No Trespassing Agreement
A No Trespassing Agreement lets a Fayetteville Police officer remove or arrest someone on your property without you being there to ask them to leave. Without one, an officer generally needs the owner or someone in charge to give that notice first.
The Fayetteville Police Department sent the Downtown Alliance the current forms and instructions in August 2026 so they could be shared with downtown businesses. The City does not publish them anywhere online, so they are hosted here.
Much of what follows came out of the DTA Business Watch Core Group meeting on 20 August 2026, where downtown owners put their questions directly to FPD. Several answers are not written on the forms anywhere.
Read this part first
Section titled “Read this part first”The agreement only applies when you are closed.
If you are open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., the agreement is enforceable from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. and not one minute inside your business hours. For a trespasser during business hours you call 911 like anyone else — and if an arrest is made, the owner or agent has to go to the Magistrate’s Office in person and give probable cause for it.
That surprises people who file one expecting it to cover the whole day. It does not.
What it rests on
Section titled “What it rests on”N.C.G.S. § 14-159.13 — second degree trespass. A person commits it by entering or remaining on premises after being told not to, or on premises posted with notice not to enter. Both are Class 3 misdemeanors. The agreement is what lets an officer act on the posted notice on your behalf when you are not present.
Which form
Section titled “Which form”| Your situation | Form |
|---|---|
| A business, church or organization | Trespassers Authorization to Remove (Business) — POL-521a |
| A vacant home, vacant land, or a condemned or fire-damaged building | Trespassers Authorization to Remove (Residential) — POL-521b |
| An apartment complex or mobile home park | Neither — see below |
Vacant property is the one case the agreement covers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, because there are no business hours to work around. It reaches the house, any shed, and the vacant land around it.
Filing one
Section titled “Filing one”- Post two “No Trespassing” signs on the property — preferably the front and rear doors. They have to be somewhere plainly visible to the public or to likely intruders.
- Photograph each sign once it is posted. One photo per sign.
- Fill out the form and have the owner or authorized agent sign it. A witness signature line is on the form too.
- Deliver the original form and both photos to the Fayetteville Police Department, 467 Hay Street, Fayetteville, NC 28301. Photos may be brought in or emailed; the instructions ask for the original of the form itself.
Nothing is in force until the department has both. The form on its own does nothing, and the photos on their own do nothing. The agreement takes effect when FPD has the completed form and the pictures of the posted signs on file.
The signs
Section titled “The signs”Two signs, and the detail owners asked about most:
- They stay up all the time, not only during the hours the agreement covers.
- A combined decal counts. “No soliciting · No trespassing” on the door or window is enough — it does not have to be a large dedicated sign. Regular size is fine. The test FPD applies is that a person has no excuse to say they did not see it.
- Front and rear doors are the preferred placement.
This came up because a street where five of seven storefronts display a big NO TRESPASSING board is not an inviting street. A small combined decal at the door satisfies the requirement without turning the block into a fortress.
What it covers, and what it does not
Section titled “What it covers, and what it does not”| The building and the area surrounding it | Covered |
| Storage buildings on the premises | Covered |
| An outdoor area you hold a City outdoor-use permit for | Covered — see The Rules Downtown |
| The public sidewalk, green space, or a park | Not covered |
Downtown this matters more than most places, because a patio, the sidewalk and the street run together. Know where your premises stop before you need the answer at 2 a.m.
If you lease rather than own: a tenant controls the premises for the term of the lease and can file. FPD’s people were careful to say they are not lawyers and cannot give legal advice, so if your lease is unusual, check it.
The twelve-month clock
Section titled “The twelve-month clock”The agreement is valid for twelve months from its effective date, and then it stops.
- To keep it, you must contact FPD in person before the twelve months are up.
- If you do not, the department treats that as you not wanting to extend it, and the agreement automatically terminates and becomes void. Nobody calls to remind you.
- If anything on the form changes — ownership, business hours, who is authorized — it is on the person who signed it to tell FPD.
Put the expiry in a calendar the year you file it. An agreement everyone assumes is active but which quietly lapsed is worse than none, because you will find out at the moment you need it.
The “Exceptions” lines
Section titled “The “Exceptions” lines”The form has two lines for exceptions: people who are allowed on the premises after hours. Cleaners, an alarm or HVAC company, a delivery driver, a neighbouring owner with a shared alley. Fill these in. They are what stops the agreement being used against somebody who has every right to be there.
Banning one person is a different thing
Section titled “Banning one person is a different thing”The agreement covers your premises when you are closed. Banning a named person is separate, and the two get confused constantly:
| No Trespassing Agreement | Banning a person | |
|---|---|---|
| Covers | The premises | One named individual |
| When | Only outside business hours | Any time, including while you are open |
| Needs a posted sign | Yes, two | No |
| Needs a form filed with FPD | Yes | No |
You can ban someone whenever you want to. Tell them, in an officer’s presence where possible, that they are not to return. If they come back, police can arrest for second degree trespass.
Make the ban stick
Section titled “Make the ban stick”This is where downtown owners said the process fails them, and the advice below is FPD’s own.
A ban is only as good as its record. Owners in the room described being told again and again by a responding officer that there was nothing in the system about a person they had banned days earlier — one estimated it at the large majority of call-outs over many years.
- Say it plainly to the responding officer: “I need it documented, and I will be requesting the copy.” That sentence is the single most useful thing on this page.
- Get the event ID number from the 911 call and keep it. If the ban does not appear in one system, that number lets an officer find it in the call record.
- MCT is the system an officer checks for warrants, bans and prior trespass history. If a ban was written up but never reached it, the officer genuinely cannot see it.
- Keep your own record — banned by [name], on [date], witnessed by [name] — with the event ID beside it.
Apartment complexes and mobile home parks
Section titled “Apartment complexes and mobile home parks”There is no agreement for these, and FPD is explicit about why: each apartment or trailer carries the same expectation of privacy as a single-family home, and any tenant may have visitors in their unit and in common areas. A blanket authorization over the whole property would run straight into that.
Instead the department describes a per-person process:
- Call the police when someone is in the complex who you believe is not visiting a tenant.
- Officers identify the person and confirm they are trespassing rather than visiting.
- The owner, manager or tenant photographs the person and issues a memo saying they may not be on the property unless visiting a tenant — given in the officer’s presence.
- Officers escort them off and explain what happens if they return.
- If they come back, police may cite them (you would be subpoenaed to court) or arrest them (you would need to go to the Magistrate’s Office right away to give probable cause).
FPD describes this as the only way to remove trespassers from an apartment complex or mobile home park.
What happens after you call
Section titled “What happens after you call”Worth knowing before you decide how to handle an incident.
An officer generally cannot arrest for a misdemeanour they did not witness. If the trespass happened in front of you rather than in front of them, it falls to you as the owner or agent to go to the Magistrate’s Office and swear out the complaint. That is the structural reason the after-hours agreement is worth filing at all: it gives the officer what they need to act on posted premises without you being there, which is precisely the situation where getting you out of bed is not going to happen.
Pressing a charge can take several court dates. One downtown owner described four appearances over a single shoplifting case that never reached a resolution — defendant absent, released early, in custody elsewhere, notice unclear — and four days of work lost before giving up. They were explicit that this was the court calendar, not the police department. Go in knowing the time it can cost, and decide accordingly.
Officers at the meeting offered to drive owners to the Magistrate’s Office themselves rather than lose the complaint. If the trip is the obstacle, say so.
The forms
Section titled “The forms”| Document | |
|---|---|
| Trespassers Authorization to Remove — Business (POL-521a) | Download PDF |
| Trespassers Authorization to Remove — Residential (POL-521b) | Download PDF |
| No Trespassing Agreement — filing instructions, all three categories | Download DOCX |
Before you rely on a printed copy: the paper form is a four-part carbonless set — white for the officer, canary for the magistrate, pink for the court liaison, goldenrod for you — and the instructions ask for the original white copy. Ask FPD whether they will take a printed single copy or whether you should pick up the carbonless set. Worth one phone call before you drive over.
Who to ask
Section titled “Who to ask”| Fayetteville Police Department | 467 Hay Street, Fayetteville, NC 28301 |
| Crime Prevention (Community Affairs) | Maria Nazario-Santiago · 910-433-1034 · MariaNazarioSantiago@fayettevillenc.gov |
| Agreement intake | Officer Zaria Scott took in the completed forms as of August 2026. Crime Prevention can point you to whoever holds it now |
| Non-emergency dispatch | 910-433-1925 |
| Emergency, or a trespasser during business hours | 911 |
| Look up a report afterwards | Police Reports |
Crime Prevention will come out to a business to walk through the form in person. For most owners that is faster than reading this page twice.
About these copies
Section titled “About these copies”These files are exactly as the Fayetteville Police Department’s Crime Prevention unit sent them to the Downtown Alliance on 20 August 2026, byte for byte — unmodified, not re-typed, not re-scanned. Both forms are marked Revised 4-06.
The City does not publish them on its website, so there is no official page to check them against. If it matters that you have the current version, ask Crime Prevention before you file. If you find that these have been superseded, tell the Alliance and we will replace them here.
The practical guidance — signs staying up, outdoor-use areas, banning versus the agreement, the event ID, the magistrate step — is what FPD told downtown owners at the Business Watch Core Group meeting on 20 August 2026. It is a summary of that conversation, not a legal opinion and not an FPD publication. Where it matters, confirm with Crime Prevention.