Sheriff's Office Receives Grant To Combat Drunk Driving

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The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety has awarded the Bartow County Sheriff’s Office a $145,300 grant the agency can use towards fighting impaired driving, the local agency said in a press release.

The money will be applied to the sheriff’s office’s H.E.A.T., or Highway Enforcement of Aggressive Traffic, Unit, which works to combat crashes, injuries and fatalities caused by impaired driving and speeding, while also increasing seatbelt use.

It’s very important to educate the public about traffic safety and the dangers of DUI.

“Agencies like Bartow County receive this H.E.A.T. grant because they have showed a particular dedication to protecting their citizens from impaired drivers,” said GOHS Director Harris Blackwood. “This dedication is crucial because alcohol-related deaths still account for 25 percent of traffic fatalities in Georgia.”

As law enforcement partners in the Operation Zero Tolerance and Click It or Ticket seatbelt campaigns, the Bartow County Sheriff’s Office will also conduct mobilizations throughout the year in coordination with GOHS’s year-round waves of high visibility patrols, multi-jurisdictional road checks and sobriety checkpoints.

Between January and November of this year, the Bartow County H.E.A.T. Unit, which is in its second year of deployment, handed out the following speeding citations:

• 11-25 mph over: 22
• 16-20 over: 303
• 21-25 over: 421
• 26-29 over: 101
• 30+ over: 40

The Unit also gave 1,096 warnings, made 145 DUI arrests, 106 seatbelt citations, 451 seatbelt warnings, made 16 drug arrests and 17 fugitive arrests.

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