By Connor McNeely
News & Record
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Ten Greensboro police officers were finally assigned brand-new take-home vehicles Friday morning after an 18-month delay caused by supply-chain issues.
The cars, Ford Police Interceptor Utility SUVs, are the first vehicles from a program that the city council approved in late 2021, which authorized spending $1.1 million for 20 extra vehicles. At a press briefing, Chief John Thompson said the department is still committed to the program’s larger goal of buying 100 cars for the police department over five years.
The take-home car program is another one of the improvements the city government has provided to the Greensboro police department in order to drive recruiting efforts — the most notable being a raise in salary to $55,000 a year.
“This has been a long time coming,” Thompson said. “The city council took what I think is a bold step. Never in the history of the department have we had a program for officers to take home their vehicles. For me, this is personal. It shows our officers that our elected officials and the community support our police officers.”
The vehicles are all-wheel-drive with a hybrid gasoline engine and lithium electric battery. Thompson estimated that each vehicle costs around $50,000-$55,000. Ford Police Interceptor Utility cars have such a high cost because they are considered police package vehicles, which are specially built to withstand heavy mileage, quick stops and quick starts. The cars also have an integrated computer; an improvement that frees space in the front cabin.
City council members Hugh Holston, Marikay Abuzuaiter and Dr. Goldie Wells attended in support of the program. Abuzuaiter acknowledged the 18-month delay in providing take-home cars for police officers from the date they had been originally purchased.
“We have been getting comments from our constituents almost daily saying ‘Where are the take-home cars for our officers?’,” Abuzuaiter said. “This is just a start. Others will be coming forth. Hopefully, everyone will get one eventually.”
Thompson confirmed that there are several more cars that are currently being upfitted and made ready for use. He projected that seven to 10 more cars would be available for duty by the end of August, and about 40 vehicles ready for use by the end of the year. The cars are assigned based on factors such as seniority and the department’s policy to prioritize officers within a 30-mile radius of headquarters.
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Thompson also explained that the Greensboro Police Department’s order for vehicles was not high on a priority list within car manufacturers’ larger quotas containing hundreds of vehicles. As the process of manufacturing the vehicles came to an end, Ford notified the police department in 2022 that their order would take more than a year.
Lt. K.B. Johnson told the News & Record that there was more to the supply-chain issues that caused the delay than meets the eye.
“Even though the contract was signed a couple of years ago, there were multiple vendors that had problems,” said Johnson. “The manufacturers of the consoles within the cars had issues, and so did the manufacturers of body-worn cameras. There were many different supply-chain issues holding things up.”
Thomas Boyer, a police officer who has served the city of Greensboro for 24 years and was assigned a new vehicle, was grateful for the upgrade.
“It’ll be easier to get out of the new cars,” Boyer said. “And it’ll be nice for it to be your own vehicle. You won’t have to share it with another officer.”
Mayor Nancy Vaughan, who could not attend the meeting, wrote about the improvements the take-home car program would add to the Greensboro Police Department.
“Law enforcement is a tough job, which is getting increasingly more difficult due to a shortage of police officers,” Vaughan wrote. “This measure enhances police visibility throughout the community while evening the recruitment playing field. This ‘take home vehicle’ policy places GPD in lockstep with our neighboring law enforcement agencies when it comes to recruiting new officers.”
“We don’t want to lose our ‘competitive edge’ against High Point, Winston-Salem, and Burlington, where this practice is already in place,” Vaughan added.
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