Scofflaws beware: Cops are teaming up on you

WASILLA — Over the next few weeks drivers in a few problem areas of the borough might want to slow down.

Kelly Swihart, a sergeant at the Wasilla Police Department, said he’s starting up a new year of his Multi-Jurisdictional Traffic Enforcement Team.

The team is made up of officers from Wasilla, Houston and Palmer police departments as well as Alaska State Troopers and the state Department of Transportation’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement officers.

Officers sign up for overtime shifts patrolling in various areas. Last year they would take one day in each jurisdiction, working a six-hour shift in Wasilla, then six in Palmer and six in Houston or troopers’ jurisdiction.

Swihart said that since May of last year until March of this year the task force was mobilized seven times for 18 hours and one time for six hours. They stopped 1,816 motorists and wrote 1,248 tickets.

“Those were contacts that would not have necessarily have been made,” he said.

They also made 13 DUI arrests and made 64 other arrests for things like outstanding warrants or drug offenses.

“We’re pretty happy with it, that’s averaging about a DUI an hour,” he said.

May is the month when, nationally, police departments start making a big push on seatbelt enforcement. For that reason, Swihart said, they chose to start the program in May of last year and restart it this year in May.

The Click-it or Ticket campaign provides some of the task force’s money and, to hear Swihart tell it, the money is well-spent. The task force wrote 197 seatbelt tickets its first year.

Swihart said he plans to run the first task force project from May 22 to May 24. The second mobilization will be from May 29 to May 31.

Like last year, he said, they’ll spend a night in each jurisdiction. He said some of that time will be spent patrolling areas that tend to have a lot of speeders and other violators.

“When we’re here in Wasilla, depending on the turnout of officers, I’d like to concentrate on Knik-Goose Bay and also probably the Parks [Highway] on the west end of town,” he said. “And then up toward Houston we’ve got the Parks Highway safety corridor which is a big area of concern.”

He said he hopes to do as many mobilizations in the program’s second year as he did in its first. Of course that’s all dependent on federal priorities, which aren’t yet certain, given that a new administration is in charge.

“The money we get for this comes from federal grants to the state and then filters down to us,” Swihart said. “It’s hard to say how much money’s going to be available or what their focus is going to be but we hope to continue.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.