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The North Carolina Highway Patrol is the highway patrol agency for North Carolina, which has jurisdiction anywhere in the state. The Highway Patrol was created in 1929 and is not a "State Police" agency. The Patrol is, however, a paramilitary organization with a rank structure similar to the armed forces. The mission of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol includes providing for safe transportation on the highways and reducing crime. The Highway Patrol is one of the largest divisions of the North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety and its headquarters is located in Raleigh. This department also includes the NC Alcohol Law Enforcement (ALE), Emergency Management, Butner Public Safety, Civil Air Patrol, and the National Guard.

The Highway Patrol has many responsibilities. The primary job of the rank and file Trooper is traffic law enforcement. This includes traffic collision investigation, issuing warning tickets and citations for traffic violations, and finding, arresting, and processing impaired drivers. A State Trooper is a sworn Peace Officer, and although their primary duty is traffic enforcement, they can and often do perform duties typically delegated to deputy sheriff's and police officers such as responding to domestic disputes, assaults and the serving of warrants.

The NC Highway Patrol Basic School for cadets with no prior law enforcement training is twenty-nine weeks long. During this intensive training the cadet class will typically lose 40% of its members, also known as "non-hackers". It is in this live-in environment where the cadets learn about state and federal laws, perfect their firearms marksmenship, and excel at high speed driving. Early every morning the cadets rise, rain or shine, for physical fitness training before starting a full day of classroom instruction. The cadets will form a tight-knit bond and learn to never leave one another "in the ditch".

Following these months of effort, the cadets are sworn in as Probationary Troopers and are assigned to their respective Troops and Districts. Once in their assigned district, they will participate in on-the-job training for an additional twelve weeks with an experienced Trooper who is trained as a Field Training Officer, or FTO.

• List of law enforcement agencies in North Carolina

• NC Highway Patrol website

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