City-County Consolidation in North Carolina
Law Enforcement
In 98 counties in North Carolina law enforcement outside of cities is the responsibility of the sheriff. Two counties – Gaston and Mecklenburg – received legislative authority in the 1920s to establish county police departments, and so the sheriffs’ offices in those counties do not exercise law enforcement functions. (Mecklenburg’s separate police department was merged with Charlotte’s in the 1990s, so Gaston is currently the lone county with a county police department.) In most cities and towns in North Carolina law enforcement is the responsibility of the municipal police department. (Sheriffs provide law enforcement by contract to a number of smaller towns around the state.) How to treat law enforcement in a consolidated government is another issue that may well create opponents to consolidation no matter what the charter commission proposes. And there have been a variety of proposals.
No change
In the two Charlotte-Mecklenburg efforts, the consolidation proposal would have merged the county and city police departments. Because the Mecklenburg sheriff did not engage in law enforcement, this merger was not an issue in those consolidation proposals.
Two of the consolidation efforts – Wilmington-New Hanover I and Asheville-Buncombe – would have made no change to law enforcement. The sheriff would have remained responsible for law enforcement outside the urban service district, and the former city police department would have been responsible for law enforcement inside that district. While such a solution might not antagonize either the sheriff and his or her deputies or officers in the police department, it does open the overall proposal to the criticism that this important function is not being consolidated.
A single law enforcement agency
A fifth effort – Durham I – did not propose to merge law enforcement, but would have effectively given the consolidated government the legal ability to have a single law enforcement agency should it wish to do so. It would have permitted the consolidated government to appoint police officers with countywide jurisdiction, which would have permitted restricting the sheriff’s office to non-law enforcement responsibilities.
The second and third Wilmington-New Hanover efforts would have created a single law enforcement agency, although in different ways. The second effort in that county would have given the police department authority for patrol and criminal investigation throughout the county, with the sheriff having an unspecified power to coordinate with the police department. The New Hanover county sheriff opposed consolidation because of the proposal.
The third effort in New Hanover county would have created a single police agency, providing law enforcement throughout the consolidated government. The charter directed the first board of commissioners to name the sheriff as chief of that single police agency but went on to provide that “at any time thereafter” the board could appoint any other person as police chief. If someone other than the sheriff was appointed chief, the charter provided that the person so appointed was to serve as chief at the pleasure of the manager. Interestingly, this proposal appears to have been acceptable to the sitting sheriff of New Hanover county.
Decide later
Finally, the most recent Durham effort devised a complicated machinery for proposing how to merge law enforcement several years after governmental consolidation became effective. The charter commission proposed legislation that would have directed the new governing board to create a Law Enforcement Commission within 90 days after the effective date of consolidation, with the following seven members:
- One member of the governing board, who was to be chair of the Commission.
- The sheriff.
- The police chief.
- The director of the E-911 center.
- The director of the merged government’s emergency management agency.
- Two citizens, one a resident of the area of the city immediately before merger and the other a resident of the former unincorporated area. These two members were to be appointed to two-year terms.
This new commission would have had the following powers:
- To propose each year an annual budget for law enforcement within the new government.
- To propose and implement a plan to create a single communications system for law enforcement and other emergency services.
- Most importantly, within four years after the effective date of consolidation, to propose a plan for a single law-enforcement agency for the city-county; and then to call a referendum on the plan among the government’s voters.
If the commission’s plan was voted down, or if it failed to develop such a plan, the legislation would have called upon the governing board of the city-county to develop its own plan, which was to be voted on within the first six years after merger. If no plan received a favorable vote from the consolidated government’s citizens, law enforcement arrangements were to continue indefinitely in the same way they began.