Radar love: Cape police hiring two officers to reduce traffic accidents

Cape Girardeau police chief Carl Kinnison calls it a "hammer-and-nail" situation: If the city's rising number of traffic accidents are nails, there's really only one thing law enforcement can use to hammer those numbers back down to more acceptable levels.

Write more tickets.

And that's precisely what is expected to happen starting sometime this fall, Kinnison said, when two officers will be hired and charged with keeping their eyes -- and radar guns -- on city drivers.

"We want the number of accidents to come down," Kinnison said last week. "The way you do that, from a law enforcement standpoint, is you write tickets."

Over the past three years the number of traffic citations has fallen significantly, which coincided with an increase in street accidents, including four fatalities, according to the department's 2010 annual report.

In 2007, the department wrote 9,184 citations for speeding, improper passing, failing to signal, inattentiveness -- think texting -- and other traffic offenses.

But after that, budgetary restraints caused city leaders to reduce police funding, which led to reductions in two positions that were largely used for writing tickets, Kinnison said. While the department's traffic officers were still writing tickets, the loss in manpower caused the overall number of citations to drop to around 6,500 each year for 2008 and 2009. Then, last year, the number of tickets hit 5,587, down from nearly 8,900 tickets in 2006.

Over that period, the number of accidents climbed. The numbers rose from 1,795 street accidents in 2007 to 1,876 in 2010, an increase of about 4.5 percent.

"I'd love if it the number of citations went down," Kinnison said. "But if they do, I want to see the number of accidents go down, too. It's when you have citations going one way and accidents going the other way -- that's when you really need to start taking a look at it."

In July, the Cape Girardeau City Council restored the funding for the two positions. City manager Scott Meyer said he couldn't speak to why the cuts were made because he wasn't working here at that time. But when city officials looked at the budget for this year, they considered the effects of the cuts and how to make the streets as "safe and secure" as possible, he said.

"We saw that we were having more accidents and that we were having less tickets," Meyer said. "We wanted to put more emphasis on traffic safety. The result is safer citizens, and that's what we're after."

Cynics may suggest that the move is based on putting more money in the city's coffers. But Meyer said that's not the goal and he isn't sure the amount of tickets that are written would even cover the cost of two additional officers. According to the 2011-2012 city budget, the financial impact of the addition of two patrolmen is about $92,900.

When the officers are hired, one of them will be writing tickets on a full-time basis and the other will be writing tickets as needed, Kinnison said. He wants to keep one of the officers flexible to be able to assist other calls, he said.

The officers will be targeting high traffic and high-crash locations, Kinnison said. The top five locations for crashes in 2010 were: Mount Auburn Road between William Street and Gordonville Road (40), Broadway between Kingshighway and Walker Street (26), Kingshighway between Themis and Independence streets (25) and Kingshighway between Golden Eagle Court and Lexington Avenue (14).

The most injuries from accidents were at Mount Auburn Road between Route K and Gordonville Road (7), Kingshighway between Golden Eagle Court and Mount Auburn Road (4), the intersection of William Street and Sheridan Drive (3), William Street between Sheridan Drive and Albert Street (3), and Kingshighway between Silver Springs Road and Boulder Crest Drive (3).

The presence of officers at those locations may be a temporary motive for drivers to slow down, Kinnison said, but that doesn't have the lasting effect of a ticket. Citations for traffic violations has the potential to cost drivers cash from fines, paying higher insurance rates or even the loss of their driver's license.

"All of that has a significant impact on slowing people down," Kinnison said.

While Kinnison knows that the public won't be thrilled at the thought of the greater likelihood of getting a ticket, he said they should realize that the point is to make the streets safer for everyone.

"Our goal, our mission in life, is to keep those numbers down, and, more importantly, injuries and fatalities down," he said. "That's what we're trying to do."

smoyers@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent address:

40 S. Sprigg St., Cape Girardeau, MO