Liberty Police Department

05/01/2026

Weekly RADAR sign data for S Valley and S Asheboro.

S Valley SB
639 vehicles, 8 vehicles between 35-45 mph, Avg daily speed: Mon 21.4, Tues 21.3 Wed 20.6, Thur 21.4 Fri 19.9

S Asheboro SB
1387 vehicles, 6 vehicles between 35-45 mph, 1 vehicle above 45 mph, Avg daily speed: Mon 22.8, Tues 21.6, Wed 22.1, Thur 22 Fri 20.4

04/27/2026

The numbers are in for vehicles on S Valley and S Asheboro. The RADAR signs have been running and here is the neighborhood data for you. Until today the RADAR signs did not display a speed to warn drivers to slow down. As of today they are activated to display speeds.

S Asheboro St (Southbound traffic) 25 mph zone
Sat 343 vehicles, Sun 277 Monday (till 3pm) 147..
Average speed; Sat 23.2 mph, Sun 23.9 mph, Mon 23.3 mph
% over 30mph; Sat 2.3%, Sun 5.1%, Mon7.5%
one vehicle over 45mph but below 50mph

S Valley St (southbound traffic) 25 mph zone
Sat 192 vehicles, Sun 100 Monday (till 3pm) 76..
Average speed; Sat 19.4mph, Sun 22.4 mph, Mon 22.4 mph
% over 30mph; Sat 0.5%, Sun 2.0%, Mon 1.3%
one vehicle over 40mph but below 45mph

We will continue our speed enforcement efforts in the area and please keep letting us know when you see someone speeding so we can address it!

Thank you,
Liberty PD

04/13/2026

Good morning,
I was just shown a Facebook post regarding speeders in town and I would like to share a few things. First, it was mentioned the Liberty PD doesn’t sit on the side streets like we used to. This is absolutely true.
We are approaching half-staff and some of our officers are not certified or need to re certify to operate Speed Measuring Instruments (SMI) like RADAR and LIDAR. We do plan to send them to school when we can but being short staffed makes it very difficult to cover shift AND send officers to school.
The Town received a grant to help with street planning, as a part of this grant we have limited time access to GPS meta data of all GPS equipped devices. This is sent to us in an anonymous data dump of location and velocity of any phone, tablet, navigation aid or car produced the last couple of decades (basically we are all being tracked by smart devices and cars….). This helps us know what roads are being used and how often. There is a delay of about 1 week to have the data anonymized by an outside company and compiled for us. The side benefit is we can see the speeds on the roads in Liberty. We use this data dump to direct officers who are SMI certified to the most likely location and time of day to find speeders.
For example: SDK Data shows E Butler between midnight and 3 am on Tuesdays 5% of all vehicles are 49 mph on average.
E Swannanoa Ave during various time periods has 5% of all cars going an average of 49 mph in a 35 zone.
For the month of March 2026,
S Asheboro St . showed the average speed of GPS devices at 22 mph (2 below the speed limit) and 5% of the fastest vehicles at 25 mph.
S Valley St. showed the average speed of GPS devices at 25 mph (25 zone) and 5% of the fastest vehicles averaged 28 mph

S Carter St.showed the average speed of GPS devices at 15 mph (10 below the speed limit) and the fastest 5% of vehicles averaging 18 mph (in a 25 mph zone).
W Swannanoa Ave showed the average speed of GPS devices at 39 mph (4 above the speed limit) and the fastest 5% of vehicles averaging 45 mph (in a 35 mph zone).
The fastest speed recorded feature has been turned off by SDK due to internal glitches that they are working on, so could there be some very high speeders on occasion? Absolutely. When it happens call 911! Let us know!
The Liberty Police Department proposed and the Town Council approved updated speed limits on all streets in town. The Public Works Department is out posting the new speed limits as the new signs come in. Clearly our narrow residential streets should not be 35 mph zone and the Town Council has addressed that.
Reading on Facebook weeks later about speeders or other crimes being committed does not help us to help you! Call 911!
Regarding speeders, since January 1, 2026 we have written 184 speeding citations and 27 careless and reckless citations.
If you would like to come to the PD and see the actual data please reach out to me,
Thank you,
Chief DJ Semrad

03/11/2026

Invictus working hard to protect our kids.

🚨New Arrest🚨

03/09/2026

Drivers please pay attention to the runners!

02/11/2026

02/08/2026

3:20 Road Update

We’ve had a few heroic flakes of snow fall today. Truly inspirational stuff. If you squint, it almost looks like winter is trying its best. Fortunately, the roads are perfectly fine… except for the giant water leak on South Fayetteville Street near Kime Avenue, which is doing its best impression of a small river.

So here’s the deal:
If you don’t need to be in that area, don’t go there. Don’t drive through it. Don’t “just see how bad it is.” It’s bad. It’s wet. It’s inconvenient. It’s everything you’d expect from a water leak with main‑character energy.

Everywhere else? Roads are good. No drama. No ice rink reenactments. Just normal pavement doing normal pavement things.

Stay out of the Fayetteville/Kime area and you’ll have a perfectly uneventful day.

02/02/2026

𝟳:𝟮𝟬 𝗔𝗠 𝗨𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲

This is an actual* photograph of what I looked like walking to the car this morning.

On the way in today, I passed exactly 14 vehicles. Three were going waaay too fast for the conditions, two were going too slow (To be clear, we’re not saying that slow is bad), and six failed to dim their high beams when they met me. You know what I didn’t see? Flashers! None of the vehicles had their flashers on… I’m gonna call that a win. Let’s just rest on those laurels for a bit.

Oh, right, the roads… The main highways (421, 85, 40, etc.) are mostly clear—until they suddenly aren’t, so take it easy. Linear motion is the easy part; stopping and turning is where things get dicey. Unfortunately, driving involves a lot of that pesky stopping and turning.

The local roads in town are… well… not great. Once again, the town has done their best with the side streets, and NCDOT is busy elsewhere. That means the main streets in town, including Highway 49, are still pretty rough.

In summary, if you can stay home, it’s probably still the smart move... At least for another day.

I say all that to say, DRIVE CAREFULLY and CAUTIOUSLY! Some people would say carefully and cautiously are the same thing but not me, I like to be pedantic. One means, "with care," and one means, "with caution." So, there.

*Utterly and totally not an actual photograph... everybody knows I don't like wearing ties.

01/28/2026

01/25/2026

Monday 9:00 am update
TURN. YOUR. FLASHERS. OFF. We know the roads are slick. If you are STUCK and need help, turn them ON.

Stay home. Please. If you have bad weather driving experience (as in don't hit signs, cars, trees, ditches etc) and have a 4x4 or AWD you should be fine. Keep it under 35 on county roads.

BTW having moved here from the north does not automatically qualify you to drive in NC winters.

We like ice here, icing on top, a creamy snow filled middle and icing on the bottom. Like a glazed, cream filled donut (I need breakfast)...

Having lived in Germany, upstate NY and Colorado I have seen and driven in winters and honestly NC just gets ice....it's different here.

Kids, call G-maw, Me-Maw and Paw-Paw. Tell them to stay home and not head out to "see" what it's like...seriously...stopping every ten feet to point out something to Me-Maw is a hazard...

Nothing is open so I do not know where you are planning to go....but some of us have a job that requires us to be there.

In town, PW is plowing and cleaning up. Let them work, stay out of their way.

4:20 PM Update

Someone sent me this Vanilla Ice collision graphic today, and as soon as I saw it, my inner 90’s kid sat up like it just heard the THX intro at a movie theater. There are exactly two things I’m powerless against: nostalgia and anything involving a pun so bad it loops back around to being brilliant. So of course I had to share it. Destiny demanded it.

And because I like to provide visual aids for the “I can totally make it in my two-wheel drive sedan” crowd, I stepped outside about ten minutes ago and grabbed a few photos of the current conditions. The roads look like someone took a giant spray bottle and misted the entire county with instant freeze. Nothing is melting, nothing is improving, and though the Town of Liberty, NC Public Works has done a great job on the side streets, nothing is really going anywhere until NCDOT has a chance to work their magic. With temps staying below freezing, this stuff is locked in for the night.

Which brings me to my third sermon of the day: stop driving with your hazard lights on. I promise you, it does not make you safer. It just makes everyone else want to remove your keys and place you in a quiet room with soft lighting and no responsibilities. If you’re moving, your hazards should not be. It’s that simple.

So please, for the love of traction and sanity, stay home, stay warm, and let the ice have its moment. It’ll be here all night anyway.

01/25/2026