Grant funds to aid local police departments in traffic safety efforts

Local law enforcement agencies recently received assistance in their efforts to keep roadways safe, reporting funds awarded through a grant program from the California Office of Traffic Safety.

The city of Huntington Beach announced last week its police department received an area-leading $788,000 in grants funds.

“The HBPD is always looking for opportunities to incorporate additional traffic safety enforcement and education in our city,” Huntington Beach Police Chief Julian Harvey said in a news release. “This grant funding allows us to deploy necessary traffic enforcement measures and community outreach programming to assist with our goal of reducing fatal and serious injury collisions in our community.”

Newport Beach was awarded $270,000, and Costa Mesa received $250,000 via the grant program.

“Impairment, speeding and other dangerous driving behaviors jeopardize the safety of everyone on the road,” Costa Mesa Police Chief Ron Lawrence said in a statement. “Our Traffic Safety Bureau continues to do incredible work at educating residents and removing DUI drivers from our streets. We are pleased to receive this grant funding from [the Office of Traffic Safety], which will help us reduce DUI drivers in the city of Costa Mesa. Keeping our city safe is our number one priority, and that includes preventing DUI drivers and unsafe drivers from causing crashes that result in injuries and death.”

The Laguna Beach police department received $107,000 to aid in efforts to prevent dangerous and illegal driving behaviors. The Fountain Valley police department was awarded a $50,000 grant.

Tim Weisberg, acting deputy director of marketing and public affairs for the Office of Traffic Safety, said the office awarded 372 grants to government agencies across the state. There was $96.6 million made available for this cycle of funding.

“There’s not any type of quota for it,” Weisberg said of how the funds are allocated. “It’s mainly that they have a clearly identifiable problem and that they have a program to address it, and obviously, if you had a grant in the past, that’s your proven measure that you can handle the responsibilities and objectives of the grant, but also, it’s data-driven.”

Information also determines the locations in which traffic safety operations are performed.

“It can’t just be in an arbitrary location,” Weisberg added. “It’s got to be in an area where they’ve had near-misses, there’s a history of DUI collisions — maybe it’s a particular corridor that’s next to a business district where people drink and then they go out and drive. There’s a lot of those factors when setting up checkpoints or where they do the patrols.”

Deterring dangerous driving can provide protection to those that share the road, including crossing pedestrians, bicyclists and other drivers.

Local police departments will look to accomplish this goal through DUI checkpoints, as well as enforcement against distracted driving such as failure to follow hands-free cellphone law.

Leading traffic violations that result in crashes include speeding, running through red lights or stop signs, illegal turns and lane changes, and failure to yield to oncoming vehicles and pedestrians.

Grant funds also go toward community education and officer training and recertification in disciplines such as drug recognition expert, the standard field sobriety test and advanced roadside impaired driving enforcement.

The grant program from the Office of Traffic Safety runs through September.

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