Police hunt for unbuckled motorists

WASILLA — It’s Friday afternoon, Luke Szipszky sits in the parking lot of a downtown fire station studying the cars that pass.

“Seat belt. Seat belt. Seat belt,” he says, with each repetition representing a motorist obeying the law.

One guy in an older white sedan has seat belts that come out of the seat rather than out of the doorpost. Those ones are tough. Szipszky says he tends to look for a buckle hanging up by the driver’s shoulder. He has to make sure he knows the person’s not buckled in. He can’t very well pull them over just to check.

Szipszky is a Palmer police officer, but Friday he was working an extra shift in Wasilla. A few times a year the Wasilla Police Department gets money from the state to run overtime patrols. The department invites officers from other departments to work alongside them for what they call a Multi-Jurisdictional Task Force. This go-round it’s a mix of Wasilla and Palmer police, Alaska State Troopers and troopers assigned to the Bureau of Highway Patrol.

The enforcement effort was rolled out this weekend for Memorial Day, as part of the state’s Click It or Ticket campaign. WPD Sgt. Bill Rapson said that unbuckled seat belts would be the main thing officers were looking for but they’d address anything they needed to. Seat belt tickets, he said, are on the lower end of the annoyance scale — a $15 fine and no points off your license. You can even donate the cost of the ticket to the local fire department.

“It’s not to break the bank. It’s just to make sure everyone’s keeping their seat belts on,” he said.

Szipszky and his colleagues wrote dozens of citations over the course of the six-hour task force deployment. With so many people on the road heading out for the long weekend, it was certainly a target-rich environment.

“I love working overtime,” Szipszky said, and not just because he’s in the middle of building an addition on house. “Getting to come over here — it’s a change of pace.”

Though he does have to make an effort to stay aware of what street he’s on as he patrols outside of his coverage area.

In the course of two hours Szipszky pulled over probably 10 cars and handed out as many citations. Nearly all were for seat belts but he did catch a speeder. After a brief stopover at Wasilla police headquarters on the Parks Highway he pulled one over right behind Arby’s; across the street from the department.

It was a purple Ford Explorer with smiley faces drawn in the dust on the back. Over the course of the evening he pulled over a Honda CRV, a beater pickup, a Ford F-550 and a Chevy Cobalt. A lot of the drivers offered excuses.

The girl driving the Cobalt, for instance said she had been bugging her friend in the passenger seat all day about wearing a seat belt and Szipszky caught her on the one time she forgot to buckle up herself.

Then there are drivers like the teenaged boy in the Ford F-550.

“I walked up there he just had a big old smile on his face. He was like, ‘Yup. Seat belt, huh?’” Szipszky said.

Szipsky caught the speeder after almost willing it to appear, no sooner saying that Peck Street is a hotbed for fast drivers than he spotted the Honda going 12 mph over the limit.

“Uhp! Speak of the devil,” he said, as he whipped his Ford Crown Victoria patrol car around.

The driver told him he was late for work. Szipszky wrote him two tickets, one for the speeding and another for no proof of insurance. Just before he handed over the tickets, though, the driver found his insurance card. So Szipszky issued just one ticket.

Just before 8 p.m. he was called over to an auto parts store. A driver inbound from Anchorage had called to report the truck in front of him was swerving and driving fast. The caller suspected the driver was drunk. But when Szipszky heard the truck belonged to the store he figured it was a parts runner and suspected another source of the swerving — driving while tired.

As it turns out he was right. The driver said he worked an extra long shift and being a runner is just one of his two jobs. He said he was glad the guy behind him called it in because he was nodding off so subtly he didn’t realize it. Szipszky let him go with a piece of advice — get yourself an energy drink. Do a couple of laps around the store. Do what you have to do to stay alert if you plan to drive yourself home.

“He’s lucky,” Szipszky said, because even if it’s not illegal, at least for non-commercial drivers, “Driving while tired is just as bad as driving intoxicated.”

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