Mayor Nancy Vaughan said that the reason Greensboro had half the police cars of cities smaller than Greensboro was that other cities allow police officers to take their cars home and Greensboro doesn’t.
High Point for example about one third the size of Greensboro has more police cars than Greensboro because High Point police officers are allowed to take their cars home at the end of the shift, according to Vaughan.
Vaughan also said she thought that was an important distinction that should have been in the article about Greensboro needing more police cars.
In terms of recruitment and morale giving police officers the option to take their cars home is a big boost. The Greensboro City Council constantly uses comparisons to other cities as a reason for increasing pay, spending more money and passing new ordinances.
According to the report that compares the cities of Apex, Asheville, Chapel Hill, Concord, Goldsboro, Greensboro, Greenville, Hickory, High Point, Mooresville, Raleigh Wilson and Winston-Salem. It appears Greensboro is one of the few cities that doesn’t allow police officers to take their cars home. Most of the cities have roughly the same number of vehicles as sworn officers. Greensboro has 674 sworn officers and 223 patrol vehicles.
As far as the rest of the article, Vaughan also disagreed with the idea that the city didn’t need to hire an “expensive consultant” to figure out how to make the police department better.
She said that when she recently sat down to do the math and subtract out all of the officers on any given day who are on annual leave, sick leave, administrative leave, in training, etc. “I was horrified at how many cars are actually out in the district.”
Vaughan also noted that while Greensboro was pretty close to average in the number of police officers per 10,000 people that number could be deceiving because Greensboro was larger in land mass than other cities and because the Greensboro Police Department is top heavy with administrators which means it has fewer officers out on patrol.
Vaughan said that she had been meeting with City Manager David Parrish and Assistant City Manager Trey Davis for weeks to discuss these very issues.
And Vaughan said that another reason the city needs to do a serious study on the police department was that, “We need to let the new chief know the shape we are in and put everything on the table.”
Vaughan said she had been pushing for several months to have an in depth study of the police department done to answer questions such as, “Do we have the right staffing for a city of this size considering the population and square mileage?”
If they aren’t allowed to take their cars home, wonder why there is always one parked in my apartment complex at night…
Your apartment complex has a “community officer” who serves are “security” for the complex…Also, obviously there are exceptions to the rule and some units and officers take their car home.
“…the Greensboro Police Department is top heavy with administrators…” That is the understatement of the century…
The real reason- our city council would rather spend $500,000 on a program that has proven to be a failure than support and equip our police department with the tools required to fight crime.
Why is a Greensboro police vehicle parked in front of finks store on battleground ave 6 days a week all day ?
Off duty worked hired by Finks and paid to GPD.
they are working an off duty hustle
They hire off duty police for security
And that half a million is for only one year inside of two districts. You can bet the farm that there will be another half million next year no matter what because even if the program doesn’t show any progress , our city council will not admit they were wrong and will give them another year. $1000,000 … !!?? That will buy a lot of other things for our fine GPD. Our city council ,,, wow.
I think the police cars will be fine ,, the real issue is the equipment that our officers on patrol don’t have. It has been proven by many departments and universities that have done studies , that equipment vests are extremely valuable in preventing back and hip problems with our officers. In fact , when one goes to the Dr about back/hip problems, most of them are medically issued one. Sort of makes sense to PREVENT problems by having the GPD move into the 21st century and use the proper, tested and recommended tools of the trade. Also uniforms that are made and fit women, not altered men’s clothing .
Couldn’t the money for the “study” be put to more police vehicles? The new chief can make his own assessment of the state of the department. Greensboro sure spends a lot of money on studies. Am I missing something?