Let non-cops respond to minor traffic accidents, police and state lawmakers say

Fender-benders soon might not yield flashing blue police lights in much of North Carolina.

Under a new bill that passed its first committee hearing Wednesday, police departments would instead be allowed to send civilian investigators to minor car crashes with no injuries reported — a move that could ease a law enforcement hiring crunch affecting cities and towns across the state.

These investigators wouldn’t have guns and wouldn’t have the power to arrest people or issue traffic tickets. Anything like that would require them to call in uniformed police officers as backup. But they would be trained city employees, not just anyone who happens to be nearby when the wreck happens.

Supporters say the civilians could do most of the investigating and paperwork associated with the crash, freeing up uniformed police officers to handle bigger, more pressing issues.

“Virtually every law enforcement agency is losing people, losing employees, or failing to fill vacancies they have,” said Republican Rep. John Faircloth, a former police chief who sponsored the bill. “So they’re looking for ways to keep enough action on the street, if you will.”

Nearly 15 years ago, the state passed laws allowing Wilmington and Fayetteville to try out similar systems.

The Wilmington Star News reported last year that the city had 8,000 traffic crashes in 2021, and civilian investigators responded to nearly half of them. The city had four civilian investigators and was looking to hire two more, to free up even more time for the police.

“It is helping with resources, it is putting police officers where they need to be, and Wilmington fully endorses it,” Rep. Deb Butler, a Wilmington Democrat, told the House Judiciary committee Wednesday.

However, efforts to let more cities copy them have failed in the past. This year’s bill, however, could be different. It has the backing of GOP lawmakers who are also former police chiefs themselves.

“As a former police chief, I’ve been contacted by numerous chiefs around the state asking for a program like this,” Republican Rep. Reece Prytle, the former Eden Police chief, said.

Faircloth, who was chief of the High Point Police Department for nearly 30 years, said each city that chooses to create civilian investigators would be responsible for giving them “the level of training that is necessary and is appropriately protecting their citizens” — in addition to a statewide training program that would also be required.

Durham Democratic Rep. Marcia Morey filed a similar bill last year that would’ve let Durham create civilian investigators. It went nowhere in the Republican-controlled legislature, and on Wednesday she gave a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment that the bill has a better chance of becoming law now that it’s associated with the GOP instead.

“I won’t mention my city’s name, but I know that they asked us to support this bill,” she said.

Unlike the more recent efforts to create civilian traffic investigators, the laws in 2006 and 2007 to let Fayetteville and Wilmington create their programs weren’t controversial. They passed both chambers of the legislature with either unanimous or near-unanimous support.

A national trend

Big cities such as Denver, Phoenix and New Orleans already allow civilian traffic investigators. Media reports from Colorado show that Aurora — a Denver suburb that’s about the same size as Raleigh — started hiring for nine investigators last year.

Some cities are even going further. Baltimore made changes last year, according to a police industry trade magazine, to allow civilian employees to investigate cold cases and some minor crimes, plus handle internal affairs. The department had a number of vacant police jobs and leaders said hiring civilians to take over those duties would be both cheaper and faster.

Staffing shortages are part of what’s driving the push for this in North Carolina, too.

Pyrtle said he wouldn’t have hired any civilian traffic investigators when he was police chief of Eden, a town of 15,000 people on the Virginia border. But for bigger cities it absolutely makes sense, he said.

“I do understand with staffing levels that exist now, especially in larger municipalities, how this right here can assist with calls for service,” he said.

The police staffing shortages might be traced to numerous causes, ranging from low pay to increased scrutiny to the toll of COVID-19.

Most police officer deaths in both 2020 and 2021 were due to COVID-19, making 2021 the deadliest year for law enforcement since the Prohibition era, according to a recent report from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and Museum.

The South was hit particularly hard; that report said COVID-19 killed more law enforcement officers in North Carolina in 2021 than in all but four other states nationwide.