CHARLOTTE, N.C. — One lawmaker wants to close a legal loophole that allows convicted felons to run their own private police companies in North Carolina.
When driver Teddy Sims recently saw blue lights pull in behind him at an east Charlotte gas station, it didn't occur to him to ask if the man in the uniform was a real police officer.
“I looked and he pulled right behind me, and I was like, ‘What in the world?’” Sims said.
We now know that man was Aaron Echols, the owner of Pacific Unified Company Police, a private police company with an office in SouthPark.
But what the company's website doesn't say is that Echols is a convicted felon.
When Charlotte-Mecklenburg police found that out, they arrested Echols and hit him with a long list of charges, including impersonating a law enforcement officer.
But there's nothing in the law that keeps a convicted felon like Echols from owning a private police company.
Eyewitness News took questions to Marvin Clark, the man who oversees company police agencies in North Carolina and who had approved Echols’ application to start his company.
“You basically screened it like you would any?” Eyewitness News asked.
“Any of the company police agencies, yes,” Clark said.
Clark said Echols’ felony didn't show up in their screening because it was more than five years earlier, but even if they had found it, they could not have turned his application down.
“That's the way the rules were written prior to me getting here,” Clark said.
“Does that make sense?” Eyewitness News asked.
“I didn't write the rules,” Clark said.
“Is that something that needs to change?” Eyewitness News asked.
“I think it is, yes, and we are in fact addressing that in some new rule changes,” Clark said.
But it may be a loophole that the state legislature needs to close, so Eyewitness News took what we found to one of Charlotte's state senators.
Sen. Malcolm Graham was concerned enough when Eyewitness News showed him Echols' file that he wants to bring it up in Raleigh.
“Certainly it breaks the spirit of the law and legislatively, I think we need to take a look at it in terms of the loopholes and how we can fill those loopholes,” Graham said.
Echols’ family told Eyewitness News he couldn't come to the door, but a secretary said he still comes into his office from time to time and, felony record or not, he still owns that police company.
The North Carolina Company Police Association sent Eyewitness News a statement saying, "It should be clear in the law that a convicted felon does not have the right to own or operate a company/special police agency.”
Changing the rules could take up to a year. For now, prosecutors are still working to undo all of the arrests and cases Echols made illegally.
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