem in the same manner they did in addressing the coronavirus pandemic.”
The short answer vs the long sentence above is. . . . . .”can the Sheriff provide law enforcement patrols within City limits out of the County’s budget so we don’t have to increase spending on more police?”
Preposterous!
The Sheriff is not responsible for any municipal police related functions. The NC General Statutes provides the Sheriff to function as a service to the courts and also to maintain the jails. It’s up to the Sheriff and the Board of Commissioners to determine if they want to pay for unincorporated law enforcement, which they do.
Once again, those in charge of City management are looking for help without having to increase their own taxes to pay for more police. How about starting with defunding all of the various social “feel good” programs, and funds going to this community group, or that community groups, etc. If they did, there’s be a lot more money for police.
Gee Nancy, maybe if you did your job, and let the Greensboro Police Department do theirs, without turning them into some kind of social justice experiment, Greensboro wouldn’t be having this problem right now.
Pretty sure GCSD still (frequently?) backs up GPD and/or covers calls for GPD, unless things have changed recently.
They do, and it hasn’t.
Part of the reason for the High Crime Rate in Greensboro/Guilford County : A Mayor that has been in office way too long , A New Police Chief in Greensboro and a New Sheriff in Guilford County .
T-Roy you sound prejudice. Crime has always been around in Greensboro, you can’t blame a new police chief or sheriff for the crime in the city. Sound like you have a problem with them being black. Until we address the drug problem and gangs in the city no matter who is in office the crime will keep happening.
Idk…for starters how about taking that almost 1/2 million dollar yearly grift to a sitting councilwoman’s ‘cure violence’ (lol) fiasco and give it to GPD? I bet they could use that money to idk…maybe hire more officers? Buy actual equipment to aid in police work?
Ahh Seattle here we come!
Words fail me.
Skip Alston is no fool and neither is our GCSD.
If Queen Nancy is expecting someone else to take the blame for her lack of leadership she needs to look beyond the County and it’s leadership.
“He runs the Police Department and tells us what he needs and we have been giving him what he needs,” Vaughan said.
Uhhhhh, NO YOU HAVEN’T! You have only given Chief James what you and the other looney birds what him to have. Drop Miss Nancy off in the middle of Smith Homes or over off Gate City Blvd someplace late one weekend when the natives are a little “restless.” No cell phones, No Police protection, no comforts, just drop her a__ off for a few hours. I can almost guarantee Chief James will have a new ally on that City Council the next week and not just lip service!
Have councilwoman Johnson give the $900k back to the tax payers. Use that money to provide required personnel, equipment to the police department.
Mayor – please-stop lying about your’s and the counci’s support for the police department. Totally BS!
You the council klan have done nothing to support this department except for criticism.
The County doesn’t want to share funds or Sheriff’s Deputies with the City because the City is unable to provide the protection to its citizens that they deserve. One reason we choose to live in the County and not the City is so we have a better way of life without having to pay taxes for services promised but never delivered. We don’t want to “feel safe” we choose to BE SAFE. The City needs to fund its own policing services as we fund outs. A statewide change that would help all of us would be prosecutors and judges who actually punished criminals for crimes and forced maximum sentencing to reduce the number of criminals released back to the streets and hopefully causing newbies to think twice before committing their first crime.
Nancy is a pure picture of self destruction. Let it happen. Let her help herself. She belongs cleaning up the needles, condoms and panties on JJ drive long before she is allowed to ask for the help from our tax dollars outside of city limits. I would like to take her for a walk thru some of the areas she would never
The flip/flop mayor could not be addressing white people.Just last year she said we were the reason the rioting happened in Greensboro!!! I was hopeful that there was enough people in Greensboro to put her out of the Mayors job at the next election….Yhe Democrats that rule in Greensboro are just like those in Greensboro “cut the police budget “ and then when she’s out she wants a police escort to keep her safe. How asinine can one be .
Part of the reason the council is suddenly scrambling is because they have finally realized how dire the police situation has become. One of my sources tells me that the Greensboro Police Department loses about 50 to 60 officers per year from retirements, firings, and resignations. Normally, they hold two police academies per year that seat enough officers to replace the losses. However, thanks to various anti-police movements, which have unfortunately been successful, now very few people want to become a police officer. So GPD still loses 50 to 60 officers per year, but their academies are seating less than 20 recruits each and graduating even fewer since there are inevitably a few people who do not make it through.
For some concrete numbers, let’s go conservative and say GPD loses 50 officers per year. (I include academy recruits that fail out in that number because they were hired to be sworn officers even though they are not yet sworn in.) Now look at 2021’s recruits: They just graduated a class of 13, that’s right, 13 new officers in March of 2021. Now those 13 still have to make it through field training, which will probably cull one or two of them, so let’s call it 12 officers added. Another class is about to start and it has 18 recruits. My sources tell me that the class that just graduated 13 officers had also started with 18, losing 5 to test failures, etc. So it is reasonable to estimate that this class of 18 will also graduate a smaller number, but let’s be positive and go with 18 officers who will graduate in July and then get through field training.
Meanwhile, GPD will still be losing officers every month to retirements, firings, and resignations. That reverse flow never stops and is usually around 50 officers per year. So by the end of 2021, you will have added 12 officers plus the second class of 18, for a total of 30 officers added, assuming all of them make it.
+30 -50 = a net loss of 20 officers in 2021.
Now take that net loss of 20 officers per year and compound it over 3 or 4 years. (By the way GPD started 2021 with about 50 vacancies. In fact, they have so many vacancies that they are paying officers to work overtime using the salaries of unoccupied positions to pay for it.)
So the real equation for 2021 is: -50 +30 -50 = a net absence of 80 officers by the end of 2021.
The numbers for 2022 will be: -80 +30 -50 = a net absence of 100 officers by the end of 2022.
2023… Can you say CRISIS?
Wasn’t Ed Pons murdered in Irving Park?
Ed Pons, who was deputy Guilford County manager at the time, was shot in New Irving Park in June 2001. But he survived, returned to work and died almost a year later of undetermined causes.