Local motorists may want to check their rear-view mirrors a
little more often during the first half of May because the
Hollister Police Department’s traffic enforcement unit will be back
in full force.
Local motorists may want to check their rear-view mirrors a little more often during the first half of May because the Hollister Police Department’s traffic enforcement unit will be back in full force.
Over the next two weeks, the police department will beef up traffic enforcement around town with the return of its two motorcycle officers.
Sgt. Greg Thul and Officer Tom Keylon, who staff the HPD’s motor patrol units, have formed the nucleus of the department’s traffic enforcement efforts.
With a grant from the state Office of Traffic Safety, the department purchased the radar equipment and a radar speed trailer and secured funding for overtime costs for staffing local DUI checkpoints and to pay for an extra patrol officer to look for traffic violations.
“The grant has provided for a very successful enforcement effort,” Thul said.
In the 24 months that the OTS grant has been in use, traffic officers have issued more than 10,000 citations – “Most of which have been for the violations that often lead to accidents such as speeding, right-of-way violations and running red lights,” Thul said.
As a result of the stepped-up enforcement, there have been no fatal accidents within the city, and both injury accidents and the overall number of accidents have decreased significantly, Thul said.
The traffic enforcement has focused heavily on the early morning and late afternoon commute where the majority of violations occur.
“We also perform a number of saturation patrols in the evenings, looking for DUIs,” Thul said. “Through those patrols, we made 84 arrests alone.”
With the funding from the grant, the department has focused extra time and attention to traffic violations around schools as to protect children as they walk to and from campus.
For several months, the department’s traffic enforcement capability was reduced because a number of officers were taken off the streets, largely because of injuries.
However, many of those officers will return to duty soon, and a number of other officers have received specialized training in the use of mobile radar speed detection units, which will make it easier for more officers to work traffic patrols to catch speeders and other traffic code violators.
