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Greensboro police chief to retire May 31

Greensboro Police Chief Brian James. Photo courtesy of the City of Greensboro.

Greensboro Police Chief Brian James will retire next month, a little more than two years after taking the department's top position.

James was sworn in just weeks before the pandemic started shutting down the country. Not long after, the death of George Floyd brought protests to many city streets, including Greensboro's.

During his tenure, he called for a communitywide response to high levels of violence. The city saw a record number of homicides in 2020.

James plans to step down at the end of May. The Greensboro native and Page High School graduate has been with the department since 1996, taking over as chief following the retirement of Wayne Scott.

The city is working with an executive recruiting firm in the search for James' replacement.

Teresa Biffle will serve in an interim capacity during the search. She is a 27-year veteran of the Greensboro Police Department and has served as the deputy chief of the management bureau since 2021.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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