I observed earlier this week that Greensboro’s police chief seemed less than enthusiastic when answering City Council members’ questions about ordinance revisions that supposedly would make downtown safer.

John Hammer writes in this week’s Rhino:

New Greensboro Police Chief Ken Miller – who was questioned by Councilmember Danny Thompson during the meeting about the new ordinances – was clearly underwhelmed.

Those ordinances increase the fines for consuming alcohol, loitering around bars, loitering in parking garages and urinating in public from $50 to $200. Miller, when asked, said that he doubted if those breaking the laws considered the amount of the fine they might incur beforehand.

Miller said the curfew downtown would give the police another tool, as would the other ordinance changes. But he made it clear that these were not his ideas on how to solve the problems downtown. He said they would give his officers more options and that the Police Department would see how it worked.

I guess if there’s one thing —–one thing—- to say about the ordinance revisions is at least we appear to have a level-headed chief like Ken Miller in charge of enforcing them. As for the curfew, Miller helped enforce Charlotte’s curfew and assured council members police were not heavy-handed in doing so and there was no backlash. Hopefully that will be the case here until the curfew sunsets a year from now.