It’s the reason motorists slow down when they see an officer of
the law cruising by: Radar allows officers to nab speeders and hand
out hefty fines.
It’s the reason motorists slow down when they see an officer of the law cruising by: Radar allows officers to nab speeders and hand out hefty fines.
Now, after three years of owning only two hand-held radar guns, Hollister police will have 15 new radar units for their cars within a couple weeks, Police Chief Jeff Miller said. But that doesn’t mean there will be 15 squad cars patrolling the city looking for speeding scofflaws right away.
Ideally, Miller would like to set up enforcement in different areas of the city – areas where officers would focus only on traffic enforcement. Miller would like that around schools, downtown and other problem areas, he said.
“Right now I don’t know if we’ll have the money to pay the overtime to do that,” Miller said. “That’s sometime in the future.”
The radar units, called Custom Golden Eagles, are being donated from the California Highway Patrol and will be permanent fixtures in the cars instead of the hand-held and removable “guns.”
The units will enable officers to use the radar while the car is moving. The hand-held guns they currently use only work while their car is stationary.
“Getting the moving radar will enhance our ability to do speed enforcement,” Miller said.
For a small department, possessing a minimal amount of radar guns isn’t uncommon, Miller said. Acquiring more permanent units in the cars will allow the department to be more efficient manner in regulating speeding, Miller said.
After outfitting several cars with the units as prototypes the department will evaluate them and then install the remaining units, Miller said.
Without radar, officers “pace” speeding violators, which is difficult in the city, Miller said. Last year, the police department issued 249 speeding tickets within the city of Hollister.
Officers are being trained in radar use so they will be proficient with it by the time the units are installed in their cars.
Radar units are usually used only by city police officers and California Highway Patrol officers – San Benito County sheriff’s deputies don’t have radar in their cars, said Steven Smith, director of the Administration of Justice Department at Gavilan College.
The only time sheriffs use radar guns is when they are contracted out by a smaller city that doesn’t have its own police force to patrol the roads, such as San Juan Bautista, Smith said.
CHP cars in the Hollister/Gilroy area are fixed with two radar antennas – one on the front dash and another on the rear deck plate, said Officer Chris Dugger, radar coordinator.
This standard, statewide used unit called the Stalker Dual enables officers to clock cars driving in opposite directions and while the car is moving.
“They are extremely accurate,” Dugger said. “If they weren’t accurate, we wouldn’t be using them.”
An attorney who has handled many traffic cases questioning radar’s accuracy, and the author of the book “Fight Your Ticket in California,” David Brown challenges the accuracy of the units because of extenuating circumstances such as traffic and the basics of radar itself.
Radar works like a flashlight, where the beam is wider at the farthest point than at the origin, Brown said. Because of this it can clock the wrong vehicle’s speed, he said.
“Real life problems with radar is that if there’s a lot of traffic, sometimes it can be inaccurate,” Brown said. “Or (an officer) can be tracking the speed of one object while they’re visually looking and thinking about another target.”
CHP protocol states that before an officer activates the radar unit they first must identify a target, visually estimate its speed for three seconds, activate the radar and then verify that the vehicle’s speed was within 5 mph of the estimated speed, Dugger said.
“Radar is a very powerful tool and is something we train our officers not to take lightly,” Dugger said. “It is incumbent upon us to maintain the integrity of radar.”
