In the near future, those involved in fender-benders in Greensboro aren’t likely to see a Greensboro police officer respond to the scene.
On Wednesday, June 14, the North Carolina state House passed HB 140 – Civilian Traffic Investigators, which will allow cities across the state to hire and train non-sworn traffic investigators to respond to minor traffic accidents that don’t involve personal injuries.
Accidents where there are injuries will still be investigated by Greensboro police officers.
State Reps. Jon Hardister and John Faircloth were primary sponsors of the bill that passed the state House by a 100-6 margin and is expected to be signed into law by Gov. Roy Cooper shortly.
Former Greensboro Police Chief Brian James started the push for this legislation and Greensboro Police Chief John Thompson reportedly made several trips to Raleigh to advocate for the bill.
In 2021, James told the Greensboro City Council that Greensboro police spend about 17,000 hours a year responding to minor traffic accidents that only involve property damage. He said that allowing civilian traffic accident investigators would free up those hours for police officers to concentrate on more serious matters.
Mayor Nancy Vaughan had a bill introduced in the legislature in 2021 to allow civilian traffic investigators in Greensboro, which passed the state House but got hung up in the Senate.
One major difference in the bill introduced in 2021 and HB 140, which has passed both the state House and Senate, is that in 2021 the bill introduced was a local bill that would have allowed Greensboro to become the third city in the state to employ civilian traffic accident investigators while HB 140 is a statewide bill that will allow cities across the state to have civilian traffic accident investigators.
The Greensboro City Council has a bad habit of passing resolutions opposing actions taken by the Republican-controlled legislature, which makes it difficult to get local bills for Greensboro through the legislature.
However, in this case, Greensboro is getting just what it wanted, which is the authority to hire civilian traffic investigators.
The bill states that civilian traffic investigators will be required to wear uniforms and drive cars with distinctly different markings from police and they will not be allowed to carry weapons. The civilian traffic investigators will be authorized to have cars towed and their reports will be admissible in court.
The North Carolina Justice Academy will be required to establish minimum training standards for the civilian traffic investigators.
Based on the number of vehicles driving around with minor damage, the traffic investigators will be busy busy busy!
Now, how long will it take Greensboro to hire, train and put them on the streets!
Oh boy , more monkees from the zoo. Can only imagine what Greensboro will hire.
More monkeys! but they will be paid better then GPD so well paid monkeys
How can you consider yourselves an ethical news outlet when you don’t edit these offensive, hateful, racist comments. Roy Carroll, John Hammer, JV and Big city, you should all be ashamed of yourselves. A wise teacher of mine once said that the second most important law is to love your neighbor. Maybe you all should consider moving to Spain so you too can throw bananas and make monkey sounds at the professional soccer players.
Big city, believe you are probably spot on!
If the Greensboro Police Department had proper funding from the incompetent City Manager and the members of the city council were not worse than the city manager, perhaps the GPD would have been able to do their job.
What will happen when there is a road rage incident resulting in an accident? What about a drunk driver? Will these Civilian investigators have power of arrest? I doubt it. The civilians will have to call for a sworn officer to arrest a drunk driver and the road rage idiot that wants to fight. Incompetence breeds incompetency.
Will the funds be able to take out from police departments to create a new position?
I would like to be one of those monkeys!
Nice! Keep the racist comments, but delete the complaint about them. I’m contacting Google News to ask that you be removed from the news feed.
Whine, whine, whine. Get a life. You are too sensitive.
The Greensboro Police Department doesn’t have enough cars or officers now and you expect that to change?
The GPD lacks enough officers and vehicles to do their jobs now and you think you can hire traffic investigators and supply them cars?
The gubmint rarely thinks anything through before acting on it. Why would this be any different? The intelligent thing would be to keep government out of it altogether and contract with a 3rd party private sector firm who has to answer to Department Of Insurance regulations the same as security companies and bail bondsman do.
The interesting things will come when either party from the crash (or the investigatior) oversteps theor bounds and commits a criminal act or gets their arse handed to them on the side of the road. Pop your popcorn boys! Those might get entertaining.