Good marks for traffic campaign

By Barry Porterfield
Pauls Valley Daily Democrat

October 09, 2008 11:17 am

— The numbers only recently came in but they show a holiday campaign by a Garvin County law enforcement agency appears to have made an impact on things like speeders and seat belt violators.
Garvin County Sheriff's Department was one of many law enforcement agencies taking part in a national traffic “crackdown” program around the Labor Day holiday weeks ago.
One official from that office in Pauls Valley believes the program stretching from Aug. 15 to Sept. 1 believes the extra effort by county deputies looks to have had the desired results.
In the neighborhood of 200 citations and warnings were given with most going to motorists failing to wear their seat belts while driving.
Around 60 of those were handed out to motorists who were exceeding the speed limit.
Those numbers don't even include the arrests for drunk driving and warrants previously issued for some individuals.
“We saturated patrol around busy intersections and had driver's license and seat belt checkpoints,” Lt. Travis Crawford said.
“It was a more conscious effort on speeders and seat belt violators. We chose to do checkpoints and more patrol in areas where we get a lot of complaints of speeders,” he said.
Some of those areas with the highest concentration of complaints are Airline Road west of Pauls Valley, old Highway 19 east of PV, the road leading to PV's old City Lake and Wallville Road west of Maysville.
“Someone will call in about every day on one of these four, especially during the school year after 3 o'clock,” Crawford said.
“We saw several motorists approach our checkpoints and put their seat belts on,” he said.
“That's OK with us because that's what we want them to do.”
In all there were nine checkpoints set up during the time period at locations scattered around Garvin County with none involving traffic on Interstate 35. There were also random checks at bars in the county.
“All of this was a part of our daily effort. We didn't deviate from what we normally do but put more of a conscious effort to be seen and heard,” he said.
“A program like this makes our roads safer because we're out in the public and being seen. We believe it deters crime.”
This particular campaign was a first in a sense for the sheriff's office because deputies didn't work traffic on the interstate highway, which was strictly manned by state troopers in this area.
“This was the first campaign that we did where we didn't conduct business on the interstate,” Crawford said.