By an 8-1 vote, the Greensboro City Council approved an ordinance mandating that clubs “have dancing or live music and a capacity of more than 100 patrons will have to hire two off-duty, uniformed police officers for security or two armed security guards whose training has been certified as outlined by state statute.”
The ordinance is a response to recent violence downtown. Mayor Nancy Vaughan and council member Zack Matheny noted —-according to the N&R —that “the absence of club owners appearing to protest the change indicates that these businesses know there is a problem and find the new ordinance reasonable.”
But questions remain, as active commenter Don Moore points out:
A good attorney should have this easily overturned, as it discriminates by exempting some locations. Then you have the issue of available off-duty officers. At a minimum, we are potentially talking about 48 officers every Friday and Saturday night until the clubs get their people up to speed. I don’t believe there are enough officers wanting overtime (for that time and duty) to fill that need.
We’ll see how this plays out.
