California’s office of traffic safety recently awarded the National City Police Department a $70,000 grant for traffic enforcement and public awareness efforts to prevent traffic related deaths and injuries.
The grant allows National City officers to conduct DUI patrols, saturation patrols, and enforcement for red lights and stop signs and distracted driving violators.
“[The grant] enables us to take the burden off of our patrol division and put our extra traffic officers out in the field on an overtime basis in order to make the community safer,” said Sgt. Jeffrey Meeks, who oversees the department’s traffic division.
The grant mainly pays for the overtime of traffic and patrol officers enforcing traffic. Meeks said all traffic operations are grant funded and enables the department to put more officers out in the street. He said with the grant there is no cost taken out of the department’s budget for traffic operations. The grant went into effect Oct.1 and lasts until Sept. 30, 2017. Traffic enforcement started last month.
Meeks said having officers strictly focused on traffic enforcement makes National City a safer place.
“Every DUI patrol that I’ve sent out has resulted in an arrest of [at least] one DUI driver,” he said.
Meeks said typically patrol officers are assigned to respond to calls for service, so there usually is not enough time or resources dedicated to be proactive with traffic violators.
“This enables us to get out there pretty much every weekend to conduct these saturation DUI patrols,” he said.
A saturation DUI patrol is different from a DUI checkpoint. A saturation is where officers pay close attention to areas near bars and thoroughfares like Highland Avenue looking for suspected drunk drivers. A DUI checkpoint is where there is visible signage with cones placed where a driver must drive through.
Meeks said these checkpoints do more than just stop drunk drivers. He said they also find people who have warrants out for their arrests, cited drivers driving with a suspended license and occasionally find a driver with an open alcohol bottle in their car.
The grant also gives the National City Police Department to host educational presentations at high schools such as a presentation about the dangers of driving under the influence, pedestrian safety, and the importance of wearing a motorcycle helmet.
The traffic division consist of three motorcycle officers and a sergeant.
