Category: Traffic Law
In early January, the General Assembly instructed the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles to revisit guidelines to traffic stops. Although there have been traffic stop instructions in the NC DMV manual since 1972, this gives the department the opportunity to clear up the guidelines. While some of the instructions…
In January of this year, a new report came out calling for lowering the Blood Alcohol Concentration limit nationwide from .08 to .05. I wrote earlier about how Utah lowering their BAC limit to .05. The study was conducted by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, are private,…
As a criminal and traffic defense attorney, I am often asked if it is legal to record a video of a traffic stop in North Carolina. The short legal answer is… you betcha! Recently, a Wilmington, North Carolina police officer made national news for a routine traffic stop in which he pulled…
Raleigh Police Release Video About How to Behave During Traffic Stops Raleigh Police released a video earlier this month entitled “Traffic Stops: What to Expect as a Motorist” as part of its commitment to foster better community-police relations. We had some issues with the video’s overall accuracy from a legal…
Website Makes N.C. Traffic Stops More Transparent On December 17, 2015, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) launched a new website that contains information about almost twenty million traffic stops made by departments and law enforcement agencies across North Carolina in the past 15 years. The information will stay…
In North Carolina, drivers licenses can be suspended or revoked due to alcohol-related offenses or certain convictions, or if they accumulated points in their records due to moving violations and other infractions. Depending on the severity of the offenses, a driver’s license is suspended or revoked for varying periods of…
Time for a Teaching Moment It’s August and it’s that time again – back to school. With thousands of students of all ages around the Triangle heading back to the classroom in coming weeks, certain crimes begin to become more common. In addition to the usual crop of youngsters making…
Traffic Ticket Overhaul in Wake County For the first time in almost 30 years, Wake County residents elected a new District Attorney last November. Since she has taken office, Lorrin Freeman, the new District Attorney for Wake County, has made some noteworthy changes to how her office will be handling cases…
Body Cameras Could Mean a Whole New Era in Community Relations With Police Police serve an important function in our society, and I genuinely think that the overwhelming majority of law enforcement officers do their job to the best of their abilities. While I believe that most police officers in…
Ignorance Of The Law Can Mean a High Price We mentioned last week about how strict Wake County can be when dealing with certain offenses. Some defendants become aware of the unmoving nature of Wake County assistant district attorneys and believe that this means it would be a better idea for them…