Charles City police increasing traffic enforcement around Memorial Day

By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Police Department will be increasing enforcement of traffic violations beginning later this month, with an emphasis on seat belt use.

The increased enforcement from May 22 to June 4 will coincide with the Memorial Day weekend.

The increase is part of a grant provided by the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau, said Charles City Chief of Police Hugh Anderson.

The grant is part of a statewide effort and was used in Charles City to help outfit squad cars with mobile cameras, Anderson said. 

“What this grant requires is we take a seat belt survey and usually there’s four or five, what are considered waves, a year. It’s called the Safety Traffic Enforcement Program or STEP,” Anderson said. “During that wave we do an increase in seat belt enforcement and traffic enforcement in general.”

Once that period is over a survey is done to see how many people are wearing seat belts.

Charles City was one of the first Iowa communities to be involved in STEP, Anderson said.

“There’s a handful that started it,” he said. “And we’ve been doing it ever since.”

Don’t expect any warnings for not wearing a seat belt during this time. The police intend to give out tickets as part of the effort to increase awareness.

Officers will also be looking for proper use of child restraints during this time. Both during STEP and after, parents can expect a ticket for not buckling kids in.

“One you’re rarely ever going to get a warning on is child restraint,” Anderson said. “The kids, they don’t have a choice.” 

Iowa has a 94 percent rate of people using their seat belts, but the remaining 6 percent account for half of all traffic fatalities, according to a press release from the Police Department.

Seat belts increase safety regardless of where someone sits in a vehicle, according to the press release. Forty-seven percent of front-seat passengers who were killed in crashes were not wearing seat belts, and 57 percent of back seat fatalities were not buckled in.

“We have a fairly high percentage that wear them in town, (but) you always have those holdouts,” Anderson said.

More tickets mean more fines, but Anderson said it’s a myth that citations generate a lot of revenue for local police departments.

“Most of the time when we write a ticket that money goes to the state,” the chief said. “What they do with it from there, I don’t know.”

And there’s no ticket quota for Charles City officers, Anderson said. “That’s always a misconception.”