Greensboro police crack down on stop-sign runners as complaints rise

At North Davie Street and Abe Brenner Place, drivers kept rolling through the stop sign beside LeBauer Park, a children’s park area and the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts, and Greensboro police finally started writing tickets. The intersection sits in a part of downtown that sends pedestrians, park visitors and theatergoers through the same crossing, turning a familiar shortcut into a recurring safety problem.

Greensboro police said traffic concerns are now the number one complaint they receive from the public. The department cut its traffic enforcement unit in 2022 after pandemic-related problems and triple-digit staff vacancies, then brought the unit back a little more than a year ago. Since then, officers have been out looking for bad drivers, and the department said it is already exceeding the number of citations written in the second half of last year.

Traffic Educator Tiffany Hooker said drivers need to treat the sign as a full stop, not a slowdown. “At a stop sign, you have to make a complete stop at the bar, the line that’s on the road. There is no rolling,” Hooker said.

Officer Wade Crouse said the unit’s top priority is traffic safety and that stop-sign violations are showing up “all across the city and any time of day.” The problem has not been limited to one corner, but North Davie and Abe Brenner emerged as a repeat hotspot after officers first documented drivers rolling through there in February 2025 and saw the same behavior again about six months later, this time with tickets being issued.

A stop-sign ticket in Greensboro typically costs more than $200, a steep penalty for a violation many drivers treat casually. The department has also added yard signs and other “slow your roll” signs in neighborhoods, and residents can report problem spots by calling (336) 373-slow.

The enforcement push is landing as Greensboro broadens its safety campaign. The city’s Draft Comprehensive Safety Action Plan was open for public review through April 23, 2026, and it is aimed at reducing serious injuries and fatalities across the Greensboro urban area. The city’s open-data traffic-stop dashboard says the numbers are meant to improve transparency and public accountability, and it acknowledges racial disparities in traffic stops and searches while saying the figures need context.