Fairfield Police Receive $175K Grant For Traffic Safety

SOLANO COUNTY, CA – The Fairfield Police Department was awarded a $175,000 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety for a year-long program of special enforcements and public awareness efforts to prevent traffic-related deaths and injuries, the agency announced today.

Fairfield police will use the funding for such activities as:

• Educational presentations
• DUI checkpoints
• DUI saturation patrols
• Bicycle and pedestrian safety enforcement
• Motorcycle safety enforcement
• Distracted driving enforcement
• Speed, red light, and stop sign enforcement
• Warrant service operations targeting multiple DUI offenders
• Compilation of DUI “Hot Sheets,” identifying worst-of-the-worst DUI offenders
• Specialized DUI and drugged driving training such as Standardized Field Sobriety Testing (SFST), Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement (ARIDE), and Drug Recognition Evaluator (DRE)
• Court “sting” operations to cite individuals driving from DUI court after ignoring their license suspension or revocation

“The City of Fairfield is grateful to partner with the Office of Traffic Safety. The goal of the Police Department’s Traffic Unit is to improve quality of life through a reduction in injury collisions. This grant helps us to achieve that goal by providing necessary funding for supplemental traffic enforcement,” said Sgt. Sam Rowland of the Fairfield PD's traffic unit.

After falling to a 10-year low in 2010, the number of persons killed has climbed nearly 17 percent across the state with 3,176 killed in 2015 according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Particularly alarming, the agency said, is the six-year rise in pedestrian and bicycle fatalities, along with the growing dangers of distracting technologies, and the emergence of drug-impaired driving as a major problem.

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Image by nesnad, via Wikimedia Commons