State grant helps SPD focus on dangerous drivers

Included in items approved by the Sarasota City Commission at its Dec. 1 meeting consent agenda was a budget amendment to accept a $142,000 Florida Department of Transportation Speed and Aggressive Driving Enforcement grant to the Sarasota Police Department.

The grant, which the SPD also received last year, will enable the department’s patrol division to once again conduct a speed and aggressive driving, work zone safety, and high-visibility enforcement campaign.

“This Speed and Enforcement Grant gives us the opportunity to tackle traffic complaints in addition to our normal duties,” said Officer Jason Frank of the SPD Patrol Division/Traffic Homicide Investigations Unit. “This grant is citywide with no distinctive parameters on locations or times. We are free to move around the city. We concentrate on areas we know have a high probability of speeders, reckless drivers or those driving under the influence.”

The grant reimburses the SPD for overtime to conduct high-visibility, zero-tolerance enforcement operations at locations that experience frequent traffic crashes, failure to obey traffic laws and citizen complaints.

The city’s growth in population and visitors results in a substantial increase in traffic, leading to more traffic violations and crashes resulting in serious injuries or fatalities.

The funding objectives include decreasing speed and/or aggressive driving crashes and fatalities citywide by 5% when compared to the Oct. 1 to June 30 period from the previous year; conducting or participating in community outreach and education events to increase speeding and aggressive driving awareness; and to provide information and education to the public via message boards, local media, social media or press releases.

“Safety for the people who live, work, travel and drive through our city is our utmost priority, and we strive to continue to do our best to keep them safe while using our roadways,” Frank said. “We hear about complaints throughout the city at different times of the day and this grant gives us the opportunity to actively work those times.

Besides traffic enforcement, officers in the division are traffic homicide investigators, which means they are on call 24/7. They may be working in an area of traffic complaints and receive a call for a fatal crash. 

“If that happens, this grant gives us the opportunity to still work those complaint areas in addition to all the other things we do,” Frank said.