At the Tuesday, June 6 meeting, the Greensboro City Council discovered that of the 40 take-home police cars authorized, not a single car has made it to the streets.
On Nov. 18, 2021, the City Council voted unanimously to provide Greensboro police officers with take-home police cars. Despite the fact that the city had piles of federal American Rescue Plan dollars it was handing out to just about any organization that asked, the council couldn’t find the money to purchase 100 police cars at once. Instead, the council voted to buy 20 additional cars each year for five years.
Since that vote was in 2021, the city reportedly has purchased 40 additional police cars, but for some unexplained reason has, in over 18 months, not been able to get a single car upfitted for use as a police car.
This was obviously news to Mayor Nancy Vaughan, who was the strongest proponent of providing Greensboro police patrol officers with take-home cars. She said, “We made a commitment to take-home cars and we are two years in and it doesn’t appear that we are making much progress. I understand there are supply chain issues, but I did talk to the police chief about it. I know that we typically do Fords, but maybe there are some other cars we should look at.”
Vaughan added, “We committed to take-home cars. We committed two years ago. We just have to make it happen.”
Former Police Chief Brian James repeatedly told the City Council that one of the issues that was causing the increasing vacancy rate in the Police Department was that every other jurisdiction in the area had take-home police cars.
When the decision about providing take-home police cars was being made, city staff was clearly against it, and included in the cost of purchasing 100 police cars a $32 million city maintenance garage, which on questioning, staff admitted was already needed and would have to be built whether the city bought the police cars or not.
Just as the City Council learned on June 6, there is much more to this story than they are being told. Even with supply chain issues, other jurisdictions are managing to purchase and upfit new law enforcement vehicles, but for some unexplained reason Greensboro has not.
Put it on the website. Advertise it for recruiting.
And yet they find money for every other project they favor.
You got what you voted for…enjoy!
Nancy Vaughn: “I know that we typically do Fords, but maybe there are some other cars we should look at.”
Dear Nancy, thank for reading my comments and taking them to heart, even though it is way too late to start worrying about something you should have dealt with 2 years ago. Piecemealing a bastardized take home car program is the absolute worst way to implement this. Now the agency has to decide who will be getting the very few cars they do get in. All this will do is create dissention among the ranks with the rest of the troops that have to do without. Give them to the old cops and the rookies get mad. Give them to the rookies and the veterans get mad. If you are somewhere in the middle, you’ll probably never get a car before you retire. You have given the chief an unwinnable problem once again by failing to fully invest in your police department. Keep doing the minimum and you’ll keep the agency stagnant. I hope that is not your plan, although many of us think that it is.
I hope you have also realized that putting take home cars on the recruiting website as a benefit right now would be disingenuous and an even bigger disaster. Still, I encourage you to keep coming back to the Rhino for sound advice that you will not find anywhere in city hall. Whether or not you act on it is up to you.
Officer Don knows what he’s talking about. Really.
He’s loath to admit it, but he’s obviously involved in law enforcement, or retired from it.
Right Don?
I think he’s a rent- a – cop at the mall. They drive Toyotas over there.
Are you against take home cars that every other agency in the state provides? Or did you have a position at GPD that came with a car so you do not care about patrol?
I didn’t have a take home car and I also liked the schedule that former Chief Wray put in place. Greensboro has a bunch of cry babies on the force.
Yeah, how dare they ask the city to be competitive with other agencies! They should just hunker down and embrace the suckiness, right? I mean it’s not like they’re leaving and finding better jobs at these competing agencies. Oh wait, they are! You so dumb.
It doesn’t take a cop to know that advertising for a perk that does not exist is bad for business. Nor do you have to be a cop to know that slow rolling a benefit that will be given to some but not to others for the foreseeable future is bad for morale. These are all just basic, common-sense principles, which is why our friends in the government cannot understand them.
Deflection and digression….
How about answering the question, Officer Don?
You are the one digressing from the topic. Blue Boy only emerges to call names and distract from constructive commentary before slinking away again. Don’t fall into his trap. Stick to the point of the article.
BoyinBlue are you one of the bobbleheads or did you run downtown in short shorts with your illustrious former chief?
Get rid of the “city garage”. Patton is a fraud that sucks money from other city departments. It would be far cheaper to contract out like other jurisdictions do.
Could it be the vacant pin-heads running our govt? Who wouldn’t want a GPD car parked in their neighborhood?
So what it they stop on the way home for beer and cigarettes?
Must be another issue…..